Most of the levels in this ROM-hack have awful level design and look like they took 10 minutes to make. A level (the empty castle with only the bob-omb painting room) in this hack is even downright plagiarized from a hack called sm64.z64. (at least, that level was present in the version of the hack I played at the time I wrote this review. I don't know if it's still there in the final release.)
You might say "oh the personalization AI is making the levels, so they are meant to look bad!", but honestly I think that's a stupid excuse to justify this hack being good just because you like the idea of a "malicious AI that messes with your video game". I'm not going to lie when I say that I like that idea too, but this hack terribly executes every aspect of it. I'm not immersed at all. It doesn't even feel "personalized". It feels shoddy.

The custom songs in this hack are have terrible instrument choices and melodies that are unpleasant to listen to.

Some of the assets used are inaccurate to the Super Mario 64 Beta (as an example: the HUD), and the custom textures used in the levels. While I know that this is a trivial issue to most people, this is a big part of what ruins the feeling of this being the "real" beta to me.

And lastly, I'm not sure if this is still true or not, but the big issue that used to or is still plaguing this ROM-hack's coding process is that it uses ROM Manager instead of the fan decompilation of Super Mario 64. Basically, it uses archaic tools which makes it harder to implement ideas into the ROM-hack, which might explain why some things are the way they are.

There could've been so much more done with this idea. But sadly, the Super Mario 64 beta community is filled with a bunch of jerks (Trust me when I say that there are a lot of edgy bigots and racists in the Super Mario 64 beta community, as I had been pretty active in this community even before the gigaleak happened) that don't know what they're doing.

Anyways, where the frick is Wario !!! /hj

Completion: Collected all 460 stars. Played on version 1.0.2.

Review: This is one of the craziest gaming experiences I've ever had. This took me just under 40 hours (with help) to complete. The amount of content and its execution is nothing short of remarkable. Up until the very end, you're constantly discovering new areas, and probably will never see everything this hack truly has to offer. This hack has a very addictive property to it, and I'd end up playing it for multiple hours at a time. However, I'm not a fan of horror, and this hack constantly taps into the uncanny valley and even straight up jumpscares you at times. The controls also differ a lot from vanilla SM64, and can be really annoying to use effectively. There's also a ton of jank that can be upsetting. If you want to complete this hack, I'd recommend looking at a guide about halfway through your journey, and don't collect more than 2 red stars until you're at the endgame.

Proof of Completion

I went into this expecting a quaint little spooky Mario rom hack, but I was instead greeted by one of the single most gripping, immersive, and fun 3D platformer collectathon experiences I've ever played.

The combination of horror and collectathon platforming is so strange, yet it works remarkably well. The game toys with your knowledge by tossing countless remixes and reimaginings of classic Mario 64 levels, that just feel slightly off in one way or another.

And even on top of the weird redux's of beta and retail levels, theres also countless brand new levels, that fit right in with the original games design philosophy, and even in some instances, enhance and improve upon it.

There are a staggering 450 yellow stars and 13 red stars in the game, with only the 13 reds being required in order to, "beat." the game, but I found myself collecting as many yellows as I could because exploring was so much fun.

Every turn of the castle was a new mystery, with new levels and new theming. The castle is sprawling and massive, and warps in on itself multiple times, but its so impeccably designed that I never got truly lost, and I began to memorize pathways to certain levels and important intersections.

The game feels like a playable dream, it has a sublime, surreal, dreamlike atmosphere that feels so palpably uncomfortable yet strangely engaging throughout the entire experience.

This is a once in a lifetime experience. If you enjoy Super Mario 64 I implore you to play this game, it blew me away in every sense.

a very unique experience. the surreal, labyrinthine nature of the hub areas was a lot of fun to figure out. unfortunately, the game does not really respect the time you put into learning it. the ending is awful, and having to find the arbitrary red stars to even see it would be pretty silly without a guide, as some of them are hidden within real levels with no indication they are there. imo they only should have all been somehow accessible through the hub areas. speaking of the levels, wow are they trash. for the most part, they dont feel like unfinished areas from the main game, they feel like baby's first mario 64 romhack. "act 1" is just silly, the "scary" parts are cringey, and there are too many repetitive stars in the levels themselves. as fun as it was in the beginning, by the end it felt like a slog, and one that required a guide despite complete memorization of how to get where. i feel as though the game needed to either be more structured, such that someone can feasibly find everything on their own (almost nobody is going to figure out to run to four corners of a random room with 0 indication of it doing anything) or further embrace the creepy nature and random events, which i feel there wasnt enough of.

Personally I think the whole iceberg deal that inspired this game and the Creepypasta moments it has are a little cringe-y, but in the end I think B3313 does a solid job replicating a lot of the weird and subtle eeriness of Mario 64 and cranking it to the max. Many of the new areas in the castle feel like they came fresh out of dreams I had about Mario 64 when I was a kid. The whole concept of most of the levels being abstract, half-remembered/alternate timeline versions of Mario 64 levels we all know and love is also a very cool idea, even if I did get a little sick of all the Whomp's Fortresses in the end.

genuinely HOW is this on backlogged
regardless of my confusion this is super impressive and provides so much to play, its a really fun thing for discord streams and stuff. Unrelated to the game itself but sadly the ongoing very publicly brought up drama amongst the development side of both the official and unabandoned version leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth and its probably had some genuine effects on how i feel when playing the game. its still amazing though and better than basically every official mario game

holy mackaroni i started playing this when i got very very ill with covid and it made the experience even better trying to play this with a 104 fever in a complete and utter haze, it started to bleed into my dreams too. i tried to map this out by myself without using a guide and ended up writing 84 pages of notes. this is for release 0.9 that I am marking that I "completed" it, even with the amount of exploration I did, I am sure I missed areas because there is just so much to see! i typically don't like mario 64 but the amount of work and atmosphere the creators put in is incredible - huge fan of your work (the game and otherwise) and just cant speak highly enough about this

i went into b3313 completely blind expecting some stupid generic mario 64 creepypasta rom hack bullshit and instead got one of the weirdest, most surreal, and dream-like experiences ive ever gotten out of a video game. everything from the music to the level design feels like some tripped up mario fans fever dream. things like the placement of the stars feel like they were just put out in the open for no reason. the maps are all so open and i kept on finding myself in places i felt like i wasnt supposed to be in. even weird technical junk like clipping through walls added to the not-quite-uneasy feeling the hack gives off. even though it does contain some spooky creepypasta stuff, its used just sparingly enough that it manages to stay interesting and doesnt feel overused or anything. the real meat of the game is exploring the castle, but a lot of painting levels have some of my favorite areas like the eel graveyard, dry town, or bob-omb battlefield during its "quiet war". every time you find a branching path youll make a mental note that youll want to check out the other path later, but by the time youre done with what you were already doing, youve usually forgotten how to even go back. its insane. im positive that i missed a ton of notable areas even after sinking almost over a day into it. b3313 definitely shouldnt be viewed with a gamer mindset. the platforming and gameplay isnt super tight and fun/challenging or anything like that, but i dont think it should be either. if you want more mario 64, there are more than enough hacks to hold you over, but this hack in particular takes total advantage of the game it was built on and really just mystifies me more than anything else, which is a breath of fresh air. if youre gonna recommend this to a friend, dont tell them anything about it. dont show them a map, or tell them where to go. just let them get lost

Incidentally got to the end of this game today at around 15 hours, so I figure I'd log it. That is I just beat 1.0, I already squeezed all the blood out of 0.7 when it came out a few years ago.

It's honestly somewhat difficult to traditionally "rate" this game (and personally I may try to avoid star ratings soon, the way I do with movies) just due to the fact it's a very nontraditional game. 1.0 did add some clearer modes of progression, but they are easily missed through the obscure gameplay.

All that said, I love this game to bits. It tickles so many specific parts of my brain, my lifelong love of Mario paired with my loves of creepypasta, architectural horror and non-euclydean spaces, dream logic and hypnogogic atmosphere. The game truly feels like a dream, like dreams I've had and still have of digital space.
The type of exploration in this game is probably only matched by the likes of two of its main influences, yume nikki and LSD.

Unfortunately though, due to these exact strengths, there comes a wealth of weaknesses in its design. As you play it becomes increasingly, wildly difficult to maintain your awareness and to hunt down and find new spaces in the world. More and more I find myself walking in circles, warping back to familiar hallways and lobbies and loading save states to undo one-way passages. This kind of cyclical madness fits the flavor of the game perfectly, but doesn't exactly make for the best gameplay-- though it certainly makes the moments you find new places all the more sweet.

I do wish that the levels were more entwined with the plexus itself, I have levels I do need to explore but the way they are so removed from the plexus will often kill my desire to explore many of them too in-depth. If more of them had alternate exits or end of level warps like a few key levels do, I'd definitely be more inclined to explore them. Additionally, the levels could really use more varied missions. Too much climbing, not enough fun stuff like the lighthouse levels surfing mini game.

Despite my gripes with the more technical game-y elements of this project, I will definitely keep coming back to this. There is nothing that scratches the itch exactly the way this does for me. I know there is a lot I still wanna seek out in this game, but it's probably time to crack into the wiki. I still need to find the game room from SM64DS!!!