Luigi: "Waaaaaah!" It’s no surprise that the Star Festival,
and of course the amazing music that goes along with it, is one my favorite places in
Super Mario Galaxy. There’s just something so welcoming about
it, but also sad because it feels like you never get to go back here again. Once we beat the game 100% with both Mario
and Luigi we realized this wasn’t true, but prior to that, the feeling still stuck
with us. This was our grand launching point. The place where Mario moved into a territory
that was no longer the flat ground we knew. There was sort of a magic to the feeling it
left me with when Mario headed towards the cosmos and never looked back. And that’s exactly why this place fascinated
me so much. It was such a vast level that seemed to go
on forever. And once we make our way half way through
it, everything pristine about this place shatters as chaos rains down from above. Now, this change in scenery has caused people
a lot of intrigue over the years, and has typically been the one place I see popping
up all over my comment section on any Mario Galaxy video I’ve made. And this is why. When the scene changes over, there are Toads
that don’t make it out of this ordeal unscathed. Bowser begins firing his warships from above
assaulting the entire area. During the cutscene, Mario begins running
frantically through the village and we can see a few toads get zapped by electricity
or some sort of energy that causes them to crystalize completely. When we exit the cutscene, we can even hear
a Toad nearby state that their buddy is trapped in that crystal thing. But there’s nothing we can do to help them. We run to the castle to save Peach, and Mario
gets caught up in the crossfire as the castle takes to the sky. With a burst of magic, Mario is flung out
into the atmosphere and our adventure begins… And we never go back to that starting area
that is in ruin. The next time we get a chance to check it
out, the game is finished 100% - and nothing about the accident remains. So today we’re going on a little quest. A quest to save the frozen toads at the start
of the game that no one has ever freed before. Because it’s certainly not as simple as
walking up to them and shattering their casing. It’s actually a pretty complex process. So sit back, and come with me on a journey
across the vastness of space to save these little dudes that every player left behind. Do you remember playing games as a kid… And thinking they looked absolutely mind blowing? But now, those same games appear blurry if
you play them on the original hardware? The crispness of the games went away as newer
and better graphics came about - and our minds adjusted to the modern graphics of today. That’s a problem I’ve had when going back
to older games. Sure, emulation produces great results - but
it’s also error prone and doesn’t carry the same feeling. There’s just something about the original
console that can never be replaced. But, there is a solution to this, and it’s
called the mClassic by Marseille. The mClassic is the world's first and only
HDMI plug and play graphics processor for nearly every platform. You can use it on older consoles, or even
modern ones like the Nintendo Switch to upscale and sharpen your output resolution to make
your gaming experience better than it was before. Want to play some GameCube games on the native
hardware but enhance the quality to 1440p HD? The mClassic has you covered when coupled
with a standard composite to HDMI converter, and it will preserve the correct aspect ratio
while repainting the existing low res footage to a higher resolution with its upscaling
algorithm. You can even use it on your Switch to make
the image look sharper than it did before. All of this with no additional latency. Prior to using the mClassic, I actually used
Marseille’s previous gaming product the mCable to improve the look of my Switch gameplay
for my YouTube videos. It worked great for movies and anime as well
- and the mClassic is a new and improved version of that. With the mClassic’s ease of use coupled
with three different settings for normal un-enhanced output, enhanced 16 by 9 output, and enhanced
retro output, it truly is a versatile product. So, if you want to enhance your gaming experience
with your newer consoles or put a fresh coat of paint on the games you loved growing up,
you can grab yourself an mClassic by clicking the link in the description below. If you hurry now you can use my special code
SwankyBox to get 15% off for the holidays and Black Friday. With that said, I want to thank Marseille
for sponsoring this video and supporting me as a creator. The Frozen Toads of the Star Festival… So there’s something very important that
needs to be said about this stage. This is the only level in the game where Luma
is not with Mario at some point. Mario doesn’t meet Rosalina and Luma until
Gateway Galaxy, which is the tutorial level right before we come to the observatory for
the first time. Without Luma, we don’t have our spin ability
yet… And without our spin, we’re unable to free
any toads at the star festival. This is why this whole ordeal is a tricky
situation, because plenty of players have wanted to free these toads and see what they
have to say. Unfortunately, the only way to break a crystal
in the game is to utilize Mario’s spin. The ground pound doesn’t work at all, and
trying to do so will actually make Mario skip off the crystal and ground pound twice. Shooting the crystal with star bits doesn’t
help us any either. So we’re stuck in a situation where we want
to do something but we don’t have the ability to do so. The solution for this isn’t exactly easy
either. Giving Mario a powerup like a Fire Flower,
which could potentially break the crystals, doesn’t exactly work because we can’t
spin to actually launch a fireball. No spinning also means no flying hack that
I typically use, because flying is initiated by spinning in the air. And granting Mario the ability to spin isn’t
something that’s easy to do because it’s normally bestowed upon him during a cutscene
event through Rosalina. So for the time being, we’re going to try
to do a work around before actually tackling the more complex way of reaching these Toads. Because even though there are tons of Toads
frozen down here, there’s also tons of Toads running around and dancing that we never get
to interact with. Some of these Toads end up getting caught
inside of the crystals once the cutscene takes place. So let’s try reaching them first before
attempting the others. Despite not having the ability to fly, we
can still enable a moon jump here. For those who watched my gameplay channel
SwankyZone, you’ll know I dabbled around in this area with the moon jump code quite
a bit. There’s actually a lot of neat things here
too. For starters, we can actually travel back
to the path that Mario runs on during the opening cutscene to the game. Only the path itself has collision though,
and everything else around it makes Mario fall to his death. All the surrounding geometry to the level
as a whole lacks collision too. You fall through the sides of the level, the
water, the war ships, etc. When the scene change does happen and the
attack begins, we can use the moon jump to travel over the fallen tower that blocks our
path. Doing so lets us get back to the starting
area where we can talk to the toads there… And they don’t have any updated dialogue. It’s actually pretty funny how oblivious
they are to the destruction that is going on. Toad, this is my favorite view too. Nothing beats it. So reaching the other side of the level without
triggering the cutscene is actually a pain even with a moon jump. The problem with our moon jump code when only
affected by universal, top down gravity, is that our momentum slows to a crawl once our
jump has been hyper extended. Mario starts out with tons of forward momentum,
but all this momentum is converted into falling momentum the longer we fall. So basically we inch forward super slowly,
but we fall like an anvil. So it takes a good five minutes or so of just
moon jumping to get to the castle area because of the distance. Once we are over there, the area is under
attack, but no warships are present. The cheerful star festival music still plays
too. But, unfortunately we run into another problem
here. Initially when tackling this area I was under
the impression that the loading zone for the cutscene only tripped near the front of this
downtown area. However, it’s actually the entire area of
the town and beyond it by quite a bit. So if we approach the town from the back,
the cutscene still starts. Even if we moon jump into the side fountain
area, all of this is still contained in the cutscene range. So even a backdoor method doesn’t allow
us to interact with any of the Toads before they get frozen. I’m not going to give up that easily though. Trying to reach these Toads in an un-altered
game state was ideal, but if we can’t do that, then we’re going to teleport all the
Toads to the start of the level. We’ll throw Peach in too just for the fun
of it. With this in place, we can now see all the
Toads who were spinning and sitting down in the area. And interesting enough, they all have cloned
dialogue. Most of the ones we could never talk to say
the same things that the talkable Toads do. The game developers never bothered changing
these things out because it’s typically impossible to access these Toads. But there’s something we have to understand
about this whole area though. Even though these Toads look like the ones
that are frozen in crystals, they actually aren’t. And beyond that, there’s plenty of Toads
not in the town area who are frozen as well. When the cutscene takes place, one set of
objects and assets unloads and another one loads in. Think of it as like a giant switch that is
pulled that can only be pointing to one set of 3d assets at a time. With that said though… who are these Toad
who are still stuck in the crystals? If we know for a fact that the Toads from
this area actually unload, then what is the story with these other Toads? We still don’t have a method to free them
either… At this point I started to brainstorm some
ideas about how this could be done within this stage. And really, there were only two ways this
could possibly be done. Both involved Mario getting the spin ability,
but there were two different approaches to this. Either we try to bring Rosalina here to the
Star Festival, or we reprogram a launch star in the game to send us back to the beginning
of the game. Neither of these are really easy though, and
bring about a lot of problems. I was able to get Rosalina to load in just
fine into the Star Festival at the start, but talking to her was a different story. This caused the game to crash because she’s
not the only object we need here, and not only that, I made some other mistakes as well. I reached out to Captain Byte, who is pretty
savvy with editing the game, but he ran into some issues as well. He did discover something neat though. What’s interesting is that we never actually
talk to the Rosalina that is at Gateway Galaxy. When we approach her, a cutscene starts and
we are given the spin ability. She then disappears in the cutscene. Because of this you can’t actually approach
her. But if you do talk to her, she speaks to you
in Japanese - despite this being the english version of the game. Thankfully Captain Byte speaks fluent Japanese
so he was able to help with it. When Rosalina was moved to the Star Festival
without the cutscene we could then talk to her and see what she actually says. And it translates roughly into the phrase
“in front”, and depending on the context, could mean “the one standing before me”. Which is kinda interesting. Unfortunately moving the other assets over
to this level is a bust because they’re hardcoded to respond specifically to that
level and the files that are paired with it. So moving the cutscene over to grant us the
ability didn’t work. Booting up the other attempt, we run into
a similar problem. Redirecting where launch stars warp us to
when it comes to transitioning maps falls under ASM editing, as in, assembly editing
- which is on the more difficult side of things. The idea was to replace the Final Star Festival
launch star, that you get for 100% clearing the game, with one that takes you to the first
scene of the game. After some tinkering this started to work,
but the level it loaded contained absolutely nothing. It was an empty void except for the map itself. So both of these had to be crossed off the
list. It looks like at the end of the day, since
I don’t have the capabilities to hard code the spin ability to activate, we need to take
the fight to another galaxy. So after analyzing the crystals in the game
a bit, I realized that all crystals have a parameter set to them so they can contain
objects. Sometimes this is set to be star bits or other
items. But there is a field that determines what
color a Toad will be if they are stuck inside of a crystal too. This is how all frozen Toads in the game are
set. With this in mind, it’s time to go back
over to the area that started this whole hunt in the first place. A while ago I released a video about three
desolate moons in Super Mario Galaxy. If you haven’t watched that video, I recommend
giving it a whirl sometime. But these moons have tons of crystals on them
that I thought had Toads in them at some point. It turns out they don’t, but that’s also
what makes it the perfect place to recreate the setups from the Star Festival. So I hijacked some of the crystals on these
planets and converted them to Toad stasis chambers. I then flew to these inaccessible planets
and visited my frozen comrades… But what I encountered was something I didn’t
expect at all. When I went to go free a Toad, well… this
happened. I shattered the crystal and no Toad was found. I heard Toad’s giddy noise but didn’t
see him anywhere. So I slowed down the game’s engine and pulled
the camera out. I thought Toad was being launched into space
after the crystal was shattered, but I was dead wrong. The truth is, freeing Toad from these crystals
actually kill the Toads inside. They aren’t launched anywhere. They shatter into pieces and those pieces
are sent flying. Every Toad I did this too ceased to exist
upon impact of Mario’s deadly spin… So those Star Festival Toads we wanted to
free? Even if we did get the spin ability somehow… We wouldn’t save them. We would destroy them completely. Which makes the story of this Toad worrying
about his buddy that much more tragic, as there is no saving him from this situation. But let’s talk about what’s happening
here. Because some of you may be thinking “But
Swanky, you can free trapped Toad’s in Space Junk Galaxy and they don’t die. What gives?” And you’re absolutely right. But that’s because those Toads are different. If we take a look at Space Junk Galaxy, you’ll
see that there are crystals with Toads placed inside of them. But these Toads are actually two separate
objects. When Mario shatters a crystal, the Toad inside
the crystal actually gets erased from existence, but this then triggers the other object, which
is the similar colored Toad that is stored in this same location, to jump upwards and
start their animation. It’s a two step process. But the thing is, because the developers knew
Mario would never spin at the first iteration of the Star Festival, they never bothered
to finish this cycle. So when the crystals shatter there, those
Toads are gone for good. The second part of the process doesn’t exist
and the follow up objects were never put into place. So our quest to save the Toad’s at the beginning
of the game… The request everyone has been asking about
for quite a while now, doesn’t really have a happy ending. All these toads died, so press f in the chat
fam. They’re gone forever, but we’ll always
remember them. Soooo... It's been about two months since I originally
tackled this video. And while getting the assets to make the thumbnail,
I sort of thought of something that I should have tried before. So back when I gave the fire flower to Mario,
which couldn't be utilized because he couldn't spin, I wasn't thinking that the invincibility
star in the game is constantly doing damage when it touches things. Generally when the star comes out, I'm just
used to running into enemies, but I never thought to run into crystals. So I took the star and gave it to Mario in
the Star Festival, and with this invincibility, I proved the concept that the toads do indeed
die when these crystals are broken. By touching them with the invincibility star
it acts as if they are getting hit by a spin attack and they break open, and the toads
are gone. They shatter into tiny pieces. So yeah we finally got there, despite this
being two months later as I was rendering this video, as I was making this thumbnail
- I decided to try this on a whim and this is the update for that. So yeah, freeing the toads actually kills
the toads regardless of what you do. And with that… Thanks for watching guys and gals - despite
how grim that turned out - And until my next video, cheers!
