Super Mario 64 120-Star Reward: Yoshi and the Castle Roof

Grab your 120th Power Star and Super Mario 64 says nothing. The game's star-count messages, the pop-ups that tell you what your new total has opened up, are keyed to 1, 3, 8, 30, 50 and 70 stars in the decompiled source, and the list stops there. The reward for finishing the game is real. It is just sitting outside, on the roof, and the game leaves you to notice that a metal grate by the lake has stopped loading.

This covers the N64 original and the builds that run its code (Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which emulates the 1997 Rumble Pak revision, and Nintendo Switch Online's N64 app): what 120 stars changes, how to get up there, what Yoshi's gift actually does, and why most of it is gone the next time you load your save.

What 120 stars actually changes

Getting to 120 means clearing every course and all 15 castle secrets — the secret stars guide has the full accounting. Once your file hits the number, here is what responds to it, going by the wikis and a search of the decompiled code for star-count checks:

The first two are the reward. The Big Penguin detail is covered in the Cool, Cool Mountain guide; per the decompiled code, his race logic does not change at all. The game just scales him up and gives him a much wider collision cylinder, which is a bigger thing to get around on a narrow slide.

The Bowser line is a small one worth seeing once. The game checks your star count at the moment he is defeated for the last time, so you only get the 120-star version if all 120 are already on the file. If you finished him off before collecting everything, that means a rematch. The Super Mario Wiki notes that Super Mario 3D All-Stars changes "Control Stick" to "L Stick" in his sign-off.

What does not change: there is no 121st star, no new course, and no Luigi. That last one has its own long history, covered in Super Mario 64 myths and rumors, debunked.

The cannon by the lake has nobody to talk to

From where Mario starts outside the castle, head right. There is a lake, and on a small beach beside it sits a cannon under a metal grate.

In the courses, a cannon opens when you talk to its Bob-omb Buddy. This one is built differently. The decompiled level data places the castle cannon as an already-open cannon, and the thing stopping you is a separate grate object that checks your file's star total when the area loads and deactivates itself at 120 or more. There is no one to find and nothing to press. Walk up, hop in, and aim high at the castle roof.

Land on the flat section around the central tower. The roof has slanted edges, and you want to be on the level part for the conversation that follows.

What's on the roof

Three things, per the Super Mario Wiki's Mushroom Castle page and the level's object list:

• Yoshi, walking between four spots on the flat section: near the cap block, near the central spire, near the back-right corner, and the middle of those three.
• Three 1-Up Mushrooms, sitting out in the open. Easy lives, though Yoshi is about to make them pointless.
• A red cap block holding a Wing Cap. Like every red block, it only works once the red switch in the Tower of the Wing Cap has been pressed. The cap guide covers that switch.

The Wing Cap is the one to play with. It is the only cap the Super Mario Wiki's statistics list for the whole Mushroom Castle area, and wearing it you can take off with a triple jump, even from a standstill, which makes the grounds around the castle a free flying course for the length of the cap.

Yoshi's gift: lives to 100 and a new jump

Walk up to Yoshi and talk to him. He opens with a typo that has been in the English N64 text since 1996, "It that really you???", then asks whether Mario really beat Bowser and got the stars back. The rest of his speech passes on a thank-you message from the developers, signed by the Super Mario 64 Team. The European English build trims the last lines of that message, the part promising a little something to keep you playing, according to the decompiled text files.

Then the gift. Two details hide inside the shorthand "100 lives":

• He does not add 100 lives. He counts your life counter up until it reads 100. Show up with 82 lives and you get 18. The game clamps lives at 100 anyway, so this is simply a full tank.
• Your triple jump becomes a special triple jump for the rest of the session. The one exception is the Wing Cap: wearing it, a triple jump still launches Mario into flight instead. More on that below.

After that he walks to the edge of the roof and jumps off toward the waterfall, and he does not come back until you next load the file. If you never talk to him, he stays up there, and the History of Yoshi page on the Super Mario Wiki notes he can be seen on the roof during the end credits. The code agrees: while he is waiting on a 120-star file, Yoshi moves to a spot overlooking the castle once the ending plays.

What the special triple jump actually does

This is the part of the reward you will actually feel. Ukikipedia's action pages and the decompiled movement code give the details:

The fall damage line is the big one. The health guide lays out the two fall-damage thresholds, 2 wedges and 4 wedges, and the special triple jump's own landing skips the fall-damage test the normal triple jump runs. Cancel it into a dive or a ground pound and those moves land by their own rules, but ride it out and the height of the drop does not matter. Triple-jumping off a high ledge instead of climbing down becomes a free option.

One correction to the Super Mario Wiki. Its Triple Jump page describes the special version as making Mario invincible to enemy attacks as well as falls. The decompiled action definition does not carry the game's invulnerability flag, so the interaction code treats it like an ordinary jump. Treat it as fall-damage insurance, not armour.

The wall behaviour costs you something too. If you chain wall kicks off a triple jump anywhere (the movement guide covers wall-kick timing), expect Mario to bounce off the wall instead of kicking.

The gift resets every time you load the file

Here is the catch. When you pick a file on the file select screen, the game runs one setup routine, and the decompiled source shows it doing three relevant things:

1. Your lives are set to 4. Lives are not part of your save.
2. The special triple jump is switched off.
3. Yoshi is marked as not yet visited, so he is back on the roof.

So the 100 lives and the sparkle jump last for that session only. Reset the console, power off, or go back through the file select screen, and you are on 4 lives with a normal triple jump. The upside is that the gift can be claimed again, once per session, every session. If you want the sparkle jump for a 100-coin run or a trip up Tall, Tall Mountain, fire yourself onto the roof first.

Two ways the roof can softlock you

Both are documented, and both are avoidable.

Yoshi walking off the roof. The Super Mario Wiki's glitch list and Ukikipedia both describe Yoshi occasionally stepping onto the slanted part of the roof and walking straight off it. If he falls while you are away, the game respawns him. The problem is talking to him while he is on the slope or mid-step off it: he cannot reach the spot he jumps from, and the scene never ends. Ukikipedia traces the first mention of him falling off to a 2003 FAQ, with the first video of the softlock in 2007. The fix is simple: talk to him on the flat section, ideally while he is standing still.

The Japanese 1,000-coin bug. On the original Japanese cartridge only, Ukikipedia documents a coding mistake that sets Mario's lives to -25 whenever he holds 1,000 or more coins. Talk to Yoshi in that state and his count-up can never reach 100, so the scene hangs. The decompiled source shows the fix going into every later build it covers: North American, European, Shindou and iQue. Ukikipedia credits pannenkoek with first documenting it in July 2016.

Getting up there before 120 stars

The roof is reachable early. The Super Mario Wiki's glitch list documents the method: from the right side of the castle, triple jump onto the grassy slope, drifting slightly left during the second jump. Mario starts sliding, and a quick jump from there grabs the edge of the roof. Ukikipedia lists a triple-jump route up as well.

It gets you the view and nothing from Yoshi. His object checks your star total when the area loads and switches itself off on any file under 120, so there is nobody up there to talk to.

Super Mario 64 DS moves it to 150

The remake keeps the roof, the cannon and the three 1-Ups, but swaps out the rest. Yoshi is a playable character there, and the Super Mario Wiki's Castle Grounds page notes he starts the DS game asleep on that same roof, so he cannot also be the reward.

If you are coming to the remake fresh, the version differences guide explains where the other 30 stars come from.

The roof has stuck around, too. Super Mario Odyssey puts a Yoshi egg on top of Peach's Castle in its Mushroom Kingdom, which the Super Mario Wiki records as a nod to Super Mario 64.

Quick Action Checklist

• At 120 stars, go right from the castle start to the lake; the cannon on the beach is uncovered, with no Bob-omb Buddy needed.
• Aim for the flat part of the roof around the central tower, not the slanted edges.
• Talk to Yoshi on the flat section, preferably while he is standing still, to avoid the walk-off softlock.
• Expect your lives to count up to 100, not to gain 100; the game caps lives at 100.
• Use the special triple jump for fall-damage-free drops, but do not count on it against enemies, and do not expect it to wall kick.
• Grab the roof's Wing Cap (red switch required) and triple jump to fly around the grounds.
• Refight Bowser in the Sky on a 120-star file once to see his alternate final speech.
• Remember the lives and the sparkle jump vanish when you next load the file. Yoshi comes back, so you can collect them again.
• On Super Mario 64 DS the cannon waits for 150 stars and the roof holds Luigi's minigame rabbit instead of Yoshi.