Super Mario 64 DS Rabbits: Every Location and Minigame

MIPS was one rabbit worth two Power Stars. Super Mario 64 DS kept the rabbit and multiplied him: 28 of them in four colours, spread across Peach's castle and its grounds, and not one of the 28 hands you a star. What they carry are keys to the Rec Room's minigame drawers. Catch eight rare glowing ones, though, and the last of them hands over something better: the key to a door in the princess's room with a Power Star behind it.

This post covers the 2004 DS remake only. The N64 original, and the Switch Online and 3D All-Stars versions built on it, have just MIPS; the secret stars guide covers him. The rabbit locations, minigames and star requirements below come from the Super Mario Wiki's Super Mario 64 DS and Rabbit pages, cross-checked against StrategyWiki's rabbit table, which puts the same 28 rabbits at the same star counts. The minigame basics come from Nintendo's own instruction manual for the game.

How the rabbit hunt works

Here are the rules in one place.

1. No minigame rabbit spawns until you talk to the Toad in the Rec Room. The Rec Room is reached through the princess's room, the door on the right of the lobby's upper level, which the remake turns into a hall of character-switching doors. A door inside that hall leads to the Rec Room and its Toad. Until you speak to him, the minigame rabbits do not appear.
2. Colour is character. Yellow rabbits are Yoshi's, pink are Mario's, green are Luigi's and orange are Wario's, seven each. A rabbit only spawns while you are playing as the character it belongs to, so a full sweep of the castle as Yoshi will never show you a green one. Nintendo's manual has you change characters at each character's switching room, and those rooms sit behind the lettered doors in that same hall.
3. One rabbit, one key, one minigame. Catch a rabbit and it gives up a key that opens one drawer, and one minigame, in the Rec Room. Catch the same rabbit again later and it tells you that you already have its key.
4. The coloured rabbits never give a Power Star. The rabbit star comes from the glowing ones, covered further down.
5. The yellow rabbit at the very start is a 29th, and it is different. Once you have talked to the Lakitu Bros. cameraman at the start of the game, an extra yellow rabbit appears by the small hedge maze on the left of the Castle Grounds. Its key opens the castle's front doors, not a minigame, and once caught it never comes back.

Who you can play as decides which rabbits exist, so the rescue order sets the pace of the hunt. Yoshi is the starter. Nintendo's manual has Mario, Luigi and Wario trapped in the castle's paintings for Yoshi to rescue, and per the Super Mario Wiki each one's door key is held by a boss:

In the four tables below, the stars column is the Super Mario Wiki's count of Power Stars required to reach each rabbit. The "what it is" column is a one-line summary of the in-game instructions for the minigame that rabbit unlocks.

Yoshi's seven yellow rabbits

Yoshi's set is the cheapest in the game. Five of the seven need a single star, and three sit in a row at the castle end of the stone bridge, right outside the front door, so the first Rec Room visit pays out as soon as you walk back outside. Six of the seven are in the Castle Grounds.

The two that wait are Puzzle Panic, at the bottom of the moat once it has been drained, and Mix-a-Mug in the basement, which opens with the key you get for clearing the first Bowser level. The Lethal Lava Land guide shows where that painting sits on the N64.

Mario's seven pink rabbits

Mario's two 8-star rabbits are free the moment you rescue him. The basement holds three of the castle's rabbits in one spot: Mario's pair flank the Lethal Lava Land entrance, and Yoshi's Mix-a-Mug sits in front of it, so one basement trip as each character covers all three. The Mirror Room is the same one the Snowman's Land guide walks you through.

Luigi's seven green rabbits

Five of Luigi's seven open at 15 stars, though Mushroom Roulette also waits for the drained moat. The courtyard rabbit sits in an alcove above the doorway rather than on the ground, and both wikis give the same way up: a backflip from right outside the door.

The seventh is the last rabbit of a normal playthrough. The intended route to the castle roof is the cannon by the lake, which opens at 150 Power Stars on DS, the remake's version of the N64's 120-star reward. The Super Mario Wiki does document a technique that gets every character except Yoshi onto the roof without the cannon, but it is a trick, not the design.

Wario's seven orange rabbits

Wario arrives last, at 31 stars, but his set has a quirk. Read the four tables and his is the only one with no rabbit in the drained moat or the drain room, so Wario can finish his seven without the moat ever being emptied. His two third-floor rabbits wait for 50 stars.

The 36 minigames, and the eight you start with

Each character has nine minigames, 36 in all. Nintendo's manual says you can play eight from the start and unlock the rest by catching rabbits in Adventure Mode, and the Super Mario Wiki's minigame table splits those eight evenly, two per character:

Every minigame is played on the touch screen, and the manual notes that pressing START or A mid-game puts its instructions on the top screen. You can play them from the drawers in the Rec Room or from Mini-games on the title menu. The Rec Room's menu music is an arrangement of the Grass Land map theme from Super Mario Bros. 3, and the Super Mario Wiki records that Nintendo reused most of these minigames in New Super Mario Bros.

Glowing rabbits and the white door

From the midgame on, a rabbit you have already caught can turn up white and sparkling instead of its usual colour. Catch eight of these glowing rabbits and you get the one rabbit reward that counts toward your 150 stars.

How they work, per the Super Mario Wiki:

• They start appearing at around 50 stars. The wiki's game page, glowing-rabbit page and castle page all say 50; its own Rabbit page says 40, so expect them from somewhere in that range.
• They only replace rabbits you have already caught. Each time an area loads, there is a 1 in 32 chance of a caught rabbit there being glowing, rising to 1 in 16 once you have 80 stars.
• Any character can catch them.
• There are eight, and the eighth you catch is the eldest. They are brothers. Each one before the last offers you a save, and the last, the eldest and fastest, hands over a key the glowing rabbits had stolen. After that, glowing rabbits stop appearing.

The key opens the white-bordered door in the princess's room, the one on the far right, next to Wario's W door. Behind it is an otherwise empty room holding a Power Star, one of the remake's 30 castle secret stars. It only pays once: go back in later and you hear Boos laughing, and your character comes straight back out, startled.

The quick way to farm them is Yoshi. Six of his seven rabbits are in the Castle Grounds, so once you have caught them, stepping out of the front doors and back in reloads the grounds and rolls the odds again. StrategyWiki recommends this route, and the Super Mario Wiki's glowing-rabbit page describes the same exit-and-re-enter loop, noting that three rabbits are always in the grounds when Yoshi steps outside.

Where MIPS went, and the version without rabbits

On the N64, MIPS is two Power Stars, caught in the basement at 15 and 50 stars. The DS remake drops him as a star source, but not his haunts: the Super Mario Wiki notes that four DS rabbits, two of Mario's, one of Yoshi's and one of Wario's, sit where MIPS used to appear.

The Korean release of Super Mario 64 DS goes further. The Super Mario Wiki, citing The Cutting Room Floor, records that it removes the minigames, the Rec Room's Toad and the coloured rabbits, and suggests the gambling in Luigi's set was the likely reason. The yellow front-door rabbit and the glowing rabbits are still there.

For everything else the remake changes, from the four characters to the 150-star total, see the version differences guide.

Mistakes that cost you rabbits

• Sweeping the castle before talking to the Rec Room Toad. No minigame rabbit spawns until you have spoken to him.
• Hunting as the wrong character. A rabbit only exists for its own character, so check your colour before you search a room.
• Leaving the moat full. Yoshi's Puzzle Panic, Mario's Shell Smash and Luigi's Mushroom Roulette all need the moat drained first.
• Waiting on the roof rabbit. Luigi's Super Mario Slot rabbit needs the 150-star cannon, so treat it as the last one, not a missing one.
• Expecting stars from coloured rabbits. They pay out keys and minigames. The only rabbit star is behind the white door.
• Hunting glowing rabbits in rooms you have not cleared. They only replace rabbits you have already caught.

Quick Action Checklist

• Catch the yellow rabbit by the hedge maze at the start for the front-door key.
• Get your first star, go through the princess's room to the Rec Room, and talk to the Toad.
• As Yoshi, collect the five 1-star rabbits: three at the castle end of the bridge, one in the flowers to the right, one by the hedge maze.
• Rescue Mario (Goomboss, 8 stars) and catch his two 8-star rabbits by the waterfall and in the Jolly Roger Bay room.
• After the first Bowser level, clear the basement in front of Lethal Lava Land as Yoshi and as Mario.
• Drain the moat for Puzzle Panic, Shell Smash and Mushroom Roulette.
• Rescue Luigi (King Boo) for five rabbits at 15 stars, including the one above the courtyard doorway.
• At 31 stars, catch Mario's two second-floor rabbits (top of the stairs and the Mirror Room) and Luigi's beside the Wet-Dry World doorway.
• Rescue Wario (Chief Chilly) for five rabbits at 31 stars and two more on the third floor at 50.
• From around 50 stars, catch eight glowing rabbits, farming Yoshi's in the Castle Grounds, and open the white door for its Power Star.
• At 150 stars, take the lakeside cannon to the roof as Luigi for Super Mario Slot.