Super Mario 64 Tick Tock Clock Guide: All 7 Stars and the Time Trick

Most Super Mario 64 courses ask you to be good at the game. Tick Tock Clock asks you to be good at the game while the floor is trying to buck you off. It is the 14th course, a single vertical shaft of gears, sliding platforms, swinging pendulums and a Thwomp that you climb from the bottom to the top — and the entire clockwork can be running at four different settings depending on one decision you make before you even walk in.

That decision is the whole guide. The position of the minute hand on the clock painting at the moment you jump through it sets the speed of the clockwork inside. Read the hand, jump on the right beat, and half of Tick Tock Clock's difficulty evaporates. Ignore it, jump on a random frame, and you are climbing a level that reshuffles itself every few seconds. Here is how to control it, and how to clear all seven stars.

The clock face is a difficulty dial

Look at the painting before you enter. It is a clock, and the minute hand is sweeping around the face. Where that hand sits when Mario disappears into the canvas decides the tempo for your entire run:

There are no in-between speeds. The game's code carves the dial into four zones: only 15 degrees either side of the 12 (a twelfth of the face) freezes the clock, from there to about 25 past is slow, 25 to 35 past is random, and from 35 past back round to the freeze window is fast. The one you want for most of this course is 12 o'clock — frozen. A dead-still Tick Tock Clock turns a nightmare of moving platforms into a static jungle gym you can climb at your own pace, which is exactly what you want for platforming stars and, above all, for the red coins.

The catch: freezing the level also freezes the things you sometimes need to ride. Two stars, Get a Hand and Stomp on the Thwomp, are built around riding a turning clock hand. And the erratic "6 o'clock" setting is a trap — never pick it on purpose. If you fumble the timing and enter on a random frame, back out of the painting and try again. It costs you five seconds and saves you a life.

Getting in: the third floor and the 50-star door

You cannot even attempt this course early. Tick Tock Clock lives on the third floor of the castle, behind the Big Star Door that requires 50 Power Stars. If the endless-stairs math from the beginner guide is still fresh: 50 stars is well past the 30-star basement gate and the two Bowser keys, so by the time you get here you have a full moveset and plenty of practice.

The painting itself is unusual. Instead of diving into a still image, you jump into a working clock — and because the hand is always moving, you have to actively time your entry rather than just walk in. Stand in front of it, watch the sweep, and jump so Mario passes through the canvas as the hand crosses the 12. The freeze window is narrow — 15 degrees either side of the 12 — so practice this a couple of times before you care about a specific star; getting the freeze reliably is the single most valuable skill in the level.

The six stars, mission by mission

Six named missions plus the 100-coin star, same as every main course. Every mission can be finished with the clock stopped, but not every one is easiest that way: four of the six are best frozen, while Get a Hand and Stomp on the Thwomp are built around riding a moving clock hand and go better slow.

Roll into the Cage

The classic first star, and it sits lower than the name suggests — in the lower part of the climb, not at the summit. Climb past the first clock hand to the spinning hexagonal platforms; beyond them a conveyor belt leads into a cage with the Power Star inside in plain sight. Enter at 12 to freeze everything, and the spinning platforms and the belt stop dead. The only real work is then not falling off a static ledge, which is a much better problem than not falling off a moving one.

The Pit and the Pendulums

This one is mid-tower, above the cage. Climb the pole with the Amp circling it, cross the platform with the Heave-Ho, jump a spinning platform, and the star waits beyond two swinging pendulums with a platform between them. Freezing the clock at 12 stops the pendulums dead, so you can cross that middle platform without getting shoved off into the pit — no timing the arcs. If you enter slow (3 o'clock) instead, the pendulums swing more gently and you can still weave through, but there is no reason to make it harder than a frozen crossing. There is also a bypass: from right next to the blue coin switch, a long jump reaches the star's area without using the platform between the pendulums.

Get a Hand

The first exception. This star sits in a small alcove across the tower's central chasm, and the intended route is to ride the first of the two giant clock hands as it sweeps around. Climb to the platform the hand passes, wait for it, jump on, ride it round to the alcove on the far side and hop in — minding the Amp that circles nearby. Enter at 3 o'clock for this one: on slow the hand ticks round with long pauses between steps, which gives you time to line up both jumps, while on fast the ticks come four times as often and on random the hand can reverse direction. Freezing the clock is not a dead end, but it is the hard way: with the hand stopped, the only reliable route is to drop into the alcove from the platform above it.

Stomp on the Thwomp

The second exception, and the star at the very top of the clock. Above the pole, work up past the lifts, the flipping blocks and the moving bars, take the conveyor belts to the long bending platform, and at its top the second clock hand carries you over to the Thwomp's conveyor belt. The Thwomp is not part of the clockwork — freezing the clock does not stop it — and it is your lift: stand on top and it rises and carries you up to the star. Enter at 3 o'clock so the hand is turning to give you that ride. A frozen run is possible, but with the hand stopped, getting onto the Thwomp's belt takes very precise triple jumps and wall kicks from the large area underneath it.

Timed Jumps on Moving Bars

The name is a bluff. Past the pole, climb to the top of the mesh cage; at the end, three moving bars slide in and out of the wall on the way to the star's cage, and the "timing" the mission wants is only hard if the bars are moving. Enter at 12, and the bars stay stuck out of the wall, giving you a row of stationary platforms to jump across to the star. What was designed as a rhythm test becomes ordinary platforming. If you insist on the honest version, enter slow and jump onto each bar as it reaches full extension — but frozen takes the timing out of it.

Stop Time for Red Coins

The mission name is telling you how to beat it. All eight red coins sit among the rotating bars that climb the wall beside the starting area, so this is a short climb, not a tour of the tower. The correct play is exactly what the title says: enter at 12 to stop time, and those bars become a static staircase you can sweep at your leisure. The star appears over the Star Marker once you have all eight, placed higher than usual so it lines up with one of the bars. With the clock running, the bars spin, which is exactly what makes the coins between them hard to collect — freezing is the intended solution. It doubles as the start of a coin-farming lap; see below.

The 100-coin run

Tick Tock Clock holds 128 coins, so its 100-coin star leaves you 28 to spare — but the level's verticality means a single bad fall can drop you a long way, and you have to climb back up. Pair it with the red coins: the eight red coins are worth two coins each, so a frozen "Stop Time for Red Coins" sweep hands you 16 coins toward the total right at the bottom of the tower.

Most of the rest is in yellow blocks — the Player's Guide name for this star is Multi-coin Blocks — including five that hold ten coins each, four of them high in the tower. The other big payout is the blue coin switch on the way to The Pit and the Pendulums: seven blue coins at five apiece, 35 in all. Collect the red coins on the same trip, but leave their star until after your 100th coin: the 100-coin star lets you keep playing, while touching the red-coin star ends the visit.

Movement that makes the climb bearable

Tick Tock Clock is a vertical course, so the moves that matter most are the ones that gain or recover height. If your movement fundamentals are shaky, this is the course that exposes it:

• Wall kick — the whole tower is narrow shafts and close walls. A clean wall kick recovers a botched jump instead of sending you back to the bottom. Press A the instant Mario touches the wall, not after he starts sliding.
• Backflip — straight-up height with no runway, perfect for the tight ledges where you cannot get a running start.
• Long jump — for the horizontal gaps, especially across the frozen moving bars.
• The dive-recover — a dive lands as a belly slide you can roll out of, which keeps you moving after a drop. It does not cancel fall damage, though: the game runs the same fall-damage check on a dive landing, so treat it as a recovery tool, not a parachute.

One quiet mercy: all six stars are loaded whichever mission you select, so you are not locked into the one you picked — if a different star is closer on a given entry, take it. Each regular star still ends the visit, so it is one star per entry; only the 100-coin star lets you keep playing.

Mistakes that get you killed here

• Jumping into the painting on a random frame. If you did not watch the hand, you do not know your speed. Back out and re-enter rather than committing blind.
• Choosing the 6 o'clock (erratic) speed. Random speed changes only make every jump less predictable. If you land on it by accident, leave and retry.
• Freezing the clock for Get a Hand or Stomp on the Thwomp. Both are built around riding a clock hand. Enter slow, not stopped.
• Touching the red-coin star before your 100th coin. A regular star ends the visit; the 100-coin star does not. On a combined run, take the 100th coin first.
• Fighting the camera in the shaft. Lakitu's default camera in here pivots around the tower's centre, so it swings as you circle the shaft. Tap R for Mario cam, a closer camera that always follows Mario, on the narrow ledges, and rotate with the C-buttons before a jump, not during it.

Clear all seven and the third floor's only other main course is Rainbow Ride (the secret Wing Mario Over the Rainbow is up here too). Both main courses are pure platforming with no boss — which, once you have mastered the freeze trick, makes this one of the more satisfying courses in the game rather than one of the most feared. When you want to route the whole game, the speedrun guide is the next step.

Quick Action Checklist

• Reach the third floor via the 50-star Big Star Door before attempting the course.
• Watch the minute hand on the painting and jump so you enter at 12 o'clock to freeze the clockwork for most stars — the freeze window is only 15 degrees either side of the 12.
• Avoid 6 o'clock — the random setting only makes timing less predictable.
• Roll into the Cage, The Pit and the Pendulums, Timed Jumps on Moving Bars, and Stop Time for Red Coins: all easiest with a frozen level.
• Get a Hand and Stomp on the Thwomp are the exceptions — enter at 3 o'clock so the clock hands turn slowly enough to ride. The Thwomp moves whatever you pick.
• Collect the eight red coins on a frozen lap at the bottom of the tower; they are worth 16 toward the 100-coin star.
• For 100 coins, lean on the five ten-coin blocks and the blue coin switch's seven blue coins (35), and take the 100th coin before touching the red-coin star.
• Lean on wall kicks and backflips for the tight vertical recovery this course demands.