How Pom Pom Jumped 100,000 Feet in Super Mario 3D Land

Welcome back to the science of Super Mario 3D Land. I swear every time I go on an adventure in this game I always get sidetracked by some strange oddity I come across. One idea tends to transform into another and this video is no different. What you're left with is a complete dissection of Pom Pom in ways the game never intended...ultimately turning her into a rocket and launching her into the skies. So I hope you enjoy this breakdown of Super Mario 3D Land. Do you know what's worse than jumping into the water as Mario on your quest to stop evil?

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So… let's talk about the humble beginnings of this concept. Today we're going to break down Pom Pom, but I think it's interesting to talk about what led to this. So, let's move on to World 3-2 where my adventure began. World 3-2 is a setting I really like because it's a simple underwater excursion with a side-scrolling element. I chose this particular stage because originally this video was going to be about enemy characters and their interactions with water. Especially characters who don't normally face water. The stage is basically divided into three areas. You have the first room that has that strange object buried under the sand, which is honestly a little strange.

It makes me feel like I could slam it into the ground, but I can't, but we can also see that it goes down quite a bit if we pull the camera back. Anyway, we have that first room, the second long room, and the flagpole area. I chose the second room to be where my experimentation would take place and began by building a very crude cage into which enemies could be loaded. The idea was that Luigi could then hit the back of this cage when he was ready, and the enemies could then walk into the water. However, upon choosing Pom Pom as my first victim, my direction changed quite a bit.

So, Pom Pom usually fights inside the boss rooms that he jumps into. It's always a contained environment and Mario is never too far away. But once she was placed in an uncontrolled environment, my interest immediately peaked. Luigi became a mad scientist and began experimenting. Or he would have started, but because Pom Pom's intro cutscene activated when he was charging through a pipe, Luigi disappeared from existence. A small setback that we can solve by reaching the first checkpoint, dying and going back. Now that we've got that figured out, we can do that water test. And honestly, this test gave me mixed results.

So when Pom Pom is placed in a scenario, especially one where it's more of a side-scroller with very limited depth, he pretty much just camps in one spot. This is because Pom Pom actually uses jump references that must be placed independently of it. Without them, she just jumps in place. However, these reference objects are not necessary for her to follow our green boy Luigi. If you harm Pom Pom in any way, she will crawl inside her shell and try to crush us by finding our position and

land

ing on us. She hits three times before returning to normal, but during this process, she will practically follow us anywhere.

So it's a perfect time for her to try to follow us into the water. However, as expected, she simply passed through the water without any kind of status change. Or at least at this moment. Since we didn't have a small room to restrict us, we were able to get her to follow us quite far. But that in itself made me realize something else. Pom Pom practically has a King Bob-omb jump like in Super Mario 64, and she will always take a big jump back to where she spawns. The time it takes to get to her initial location is always the same, so the further away she is, the faster the movement will be performed, to the point that it seems unnatural.

She may also not be able to return to her place, especially if she hits an obstacle. After her boomerang throw, she will take a second jump which will usually take her back. The interesting thing is that if Pom Pom chases the player off the map with her shell attack, it is also possible for her to get stuck and fall forever on the edge of the loading zone. If this happens, she will become a blurry mess as she spins around for all eternity. Since she doesn't count as ground, the attack doesn't complete the cycle, so she never knows if she should jump.

However, she doesn't go any further because she would unload if that were the case. I'm not sure why this failsafe was put on this particular move, but it's something I found also in other levels where she wasn't on the plain of death. Anyway, she made me think. When approaching Pom Pom's weapon, I always thought her boomerangs had a range, but it turns out that only the boss rooms defined the range. In fact, she can throw her boomerangs at the player no matter where she is. I originally realized this when she was jumping out of bounds and one of the boomerangs made its way across the stage to come towards me.

She was very far away but was still heading towards my location. However, there is a limitation similar to the one I described above. If Pom Pom's measured throwing distance tries to hit our player but let's say there's a wall in the way, the boomerangs might get stuck there for a long time. At this point we can download Pom Pom by advancing further in the level and then returning. We can take her to a failure state like this where she will always be waiting. Due to gravity and the slope she was on, she slid into the water during this process and became trapped.

It's pretty cool, but a level like this really limits Pom Pom's range, so let's swap stages... And it was with this stage swap that I discovered something super, super cool. Continue to World 3-1, a huge desert level with a huge rock structure in the center. I chose this level for two reasons: one, it's a very wide setting that's essentially an open world, and two, it's incredibly tall, giving us a lot of max space for Pom Pom. Coming here I wanted to try two things, so let's start with the boomerangs. It turns out that the only limitation to the distance Pom Pom can throw is actually just the game's charge distance.

Pom Pom's range is quite large and it doesn't discharge as easily as most objects do when they are simply out of camera range. But Pom Pom's launch is capable of going beyond this loading zone if he starts his launch in the frame in which we leave the range of the loading zone. But it's impossible to measure the full distance because her boomerangs discharge when she does. If the charge range was unlimited, he could throw his boomerangs at our character even if it took several minutes to reach us. Something neat. So instead of adjusting their AI to calculate all sorts of different factors, they simply let the boss arena serve as a band-aid and barrier to keep everything under control...

But it was by altering the range of the loading zone that I realized that something really amazing could happen. I was in the process of testing how far Pom Pom's recovery jump would actually go. So I damaged her, floated off stage, and dropped her while she attacked me in her shell. At that point she got stuck on the edge of the loading dock and stayed floating there until I decided to climb down. And then she, King Bob-omb, climbed the mountain with a great leap. The first jump wasn't perfect, but she managed to climb the entire mountain.

She then returned to her default position after launching a few attacks. But this is what made my brain work. So at this point, I was pretty familiar with how far the range was from Pom Pom's loading zone. But I had also seen examples where downloading and uploading affected her actions. And that's when I channeled my inner Super Mario 64 bug and applied that concept to Super Mario 3D Land. If you're not familiar, Scuttlebug Lift is a technique in Super Mario 64 that allows Scuttlebugs to continually increase their height, but unload them in the middle of their jump and then recharge them so they can jump again.

Ultimately making them go higher and higher each time. However, with Pom Pom, I theorized that if she started her recovery action and we had her exit the charging zone near the peak of her jump, when she reloaded, her jump would occur again. I was also thinking that despite being downloaded, she may have been changing position values ​​as well, but that's something I couldn't prove. But my theory was quite correct, although it was much more far-fetched than I thought. After unloading and loading her, I went back to the top of the mountain to see if she was there.

But she wasn't. But that's when I got the feeling that if the bottom of the loading dock was able to keep its shell shape in place, then the top of the loading dock relative to the player would probably be able to keep its shape. I jump in place. Then I

jumped

the moon into the sky and that's when I saw it. Pom Pom moved upwards at a very fast pace and only loaded 1 frame at a time while Luigi increased the vertical distance from her. She would charge and then unload from it because being charged allowed her to activate her incredible movement speed, but moving from it caused her to fall outside the charging zone.

Then she flickered like a light bulb as we rose higher and higher into the heavens... Until finally, Pom Pom was no more. She took off into the afterlife leaving little Luigi behind. So I fell back to earth hoping that maybe she was down there... But alas, she was gone. It was my Super Mario Galaxy Voyager concept once again. Pom Pom had become a rocket because we split her jump in two and she would never return to this world again. I guess that's the science of Super Mario 3D Land in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed this strange tale.

And with that… Thanks for watching guys and girls. And until my next takeoff, cheers!