A video game can be as difficult as the player wants it to be. By ignoring some of its mechanics or imposing personal limits, the difficulty is already increased. This is something we have seen with the Souls games and the obsession with not summoning help. Simply put, there are people who enjoy overcoming a challenge that is greater than what the developers can propose if they want to sell well. Something that with Super Mario 64 has materialized in one of the most peculiar feats in the history of video games.
A streamer named Marbler has managed to beat Super Mario 64 without pressing the A button. Why is this considered a feat? Because the A button is the jump button. By exploiting all the glitches and tactics available in the game, he managed to complete the game after obtaining 70 stars without making a single jump.
How long did it take to achieve this feat? Around 86 hours. To put it into context, a normal game of Super Mario 64 can take around 12 hours, while one where we try to get all the stars will take around 20 hours. This is not counting that experts can do it in less than half the time. It shows how not pressing the A button even once requires taking a lot, a lot of time to finish the game.
In addition, this challenge, known as A Button Challenge, comes after many previous attempts. About eight months ago, Marbler managed to complete a game of Super Mario 64 by only pressing the A button once. It took him those eight months to reduce it to its bare minimum: not pressing it at all.
This challenge, however, is not new. The first known attempt to beat Super Mario 64 without pressing the A button dates back to early 2006. Considering that it wasn’t until 2024 when someone finally achieved it, after 86 hours of gameplay, it demonstrates how particularly complex this challenge was. And why it is also so interesting.
