Everyone knows that Super Mario 64’s Cool, Cool Mountain is a snow favorite in the world of gaming. But did you realize that fans have dedicated almost three decades to cracking a single door in the game? That all changed this week when a Youtuber called pannenkoek2012 spilled the beans on how to open it legitimately with no cheats or hacks, just by utilizing a bouncy penguin.
So, picture this: what if the most sought-after door for years turned out to be the most insignificant one possible? Surprisingly, it’s the back of the door Mario exits after grabbing a star at the end of the slide section in the level. We’ve all been on that side of the door, yet somehow have struggled to get back through it.
Upon exiting, you find yourself back in the main level area next to the mama penguin who wants you to locate and return her lost child. The catch? The door lacks a handle outside, making it impossible to re-enter. Back when I was a kid, I tried to go back through that door and failed. Little did I know some gamers wouldn’t give up on it. Finally, pannenkoek2012 has unraveled the mystery behind this long-standing puzzle using some platforming skills and knowledge about the game’s coding logic.
The main obstacle to opening the door from the outside is the collision of the cabin walls surrounding it. If you’ve ever tried to open that door, Mario just gets stuck against an invisible barrier. By removing those walls through game manipulation, pannenkoek2012 found out that simply walking up to the door triggers it to open. This discovery raises the question of whether you can do it without any hacks.
By messing with the game’s logic, it becomes evident that you can, indeed, open the door from the outside. Mario needs to walk into the door to activate the hitbox, but the wall collision prevents it from happening. By utilizing the mother penguin’s AI to push Mario in the right direction, you can manage to clip him just enough to trigger the door’s opening. While some players found themselves free-falling through the level’s structure by jumping over the penguin, Alexpalix1 on Discord revealed that a quick turnaround after the fall allows you to hit the door’s hitbox and open it from outside.
p4nnenkoek2012 took this newfound knowledge and tested it in speedrunning. Surprisingly, it didn’t shave off any time, but the potential for future optimizations is promising. The revelation of this technique might change the game for Super Mario 64 players down the road.
