Rainbow Ride: The WORST 3D Mario Stage | Level By Level 

Mario be looking like a cartoon reviewer avatar with his arms crossed like that 💀

It's criminal how the stage doesn't even give you the option to use the wing cap in the stage!

What boggles my mind is why did they create a sky level… and not include a single wing cap?!

“Luckily the shot is easy because there’s a circular rainbow…” I was following the star name as a kid. I shot over it. That was the day I stopped playing mario 64 for a long time.

Rainbow Ride was originally going to be a fire themed stage, since in the code contained within the 2020 gigaleak internally refers to it as "fire bubble 2," which implies it's related to Lethal Lava land as In the Japanese version LLL is referred to as "Fire Bubble Land." the "star" file (which contains the data for Star placements in each course) refers to the course as "Fire Building," to me this explains alot about the level design and the amount of fire in it, and there likely would've been a pool of lava underneath the level instead of a bottomless pit which would've made the course much less punishing and frustrating to play.

If Little Timmy Made a Super Mario Maker 3D Level

It says a lot that finding a way to skip the long carpet ride to get the Big House star was THE white whale of the 120 star run for the better part of 25 years. A consistent setup was only found _last year_ which is just insane to me. Wing Mario Over Rainbow is still worse though imo

It's basically just random blocks everywhere.

If you're playing the DS version of Super Mario 64. There is an additional main star. Making it 8 stars per level. 7 main stars and the 100 coin star. The additional star added to Rainbow ride is called "Switch star of the manor" this adds another trip to the manor having to press a star switch and making your way to the roof again to grab its star. Normally you wouldn't be able to get the roof since stepping off the carpet makes it disappear after a few seconds which would have been an issue since you have to do this to press the star switch and even if your able to get back on the carpet is too slow to make it up there in time since the switch star is on a timer when you press the switch. However the DS version adds a block inside the manor and if your playing as Mario it gives you a power flower that turns Mario into balloon mario allowing him to float up to the roof to grab the star in time. You can also use the power up to grab the big house in the sky star as well. So that basically cuts the trip to the roof a bit shorter than the original route up there.

Sad how Rainbow Road was cut but Rainbow Ride in Smash Ultimate Im still frustrated by that, an actual good rainbow stage was removed

According to Gigaleak, internally Rainbow Ride was a fire stage (similar to Lethal Lava Land) which really fits a lot more with the slow moving platforms, which also show up in the volcano.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="97">1:37</a> As a longtime roblox player, I can confirm this is what obbies look like

Imagine you accidentally take the wrong carpet and go to a star you already collected

Star 6 can be mitigated by the fact that most people will spot the pink bobbomb while doing the red coins.

I can imagine one of Nintendo’s employees designing this level had a bad day. So they decided to make us suffer too by giving us a plate of nothing.

Changes in Super Mario 64 DS The blue flame was removed from the rotating platform section There is only 1 glass container on the ride to the house The house added a power up block, and a 1-up in the flames for Luigi to use the Invisibilty cap. (This also means if you play as Mario, you can get to star 2 without having to use the carpet to go back outside) The number of blocks on the way to the airship are reduced There is a power up added to the airship. (Mario can fly to the ship up to the Chuckya platform). DS Bonus Star: Switch Star of the Manor. There is a switch outside the house that you need to activate. Either hit the switch on the way out of the house or hit the switch as Mario, then get the power up to go to the top and claim your prize if made fast enough. Tweaked Star: Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow. The 1-up and Star on the airship have swapped places. N64 the 1-up was on the tip while the star is in the hull while vice versia in DS

Yesterday, I started playing the game again after 6 years, and as someone with a fresh look, I can say you didn't mention one thing, which, for me, is absolutely huge. Every hazard and enemy are designed to push you off the tiny platforms, meaning if you fall once, you have to do everything all over again...

Player: I'm so excited for this crazy-looking level! Nintendo: I hope you like random garbage everywhere!

how the hell they expected kids to beat this

I think the best way they could have solved the carpet problem is by replacing them with koopa shells that can slide on the rainbows. That way on those long stretches of nothing you would still at least have to worry about steering at a high speed

honestly watching this kinda gave me a BETTER appreciation for rainbow ride. i think its interesting how they tried to implement branching paths in an auto scroller, regardless of how well it worked. i think it could work as a concept better if the carpets were more like a branching bus system, with multiple rainbow paths taking you to and from each obstacle and looping around the level

Honestly a really good breakdown, I feel like a lot of people just look at the weird decisions in this level and go "oh it's the last level, it's supposed to be hard so it's fine". But in reality yeah this is 50% autoscroller 50% roblox obby mess and there isn't even a wing cap

Skill issue

Even the Smash stage sucks. Can we just appreciate how Rainbow Road is pretty much the only good thing in Mario with the word “rainbow” in front of it?

Rainbow Ride is the Mario level equivalent of a RU-vid video that stretches itself out to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="481">8:01</a> for ad revenue with no real interesting content to warrant the filler

The worst part of the stage is the lack of bat man

Recently replayed Super Mario 64 DS and acquired a new, burning hate in my heart for this stage, so thank you for validating my feelings. >:) (Sidenote: Your editing style's really funny, lol. Keep it up!)

Rainbow Ride is by far the most illogical stage in Mario 64. It’s just a mesh of random and somewhat surreal content, such as a massive empty house and a load of irrelevant platforms. Every other stage in the game has a distinct theme, with the missions and obstacles being based around the level’s theme. Rainbow Ride just threw a bunch of random stuff together and called it a day.

Criminal that you have not reached 200k yet. I feel like you have improved so much over the last year in particular

The main problem I have with the stage is that some stars feel like a chore instead of a challenge. It's kind of crazy that doing speedrun tricks make the stage funnier to play than taking the intended paths

"I guess you can combine bombs and puppies." They actually did that before, and it was one of the worst things you could combine. It was supposed to be an anti-tank weapon. Dog goes under the tank wearing a bomb vest, blows up the tank from underneath. Only problem? The training tanks used diesel, not the gasoline of the enemy tanks.

If someone took a shot every time you said "carpet" they would die. This level is now hazardous to your health.. 💀

Very unrelated but i always cite this level whenever people ask me why i dont like 3ds rainbow road. To me they both represent especially scattered ideas/layouts that involve placing a lot of obstacles that seem interesting in concept but don't feel like they have a lot of substance that add enough value. There's a reason i call this level "the Junkyard of SM64"

What's sad is that they had so much potential on making a sky level on this game. Just look at the sky levels from the various rom hacks.

I agree on the music being unfitting. I’d say that the wing cap theme would work better.

I like this level's aesthetics a lot. The wide open sky is beautiful, rainbows and bright colors are all over place, and the design of many elements like the carpets, ship, and house are appealing. There is sort of a lack of aesthetic/thematic cohesion, but that's part of what I love about it, since I find that levels which stick too closely to a single clear concept can get a little bland and predictable. If you look at a classic level like Whomp's Fortress, it also has some elements that look randomly cobbled together, and I think that actually makes it better. Why are there long boards of wood everywhere you have to use as bridges? Why is there a random section of inch-deep water? What is that area with the blue coins and pole supposed to be? Why are there floating islands and a cage way up in the sky? Why does a tower appear after you beat the boss? None of these questions have entirely logical answers. The developers just added stuff they thought might be fun, and in many cases, they were right. Mario games have always been like that. Why is a plumber fighting evil turtles and mushrooms, breaking blocks, teleporting with pipes, jumping on floating platforms, and sometimes riding a dinosaur? No reason, except that it's just wacky fun stuff that happened to be possible with the technology at that time. Now, I need to be absolutely clear about one thing, which is that I'm NOT saying aesthetics or logic are irrelevant to Mario games, I'm just saying that a bit of wacky random stuff has always been a core part of Mario game design, and I don't think it looks, plays, or feels quite like Mario if you take too much of the weirdness away. Mario levels are always best when there's at least one ingredient that doesn't seem to belong in the recipe, like those weird flower enemies in the snow levels, the chuck-yas and heave-hoes in Wet Dry World, the secret white slide in Tall Tall Mountain, and so on. There are a few legitimate issues with Rainbow Ride, especially the carpets, but I don't think it's fair to drag the overall aesthetics and design so much.

To be honest The stage is so weird I can’t help but love it. And if it weren’t for the clunky, N64 controls and camera, the stage might’ve been tolerable

Everyone figured out jumping to the pole. Its so obvious, even to babies.

Here's how I would have made this one a lot more interesting: make the flying ship the centerpiece of the level. Give it two levels, with a below deck area split into four chambers. Start Mario off on the ship, and have a carpet you can jump on any time at one end. When you do, it starts off on a path that weaves through each of the four chambers below deck, letting you get off and do all sorts of things while it's passing through to the other side. Lots of blocks and crates and bombs and stuff. Every time the carpet exits one side of the ship, it goes out just far enough to a coin or something that's barely too far to jump on your own, then turns back to pass through another chamber. This way, you always have stuff to do while you wait for the carpet inside the ship, there's very little waiting outside the ship, and at the end of the four chambers, it's brings you back up to the deck and drops you off. And there should be four cannons to launch you to islands that are really far away. No long, boring carpet rides.

First video ive seen of yours and really enjoyed it. I always thought something was up with this level as a kid, but could never place it. You really nailed it

I just realized I have to speedrun beating Mario Wonder so I can watch your 2D Mario stages ranking

I don't know how many times I've played mario 64, and it wasn't until this video that I learned you could rotate the camera and skip the first carpet.

I dont know if you edit your vids yourself but the editing always cracks me up.

It’s been too long since the last Mario 64 video, glad to see them return and hopefully we can see more in the future!

Well, at least Rainbow Ride lives up to its name Also, nice touch, adding the Melee Hyrule Temple theme to the Maze segment ^_^ only this time it's Overground

I love this series! Keep up the good work! ❤

I personally love the giant house. It does make you wonder who lives there and I like that. It makes me want to write a story about it.

also, the wingcap cloud level has a much better aesthetic than this so i wonder why they didnt combine the two since all in all, theres 3 sky levels: rainbow ride, wingcap switch level, and the red coin cloud wingcap level.

I think the best way to fix it at least visually is to make the stage at night, replace the grey blocks with rainbow wire frame and gold ones, and replace the slide theme with something more like Rainbow road from Mario Kart 64

I ❤ this series. Can't wait for the 200k special!

🚨🗣️Finally a new Mario 64 vid WOOOOO🗣️🚨

I've always wondered why platformer developers make auto scrollers. Like what's their thought process? "You know what our players want to do more than anything? Wait extended amounts of time to move for 6 seconds and wait again!"

I never hear many people talk about shifting sand land. I hate that level. Rainbow Ride is worse but SSL is definitely my second least favorite

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="679">11:19</a> I remember feeling like a god when I figured that out as a kid

you just so happened to combine my favorite wolf vatient with bombs...

What annoys me the most about Rainbow Road is that it's not even really hard like you would expect a final main stage to be. Instead it's overly tedious to the point of sleep inducing. Plus, I think this stage could have been decent enough if you had to platform on the rainbows instead of riding a carpet on them.

That specific render of Mario 64 Mario is so funny to me in particular

what's funny about the roblox obby analogy is that the background is the same in the level as the sample video you showed of the roblox obby

The fact that you didn't say the entirety of Galaxy was worse than Rainbow Ride is character growth. I'm proud of you.

Almost at 200K subs! You have such a great channel.

Yanno what would be great once you finish ranking all the 2d courses? A ranking of every single Mario kart course. I’ve only really played 8dx, so idk what i’ve been missing out on from the earlier games

Snowman's Land - _specifically the DS version_ - is a close second for me. IMO it has two good stars, the first star and Whirl From the Freezing Pond. The others are either repeats (Boil the Big Bully but it's cold this time, two stars back to back where you just enter the igloo) or deliberately trying to waste as much of the player's time as possible. Silver stars I can deal with, but putting one under the bully platform and forcing the player to go all the way across the map for the koopa shell is just tedious (especially because grabbing that silver star with the metal cap right next to the bully platform just KILLS YOU), and the replacement for the ice maze star frustrated me because of how far away the ?-box is and the time limit on Yoshi's fire breath. It's pretty much a running theme with floor-3 levels where a level gets built around one core path, and then other stars just get thrown in the blank spaces to make it a full course - Rainbow Ride (ride the magic carpet), Snowman's Land (climb the snowman), Tall Tall Mountain (climb the mountain), and Tick Tock Clock (climb the clock), but to me only the latter two of those really do that design philosophy justice.

Ok, im actually in the camp that likes autoscrollers and moving platforms, but even im gonna have to draw the line at those carpets.

What if this level's theme was instead that it had no theme at all? Throw away the sky background and make it a mix of all previous levels. Replace the slider theme with a mashup of all previous music tracks. Have you travel through portions of all previous challenges, moving through them on a magic carpet. Also, are you including the Mario Maker sample / story mode / ninji levels in your 2D ranking? I think they count.

Good video. i used to rage so hard at this stage as a kid

I think instead of all the random junk, they should've had the stage take place on a galleon-like airship, with plenty of nooks and crannies below deck to explore. Key thing, have all the holds have windows so you can see outside, and have a good number of stars above-deck so you can see the scenery. Maybe even have a single rainbow road with a carpet that takes you to a floating fortress, maybe one built on top of some kind of giant bird.

M64 - "For the last level let's just stick random crap in the air" Banjo Tooie - (takes notes)

When I got to <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="728">12:08</a> I couldn’t watch anymore! I got super scared by that monster and I just couldn’t get through the rest of your video. I told my little brother and he’s curled up crying in the corner of his room. My mom is calling the police and my dad is getting ready to fly all of us to Canada.

At least with this level it has some stars that actually are a decent challenge and are fun with tricky triangles, the maze, and even the 100 coin challenge. Hell I even enjoyed doing a carpetless cruiser crossing the rainbow and somewhere over the rainbow as a pretty difficult challenge, which also illustrates that you can play rainbow ride in different ways and not just the one. Still not a good level, but that's way more than what I can say about dire dire docks, which is all nothing but boring swimming and the one platforming challenge being super annoying and revolves around waiting. The only passable star is one that isn't even fun, it's just a cool idea with collect the caps.

The devs spent a lot of time making Mario's moveset work perfectly and in the end had to slap a bunch of levels together, rendering Shigeru Miyamoto's planned 32 courses down to just 15. Therefore, it makes sense that this one is a bunch of random junk thrown together, because obviously, as the last level, they quickly threw together a bunch of final ideas that they wanted to use in the end but didn't have time to implement into their own stages. So, in that context, this level is forgivable, especially since it's the last one you visit anyway, making for a test of endurance and, especially, patience. Definitely needed some work, though, and is definitely not a well liked level overall. I will say, though, that the pink bob-omb is actually not all that bad, because some players, like myself, are likely to find him while looking for the red coins in the maze, which does help a huge deal. But, yeah, after seeing this new perspective on that star, that star definitely is poorly designed. A cool concept on paper with a nice homage, but really could've been implemented better.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="324">5:24</a> at least 7 times

I love how Odyssey takes the line of Squidward saying,, nothing? We can't just sit here and do nothing! " way too seriously

Also, it took what should've been Bowser's Castle's stage slot in Melee.

Rainbow Ride would’ve been so much cooler if it was an actual Airship level and the magic carpets were how you traversed between some of them and clouds with different star challenges on them

You didn’t mention this about casual players, but due to the random layout of everything in the level and no real theme, you can get confused and lost very easily. If you accidentally take the wrong carpet ride to get the star you’re screwed.

@ <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="48">0:48</a> that bob-omb is *_devious_* 😂

I was gonna say I think Dire Dire Docks was worse, but you might’ve convinced me otherwise. Great video

Every SM64 video I watch, the more levels I learn the existence of

The stage design around the carpets almost makes me think that the devs wanted the carpets to move faster.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="152">2:32</a> Was not expecting that classic lmao.

Rainbow Ride feels like a remnant from the phase in development where Super Mario 64 was structured more like the 2D games with more linear stages. It clashes so strongly with the design philosophy of Super Mario 64 that I can’t think of another reason for it to be designed the way it is

There's also the extra star added in the DS version, which is literally the same as the star on top of the house except you have to press a timed switch before floating up to it with a Power Flower. Slightly more creative, slightly more tedious, just as slow and uninteresting.

Funnily enough, it was this level that really kickstarted my distaste for video game levels that are clearly just a blatant obstacle course/battle arena, it's why I can't stand Ultrakill. As you said yourself, the best things these types of games can do is immerse the player in a world or as Melo from Running Shine said in his THUG review, "feeling like you're in an actual city and not a skateboarding level that looks kind of like a city." This level's aesthetics were always just off-putting to me and that's without even bringing up everything else wrong with it.

The floatin House (with giant proportions) is probably something from Jack and the giant or however the story is called

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="923">15:23</a> Lmao Mario's like "peace ✌ I'm outta here!" 😂

Another great video, interesting to hear you thoughts about this awful level :D

I'm surprised you didn't mention Wet Dry World when talking about the aesthetics, they both have a very "beta test level" vibe going for them

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="544">9:04</a> do you think that would be enough time to get some water? lets say someone was parched, and they sprinted to the kitchen to refill their cup, do you think they could make it?

Tbh one big destination is rather a negative point for level design to me because it means you usually have to complete the same parts of the level over and over again.

i cant wait for the all dog variants ranking

As an adult: ugh the devious little carpet up to mischief, random assets, literally getting over it As a child: woah sky, ship, castle and flying carpets, so coooool

My least favourite 2D Mario level has got to be 6-2 from Mario Bros 2 (The Lost Levels). Because it’s literally “Hold right and hope you don’t die: the level.”

you did NOT just diss JRB and DDD. those stages are such a vibe

Imagine an underwater auto scrolling dark fireball spam bowser fight..dear god..

rainbow ride is the stage that either they made in 2 days to fill stage quantity quota ig OR they just had some random intern who has no idea what a good platformer is make the stage.

I personally hate shifting sand land more but this one sucks too

"If you want to get to [location], take a carpet" Speedrunners: 💀

I love your videos and sorry if I write something wrong, my English is not perfect I relly like the 2d auto scrolls levels and water levels... But... Even I agree that those elements in 3D Mario suck, maybe it's because it's less natural for me with Mario's movements or simply because it's more complicated to move in a three-dimensional environment with those characteristics. I don't know...

The thing about all the "Random stuff in the sky" aesthetic is.. it *was* the first 3D Mario game so I wonder if it legit was made to be that.. random stuff in the sky and then when they made more levels they were like "maybe we should focus on the themed levels" but also.. there had to be other random polygon levels made.. and this one made it into the game.. honestly wonder if Rainbow Ride would be less hated if there were more "random stuff" levels in the final game.. Speaking of that.. the closest to that idea actually are the Bowser Stages imo (not *as* random looking but still) so.. maybe that it's issue.. it's a floating void stage as a regular level and thus had to be filled up with more than just an end point Also it is in the final main room of the castle.. off to the side.. so it isn't even close to being required so it again gets marked down since.. if it was required it probably would be bit more cohesive.. Another thing I can think of as a way to at least.. look at it in a maybe positive design is.. it's almost like they had a normal stage and they slowly removed the "fluff".. like if Bomb-omb Battlefield didn't have random empty patches and wide areas.. imagine if it was *just* the objectives.. would look a lot more like Rainbow Ride I bet.. It's wild that they had a very solid go as their first 3D game with this as one of the few blemishes Also.. wow the first two Stars are the two that have longest go around with all the carpets.. they.. could have at least split them up.. oh and then star 6 actually did do that... nvm that is very annoying lol

I find it ironic that Super Mario 63, one of the best Mario fan games, made Rainbow Ride more fun despite the whole game is 2D. I think why is they replaced wall-jumping with Sunshine's FLUDDs which made the entire level tons more fun! (Also they don't have 100 coin stars)