Mario 64’s Most Impressive Level Was Its First

“Art of the Level” rarely gets this literal.

Bob-omb Battlefield is a masterpiece within a masterpiece that established a new grammar for 3D movement and invoked a sense of storytelling within traditionally wordless worlds. The first challenge course of Super Mario 64 is a dense possibility space with precisely-tailored progress that leads you across enemy lines and up a mountain in pursuit of its seven perfect stars. Bob-omb Battlefield is worth hanging on the wall.

What makes this warzone so welcoming? How many times can you climb the same hill? Do you think love can bloom, even on a battlefield? Light the fuses, man the artillery, and hold on to your flying hats, because this is issue of Art of the Level, we’re shipping out to Bob-omb Battlefield.

Mario 64’s tutorial space is the stuff of legend. The castle grounds are a verdant playground we can triple-jump through for hours, but we must eventually put our new skill to the test. Step into the castle, placate the terrified Toad, and enter the first door on the left. Inside the simple room, flanked by two austere columns, is a painting. A texture, really, 4,000 humble pixels etched in the greater gaming canon. The composition is simple: a row of round bombs marching towards conquest, viewed from below, towering as gods blotting out the blue sky– an ominous, deeply inviting image. There’s a reason the painting is hung front and center at Super Nintendo World: it says “come on in” in every possible language.

The game doesn’t tell you how to start the level. Instead, you’re left to experiment in a subtle continuation of the lesson that began outside, literally bashing your head against the wall until the canvas starts to ripple and Mario takes the plunge.

Boots on the Ground

Before Bob-omb Battlefield was shown to the public, early demos of Mario 64 offered up Whomp’s Fortress as its introductory stage– a harsh, abstract piece of geometry floating in a cloudy void as opposed to a grounded, pastoral meadow scene.

Miyamoto’s original concept called for a river to cut through the war zone, and when that proved unfeasible, the team carved out the level’s signature valley and made it the first real challenge in the game, a trench that splits the field of combat like the scars of the Somme.

Bob-omb Battlefield is where Mario 64 introduces hostility and failstates after the safety of Peach’s castle, so it’s important to give the player the lay of the land. The vista that greets you inside the painting is just as arresting as the artwork itself. Mario finds himself in a green meadow, standing before a rocky platform with a giant cannon you can’t use yet. An elevated chunk of land is blocked by a barbed wire fence, and an island hangs in the distant sky. Beyond it lies a fortified hill where the mad king rains watery hell on his enemies.

The Battlefield has lots of nooks and crannies to explore, with glimpses of colored coins and caged stars to keep in mind for later. Mildly dangerous baddies and bubble barrages keep Mario on his toes. You can brave the canyon and find a locked gate for your troubles, or putter around the meadow discovering hidden teleporters and curious clear cubes. The level seems vast through the lens of a Lakitu, but clipping outside of Mario’s perspective reveals the compact simplicity of the space.

From the starting point we see two pink Bob-omb buddies wiggling in place, uninterested in attacking. For the first time in a Mario game, we have friendly NPCs inside of the action. Mario levels before Battlefield told stories, but they were more emergent and play-based, like “that crazy sun kept coming after me” or “I went through the right combination of doors.” Nintendo’s 2D SNES swan song, Yoshi’s Island, experimented with non-hostile characters and narrative techniques, but levels never really had a plot before Mario 64.

The level rubs your face in it before you even gain control: “Wow! You’re stuck in the middle of the battlefield.” The peaceful Buddies occupy a tiny swatch of territory, but they can seize some firepower if Mario can clear the way. It’s time to aid the insurgency, Old Snake style. King Bob-omb must die.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, it’s time to take down the spherical sovereign.

Regicide

Your journey will take you past a snarling Chain Chomp and through a metal gate into a treacherous path up the summit. We’ll deal with the beast later. See that mountain? You can climb it. You have to, in fact. “Big Bob-omb on the Summit” is the only star you’re able to select when you begin the stage, and you don’t have many options.

There are lots of slopes throughout the level offering the temptation of a quick shortcut, but they’re too steep to surmount without expert tech. Soon we’ll be able to blast and fly our way to the top, but the first run has you hoofing it through a vintage Mario gauntlet. It begins with wrought iron gates, a valley of steel boulders and a winding path through the brutality of No Bob-omb’s Land.

We find one soldier manning the artillery, showering blue death on the Buddies below. You may be tempted to throw a punch at the little creep, only to find yourself holding the war criminal in your hands. This teaches us two valuable lessons for Mario 64: enemies are grabbable, and war marches on– the cannons continue after his demise.

The mysterious island seems just within reach, but you can’t get there from here just yet. There are chasms to leap and beams to balance on, and if you fall you’ll just wind up winded at the bottom. Nothing a few coins won’t fix.

The mountain’s main challenge is an infinite barrage of giant balls, ejected from an endless generator and sent barreling towards Mario on the narrow trail. You can avoid some of the climb by hiding in an alcove and teleporting to the top, but you’ll have to backtrack to charge up on health for your imminent confrontation with the self-proclaimed Lord of All Blasting Matter.

The English localisation of Mario 64 called the character “Big Bob-omb,” while the original Japanese version always referred to him as “Bomu Kingu.” Western audiences wouldn’t recognize his claim to the TNT throne until his appearance in Mario Party 5, when he was finally crowned King Bob-omb for good. Mario offends his royal presence either way, so they face off in a duel.

The rules are simple, but His Majesty isn’t interested in playing fair. The King can yeet Mario from the summit, sending him flying to the ground below for a brutal walk of shame back up. Mario can’t return the favor– throw King Bob-omb out of the arena and he’ll whine about cheating and start the fight over. Bad form!

Like many enemies in Mario 64, King Bob-omb is constructed from 2D images animated with a 3D effect– the only polygons are in his crown, eyes, and impressive moustache. Rotating around a boss is a big ask for gamers who were new to analog sticks and the z-axis in 1996, but the simple, readable roundness helps our brains acclimate. What’s more natural than orbiting a sphere?

The whole encounter is designed to test your knowledge and prepare you for the future. The entire level is, really. So far you’ve learned that punching some bad guys defeats them outright, while pressing the same button will result in grabbing more ergonomic foes. Later, we’ll encounter enemies that simply bounce back from your strikes, but the game leaves us the simple binary for now: death or uppies.

After three throws, aided by some side somersaults if you’re feeling fancy, King Bob-omb admits defeat and obliquely hints that the same tactics that led to his end will also help you defeat Bowser, though he neglects to inform you that you’ll also have to spin the tyrannical turtle and hurl him like an Olympic hammer towards the explosives surrounding the ring. It’s a natural extrapolation of the same mechanics that led you towards your mountaintop triumph, delivered through dialogue and discovery rather than a tooltip that grinds gameplay to a halt.

The mortally wounded monarch leaves you to learn that on your own, more concerned with dying than tutorialising. He ponders the battlefield, his kingdom fallen to the cursed pink rebels, his armies turned to ash and yellow coins, and utters his last breath as the royal corpus detonates into a shower of splinters and a star. The king is dead, long live the king.

It’s a cruel fate to be born knowing how you’re going to die, but what other destiny can balls of sentient dynamite expect to meet? Especially ones with delusions of conquest? King Bob-omb has continued to appear throughout Mario’s extended library, forever cursed to the same explosive end.

The star you plucked from the king’s corpse is the key to exploring the castle. You can storm Whomp’s fortress, find the secret slide, or remain in the battlefield. There’s still a war on, after all, and five more stars to collect, but the world you’re jumping into isn’t the same as the one you just left.

All the Stars

The next time you enter the Bob-omb Battlefield you’ll be presented with a choice. The first star is filled in, but now a second empty slot has manifested: “Footrace with Koopa the Quick.” Choose it, and you’ll return to a familiar, slightly different course. The Bob-omb buddies will unlock cannons for you across the level, opening new routes towards goals that were always visible. These stay open even if you select Star 1 for a rematch with the big Bob-omb.

In this version of reality with King Bob-omb deposed, the summit is uninhabited, but the mountain has a new posthumous hazard: a third iron ball has entered in the valley below, implied to be the royal remains rolling forever as a warning from the Buddies to any wannabe future tyrants: Stay off our mountain.

A giant Koopa Troopa is now waiting in the meadow, another enemy which any Mario veteran’s muscle memory would read as a threat– but Koopa the Quick just wants to go fast. He challenges us to a race to the flagpole that’s now atop the mountain. Originally, Miyamoto intended this to be a straightforward sprint against Mips the rabbit instead of the reformed baddie, but the addition of the rolling balls and alternate routes turn the contest into a skill check that gives you another chance to scope out coins to snag in the upcoming collectathons.

KtQ’s time isn’t consistent– the iron boulders introduce some RNG into his route– but you’ve got about a minute and a half to perfect the path that you just barely survived. You can’t use the newly-opened cannons, which the Quick would rightfully decry as cheating, though the teleporters are fair game.

Collecting your prize unlocks the third and final world state, with three balls, locked-and-loaded cannons, and a green shell that Koopa the quick left behind as he trudged, defeated and presumably nude, to your next showdown on Tiny-Huge Island. Fanatical holdouts in the hills continue to shell your position. War never changes.

The next star is the one we’ve been waiting for: “Shoot to the Island in the Sky.” The floating rock that’s been taunting us is finally in reach thanks to the cannons, but aiming is awkward and our margins are thin: we’ve got to snag the branches on a lone tree at the island’s edge to catch Mario before he overshoots into the canyon. There’s no fall damage from the cannon shots, so the experimentation is low-stakes and extremely satisfying, turning Bob-omb Battlefield into Mario’s own personal Hall of Meat.

The best launch angle for the island happens to be near the top of the mountain, sending you to brave the balls a third time. It’s technically possible to reach the island with a single long jump via some wild speedrunner setups, but for most people this star is unavailable until the cannons open.

Mario’s next task involves the eight red coins scattered across the entire stage. You’ve probably been collecting them this whole time, but now you can finally grab them all. One is on the floating island, so the cannon is required here too. Others are tucked behind clever moments like opening the gate in the canyon or sliding down the green slope from above. The most obvious coin of all hovers above a wooden post holding a very bad dog’s leash.

Every spherical object in the Battlefield, the bowling balls, the bubbles, the Bob-ombs and their king, is a perspective trick on a 2D “billboarded” sprite. Chain Chomp is the only orb in the stage that’s fully polygonal, and he’s an exception in more ways than one. The sixth and last star on the menu, “Behind Chain Chomp’s Gate,” is the only one available completely out of order. If that red coin above the log sparks an epiphany that leads you to slamming Mario’s butt into the ground, you can smash that gate open first before even glimpsing King Bob-omb.

By now, you’ve probably been here for a while. We know it’s a great level, that’s why we wrote an article about it, but at this point the game really wants you to give Whomp a house call. You can select Star 5, “Mario Wings to the Sky,” without ever unlocking the mystery behind the translucent item blocks, but you’re not meant to succeed until you’ve explored the castle further.

Mario needs ten stars to unlock the sunlit ceiling fresco that hides the red switch, and there are only seven in Bob-omb Battlefield. Until you leave and return, you have no way of flying through the three rings made of coins in the sky. It’s technically possible to pull off with the cannons if you’re stubborn enough, but Mario is supposed to take flight here. The Wing Cap also makes the somewhat tedious task of the 100-coin run viable. Without it, you’re scraping somewhere in the low to mid-nineties and coming up short. Some loops through floating currency will fill your pockets fast, awarding you the final, unlisted star.

The fight has been long. You arrived as a tourist just looking for some cake, but seven stars, three world states, and a hundred hard-fought coins later, you exit the painting one last time, a hardened veteran carrying memories that won’t just go away. We can leave the war behind, but the Battlefield never leaves us.

Love Is a Battlefield

You never forget your first level. They stick with you, like long lost loves or the layout of a childhood bedroom. Even lapsed gamers can recite a litany of excellent opening stages and remember the path beat by beat: World 1-1, E1M1, Kokiri Forest, Green Hill Zone. They all have a few things in common: simple layouts, smart onboarding, enticing graphics, and music that stays with you for life.

The song you hear in Bob-omb Battlefield isn’t unique to the level. It plays across three more courses, and its melody runs through all of Mario 64, from the frantic ragtime sliding music to the game over screen. This is a favorite technique of composer Koji Kondo, who likes to build a melodic throughline for a game and bend it to fit different scenes. Scroll through the official soundtrack and you won’t find “Bob-omb Battlefield Theme” or “Big Bob-omb’s Lament” anywhere. The music is simply called “Main Theme,” inseparable from the revolutionary package that is Mario 64. Like the Battlefield itself, it represents more than just the opening stage of a pretty good game.

Maybe you first encountered the level at a toy store kiosk in 1996, or fired it up on your Switch 2 to see what all the fuss is about. Perhaps you dove headfirst into the 2004 DS remake, which added a seventh star for a King Bob-omb rematch and reworked the fight to suit Yoshi’s puny arms. No matter when your first tour of duty was, the Battlefield still has plenty to offer. Like a favorite painting in a quiet museum gallery, there’s always something new to find.

Inspired by the simple story depicted in the levels, fans have spun their own lore to explain the hostilities between the belligerent bombs. Urban legends about a peaceful Bob-omb village torn apart by war that supposedly existed in beta builds of Mario 64 have become a part of internet folklore and creepypasta canon, despite being demonstrably false.

Meanwhile, the equally-obsessive speedrunning community has spent the last three decades tearing the level apart, unlocking glitches and secrets buried in the game’s famously creaky code. Koopa the Quick can be smoked in 1.7 seconds, Chain Chomp’s fence can be clipped through without ever freeing the creature, and the entire stage can be cleared without a single jump. It’s possible to collect all seven stars without so much as breathing on the A button, as long as you’re skilled enough to engineer a floating staircase out of cloned Goombas.

But you don’t need to master parallel universes or backwards long jumps to feel the pull of the Battlefield. References to the level continue to pop up in Mario media, from the Hint Toad’s map in Odyssey to Peach and the gang strolling through the meadow in the movie. Nintendo keeps coming back to it, and so do we.

Some art should be appreciated from afar, while other pieces invite up-close scrutiny and examination from all angles. Bob-omb Battlefield is the best kind of art: one that encourages you to jump right in.