B3313

B3313 or Build 3313 (also called SM64 Internal Plexus) is a ROM Hack of Super Mario 64 developed by ChrisRLillo and his dev team. It is the largest beta-based SM64 hack to date, especially regarding the number of accessible areas, but also the star count and various other aspects. The latest official public release endorsed by the original creator is V0.9.

Development
 See also: List of versions 

Development on the hack started in late 2020.

The first public build, V0.4, was released on 26th April 2021. The next big move was made on 29th July of the same year, when V0,6, a major update, got released. This was a subtle reference to the "07/29/1995 build" meme, a mythical beta version of Super Mario 64 said to be haunted by the personalization AI.

On November 22nd, 2021, the 26th anniversary of Shoshinkai 1995, Christopher released v0.7, another major update, along with his announcement of taking a hiatus from developing the hack in favor of his other personal projects. Around the same time, Jefftastic, another game developer with a history in SM64 hacking, began working on converting B3313 into decomp, a more versatile hacking method, potentially adding new content to it eventually as well, as a way of shifting the hack towards a v1.0 release.

In January 2022, Christopher, disappointed by the sluggish progress on the decomp port, continued working on the hack. He then later uploaded an hour-long preview video of v0.8 which showcases more than 10 new areas, revamped sound effects, new music, and other changes.

Over the course of the following few months, v0.8 was rebranded to v1.0 due to a plethora of new features being added: areas, stars, music, enemies and even a fully functional "AI" able to personalize the player's experience based on variables derived from their gameplay style (all within the limits of keeping a 100% completion of the hack possible). Several of the new features were teased by Christopher on his "Friday Jamz" music streams and even some standalone videos.

On July 30th, 2022, B3313 was featured on the F3 2022 expo organized by Kaze Emanuar. An extended version of the F3 trailer was uploaded to Christopher's channel on August 5th, along with a demo of 1.0 (also called B13), containing several of the upcoming areas, along with some intentional and unintentional easter eggs.

Since the demo's release, v1.0's development has continued with screenshots of new areas and other features often getting posted to Christopher's Discord server. After several delays due to various issues and changes of plan, the release date of the full version was projected to early 2023.

On January 13th, 2023, a new 1.0 demo was released on romhacking.com with an accompanying trailer, under the title Motos Factory, mainly featuring the titular area, with several hidden areas and collectibles as well. Two weeks later, on January 28th, the release date of 1.0 was confirmed, as Chris stated that he will "stop hacking" on March 13th and give way to other projects instead. This date was deconfirmed by him later, stating that the game was not yet in a releasable state despite the team's best efforts.

On March 20th, 2023, Christopher announced that the game's development would enter an indefinite hiatus, mainly due to his recurring health problems. Production seemingly resumed in April, with several ingame screenshots posted in the Discord server. Multiple developers have projected the hack's release onto the summer of 2023.

On May 29th, 2023, Christopher unofficially "leaked" an unfinished build of 1.0 (later dubbed 0.9), announcing to indefinitely shelf the project for the time being. This build is allegedly quite close to completion, only missing some bugfixes, proper star IDs, an "ending", a few beta asset implementations and a small amount of additional content. This would conservatively estimate 1.0 as containing over 300 areas and 400 stars respectively.

On June 12th, 2023, Christopher released a video titled "B3313 ANNOUNCEMENT (yeah...another one)", that only consisted of the text "READ DESCRIPTION". In the description, Chris announced that B3313 isn't being abandoned, but that he'd be stepping down from romhacking and will be contributing with creative decisions on the hack instead. He has also announced the team is planning a 2.0 version, based on the Super Mario 64 Decompilation Project, which may be playable on Nintendo 64 consoles in the future.

On July 31st, 2023, TheGreatestRoman posted a supposed v1.0 release trailer to his YouTube channel, claiming to host a fixed version of v0.9 codenamed B3313 Unabandoned, which adds unique Star IDs, more ending content, bugfixes and removes some of the intended crashes as per the general player feedback. This caused a small controversy in Chris' community, when it was found out that the Unabandoned team, consisting of a big part of Chris' old team members, did not have the permission to use the content from several other contributors including Chris himself, who explicitly told said team members to remove their areas and music from any further releases.

On August 28th, 2023, the Unabandoned build received a "hotfix", a patch that supposedly fixes most of the bugs present in the initial release, such as duplicate star IDs and unintended crashes.

Since v1.0's release, the Unabandoned team has been reportedly working on a new Decomp project, which while keeping the B3313 atmosphere, will be a fresh new unique experience with all content built up from scratch. It is possible that this release will detach from the B3313 branding completely. There is no estimate on how long the development of this version will take, but it is expected to be over a year.

Star count
The hack's star count is currently uncertain due to the large number of areas and the occasional duplicate star IDs. User TheGreatestRoman has acquired 143 stars while playtesting v0.7 on November 10th, 2021, along with finding 4 duplicates, which is where the star count on the hack's romhacking.com page originates from (although it was eventually reduced to 140, due to apparent issues with MIPS and the unfeasibility of the 100 coin star in Tall, Tall Mountain). He managed to gather an additional 6 stars from older versions, exploiting removed areas and reassigned star IDs, for a grand total of 149 stars.

On December 13th, 2021, Primarina was the first person to acquire 144 stars on a v0.7-only save file, with the usage of the newly found credits glitch, which allows access to an extra star in Tall, Tall Mountain. This also allowed TheGreatestRoman to get his 150th star on his save file with previous versions allowed.

On December 15th, 2021, Primarina acquired another star on v0.7 for a total of 145, being the first one to discover the presence of MIPS in Wing Cap by the Rainbow Highway. This is also the 151st star with previous version allowed, although a full 151 star save file is yet to be achieved.

On December 25th, 2021, TheGreatestRoman found another pre-v0.7 star: in versions v0.6.1 to v0.6.3, the Checkerboard warp in Tick Tock Blocks is replaced by an actual star, corresponding to the first star of Course 6, which is unobtainable anywhere else. This allowed him to get 152 stars on a single save file with previous versions allowed.

On February 23rd, 2023, EK_Gras achieved a 153 star save file after playing through v0.7, v0.4, and v0.6.3 on a single save file. The 153rd star she collected was the "Scale the Mountain" star in Tall, Tall Mountain on v0.6.3, though it is unclear if this star had not previously been discovered due to the lack of documentation for pre-0.7 stars.

The release of v0.9, known for having a plethora of duplicate Star IDs due to it being released ahead of time, provided a brand new challenge for star hunters. A video released on June 30th, 2023 by veteran video game YouTuber BikdipOnABus, a close friend of Chris', claims that there are 178 unique Stars in this build. He also posted a spreadsheet in said video's description with a list of all obtainable Stars which confirms this claim.

The tralier of the "unabandoned" v1.0 version claims a star count of at least 415, highlighting the HUD in one of the clips included. This footage comes from TheGreatestRoman, who also claimed that 424 is the build's definitive star count. The first known player to get over 400 stars was Wixo on August 6th, 2023, barely scraping by with a star count of 401. This was soon surpassed by GoldYosh, who got 410 Stars by August 9th.

On August 4th and from 7th to 11th, TheGreatestRoman streamed an attempted "100% playthrough" live, ending the attempt at 416 stars, missing 2 MIPSes and skipping 2 stars from Cave Dungeon. This would have meant an exquisite total of 420 stars, however, he found out later that he missed Sunken Castle in his playthrough, thus making 421 the total. Additionally, there are 5 Stars which can be obtained exclusively via the Yellow Cap Switch, with an approximated 3.1% chance of getting all 5 of them at once upon pressing it, raising the definitive total to 426.

On August 20th, 2023, a new star was discovered in the Unabandoned build, when it was found out that the Toads in the day- and nighttime variants of the Vanilla Lobby were accidentally given different star IDs, both of which were otherwise unique. Thus, the total star count would be raised to 422 (427 with the Yellow Switch).

It had been known for a while before the hotfix's release that the star count would be expanded to 430, as it fixes 8 duplicates and adds an extra star (the silver star mission in Grassy Highlands). In fact, this has already been achieved on August 16th by katze789, who volunteered to be a playtester for the hotfix during his Twitch playthrough. The hotfix also prevents the Yellow Switch from increasing the star count beyond intended, thus making it no longer a necessity for a 100% save file. On August 28th, TheGreatestRoman, with the knowledge of all the changed star IDs between versions, managed to reach a star count of 438 with a save file containing both Abandoned, Unabandoned and Unabandoned Hotfix stars.

Speedrunning achievements
 See also: Speedrun Leaderboard 

After TheGreatestRoman discovered the game can be beaten with 0 stars in v0.6.x versions on August 15th, 2021, CK Laboratories was the first one to perform a speedrun of the process, marking the first full run of the game with a time of 4:25, on August 23rd. As v0.6.9 patched the 0 star exploit, ShadySmet returned to an older version to beat this time with a 4:16, exactly 2 months later, on October 23nd. Weeg got the first sub 4 minute run, 3:59, on December 31st. Since then, he has improved his record down to a 3:38, set on July 5th, 2022.

30 star has been the lowest intended requirement to reach the ending of the hack ever since the release of v0.6.1. Several runners have attempted to do 30 star runs, but the only successful one in this period was CK Laboratories, getting a time of 27:58 on August 26th, 2021 and a 27:34 on September 2nd, but with unfortunately no video footage. The idea of 30 star was then shelved until after the release of v0.7, in which player HalfHalf was the first one to do a 30 star run on December 13th, clocking in at 54:23. He later beat this time with a 45:51 on December 15th, however these runs start with a savestate and are now considered invalid. Not too soon afterwards, Weeg started grinding the category with some routing involved, ending up with a time of 27:36 on December 26th. After improving the route, TheGreatestRoman got a 24:45 on December 30th, then 23:58 after another series of route improvements, one day later. Weeg, capitalizing on the new route changes, claimed the WR with an unrecorded 22:11, then a recorded 21:08 on January 2nd, 2022. Making up his own strats on the go, he managed to snatch a sub-20 on June 18th, 2022 with a 19:55, beating Cavin856's previous WR of 20:29.

After the 100% got stabilized as 140 stars on romhacking.com, TheGreatestRoman set out to beat the game as fast as possible while collecting all these stars. With a primitive route and a plethora of mistakes, he finished his first run in 4:31:58 on December 26th overnight. This time was greatly improved by KableNStuff, who added the 4 "optional" stars into his run as well, getting 144 stars and beating Bowser in 3:13:39 on January 2nd, 2022. It has since been decided that only 144 Star would be considered 100%, rendering previous 140 Star runs invalid and making VeloxusGaming's 4:48:35 the first 100% run. On July 25th, 2022, Weeg finished his second ever 144 star run, clocking in at 3:06:43.

Main features
B3313 mostly plays like the vanilla Super Mario 64, where you collect stars while venturing through different areas of the hub world. However, the central element of this hack is the myth of the internal plexus within Peach's Castle, a key motif in many urban legends that describe so-called "personalized" copies of SM64. As such, warps (doors, pipes, teleports etc.) can lead to completely unexpected areas (of which there are over 100), highly contributing to the eerie atmosphere of the hack.

The player can play as either Mario or Luigi, with each build since V0.6 being released in two versions that feature one of the two plumbers as a playable character respectively while V0.7 is released in 1 version that features both plumbers. A few quality-of-life adjustments have also been made, including fast travel between hub areas (which also allows the player to exit a course while the character is in motion), and the ability to change the FOV and aspect ratio.

Controls
Both characters have the same movesets, with minor physical differences (e.g. hitbox). However, there are several changes in said moveset, inspired by the beta version of Super Mario 64. (Note, some actions require Red Stars to perform):


 * The ground pound animation reaches the ground much faster;
 * The punch-punch-kick combo is reduced to punch-kick;
 * Turning in water is not possible while otherwise staying still;
 * Triple jumping triggers a spin effect, similarly to jumping on a Shy Guy/Spindrift;
 * The slide kick is replaced with a new somersault move that triggers a slide;
 * Getting shot out of a cannon triggers a gliding effect;
 * The characters are slightly floatier, allowing for more lenient platforming;
 * The Wing Cap now allows for more controlled flying.
 * The Wing Cap now allows for more controlled flying.

Level design
While several areas are entirely original creations by the dev team, there are a number of notable inspiration sources, including but not limited to:


 * Super Mario 64 beta content (from various development versions e.g. Shoshinkai build, B-Roll build)
 * The infamous Super Mario 64 iceberg
 * Content creators on Youtube related to the "personalization" topic, such as Greenio, jefftastic or The Bob.

Sound design
 See also: List of music tracks 

The music of B3313 is implemented from various sources. Some tracks are recreations or remixes of songs from Super Mario beta content, some that were created originally and specifically for B3313, and some are songs that appear in the vanilla version of Super Mario 64, with or without some slight modification.

Some sound effects are replaced by their beta counterparts, while others are left intact.

Plot
 See also: List of plot points 

The plot of the game is largely up to interpretation, although it appears that the Mario brothers are stuck in the aforementioned internal plexus, a way out of which they are frantically looking for, while being haunted by an evil entity (presumably the personalization AI) as it takes the form of eerie liminal spaces, sinister NPC messages and other phenomena.

Additionally, Bowser has stolen the Princess again, although this might be just another manifestation of whatever the brothers are trying to escape. Infiltrating his lair leads to the Eternal Fort, his main hiding place.

Areas
 See also: List of areas 

In v0.7, there are 131 areas (135 if you count all instances of Checkerboard and Snow Slider separately), each with at least one intended warp leading to them. Due to the hack's confusing and inconsistent nature, trying to find a linearity and/or pattern between them is a futile effort, and should rather be considered an open-world system with no clear edges. However, amidst the chaos, a few junction points can be found and accessible through simple means, alongside other warps leading to and away from them:


 * Castle Grounds - the initial spawn point after selecting a file
 * Beta Lobby B - the first fast travel destination
 * Beta Lobby A - the second fast travel destination, as well as the lobby accessed when entering the front castle door
 * Beta Lobby C - the third fast travel destination (note that on the next usage it will loop back to the first one)
 * Plexal Upstairs - the default destination after exiting a course via collecting a star (with the exception of some unique cases)
 * Plexal Lobby - the default destination after exiting a course via dying (with the exception of some unique cases)

Despite the lack of linearity, some areas have certain requirements to be accessed. These include but are not limited to:

In v0.9, depending on the classification of certain the areas as individual from others, there are approximately 320 areas. The unofficial v1.0 raises this count by 6 with Creepy Cove (beta), Ending Room, Indigo Cave, Oak Slide, Teaser Bar and Wall Castle.
 * The Star and most of the consequent areas cannot be reached without having 10 stars, as that is what enables the c-up warp in all of the Beta Lobbies.
 * Most doors in the Vanilla Lobby are locked in a similar fashion to the original requirements.
 * The star door leading to the Randomized Realm requires 30 stars to unlock, making it the minimal star requirement for "beating the game". However, before v0.6.9, there was a pipe erroneously left in Floating Hotel that led to the same area, therefore making it possible to "beat the game" with 0 stars (although requiring the wing cap).
 * MIPS doesn't appear unless the player has 15 or 50 stars, respectively, as usual.

Trivia

 * The hack's primarily used name comes from Christopher's series of coincidences regarding the numbers 33 and 13, while B simply stands for "build", referencing the "prototype" atmosphere invoked by the internal castle plexus.
 * As of v0.7, all 15 of the 100 coin stars are accessible, although Course 12's one can only be spawned via cloning in Tall, Tall Mountain, making it the hardest star in the hack.