Bowser in the Furious Tempest

Bowser in the Furious Tempest is an additional Bowser level supposedly present in certain personalized copies of Super Mario 64. It reportedly takes place during an intense storm out on the open ocean, and features submarines similar to the one in Dire, Dire Docks as well as several ships similar to the Koopalings' airships in Super Mario Bros 3. It is mainly of interest for it's largely unexplored interactions with the A.I, research into which is unfortunately hindered by both the relative rarity of it's manifestation and the glitches these interactions tend to cause.

Description
Bowser in the Furious Tempest appears as a large open area, similar to Lethal Lava land but larger with water instead of lava and a layer of scrolling mist reminiscent of the fog in Jolly Roger Bay. There is a rain effect similar to the snow of Cool, Cool Mountain, but more intense, and the screen will periodically flash white with lightning. The level contains a constant, but slight wind that slowly pushes Mario away, and falling in the water usually means certain death as the currents rapidly suck him away into the ocean, with the air meter draining much quicker than it would elsewhere. The music is the same as the other Bowser levels, but is accompanied by a clip of storm ambience and the sound effect of thunder when lightning strikes. The level is reported to be unusually difficult in comparison to the base game, as it not only contains an obstructive wind effect but also several anomalous enemies, including Cheep Cheeps, Motos and even Hammer Bros.

Reported platforming sections include an enterable submarine that Mario either starts inside or next to, a raft section similar to the moving platform in Hazy Maze Cave but controllable only in two directions, wherein he must avoid leaping Cheep Cheeps and fire-shooting buoys, a ship he must shoot himself to through a cannon, a platforming section where it becomes especially important to be wary of the wind, a large, swaying ghost ship and even a long underwater section where Mario must use the Metal Cap to withstand the ocean current and platform to Bowser's underwater submarine. As Metal Mario's underwater walking speed is reduced, this area contains multiple boxes to replenish the cap's duration.

The boss fight, taking place inside the roughly oval-shaped submarine, is notably timed. Bowser fights in a way similar to how he does in Bowser in the Fire Sea, stomping against one end of the arena to tilt it, partially flooding it with water, after which he runs towards the player, makes several short sprints while the arena readjusts and repeats the cycle again. To compensate for Bowser not breathing fire, coins flow in with the water and are collectible once it drains. Once he has been hit once, he gains a new jump attack which drastically tilts the arena, enough to forcefully slide Mario down into the water where he is highly vulnerable to attack. Defeating him requires only two hits, but is still very difficult due to both his jump attack, the shape of the arena and the positioning of the bombs.

The nature of the reward is inconsistent, and has thus far been reported to possibly be a star (potentially discolored to give multiple stars), a key, a medal visible on file selection, or even an unlock for a new powerup. Regardless of the initial appearance of this reward however, collecting it often if not always leads to increased long-term personalization later on in the game.

Another notable occurence is what happens if the player does not defeat Bowser in time, but instead lets the timer run out. As it counts down, the floods become more drastic, which in turn makes the battle more difficult and thus the player more likely to run out of time. When it reaches zero, Bowser teleports away and the submarine floods completely, while the screen darkens. Dying at this point notably does not cost Mario a life, but instead warps him to the Ocean Depths.

Similar to other Bowser levels, the only other mission aside from the boss battle is collecting 8 red coins, found among other locations on top of climbable masts and hidden inside a submarine. The eighth red coin is initially inaccessible due to being located on top of the fin of Bowser's sub, but can be obtained after the fight is completed, since the now raised sub can in fact be exited and thus explored without having to worry about the Metal Cap's limitations.

Unlike the other Bowser levels, but like many other levels implemented by the Personalisation A.I., Bowser in the Furious Tempest is not consistently found in a specific location, and the means of accessing it vary from copy to copy. It is however commonly associated with Dire-Dire Docks, whose submarine greatly resembles the ones present in the level. Obtaining a star inside the interior of this submarine is one of the reported means of accessing the level, and doing this opens the way through the large hatch as well, which would normally lead back to the Castle Grounds.

Difficulty Gauging
It is theorized that the stage of the game at which Bowser in the Furious Tempest is completed greatly affects the ensuing personalization. Due to it's apparent status as a bonus level, with difficulty far exceeding it's place in the game, it may be used by the A.I. as a specialized method of gauging the player's preferential means of challenge. Players who attempt it early, regardless if they succeed in completing it easily or not, are identified as challenge-seekers, while those who save it for later recieve greater challenges later on in their playthroughs, and players who give up quickly recieve an easier, more flattened difficulty curve. Players who complete the level quickly are qualified as experienced, long-time players and thus rewarded with a greater level of personalization to increase variety, while players who die many times in a row without giving up are recognized for their determined playstyle by the A.I, never subsequently lowering difficulty upon repeated fails as it usually does.

Due to the level's rarity, this theory is hard to confirm. However, this very rarity may actually support the theory's credibility; a system of difficulty-adjustment on such a scale would be very to implement and would cause inevitable instability, which combined with time-crunch at the developing team would lead to the level being scrapped altogether shortly before release. Some copies of the A.I. would however slip through this process, and crashes caused by these attempting to reimplement the level could easily be misidentified as effects of simple corruption.

Anomalous Latency
Bowser in the Furious Tempest shows very high latency, even moreso than Dire Dire Docks. While still not enough to significantly interfere with gameplay, it is a noticeable change when entering the level that initially can throw a few players off-guard.

This could initially be chalked off to the many polygons and special effects, with three different memory-intensive submarines being present on the same map. However, performing a Bob-Omb clip while having the camera pointed upwards reveals that these are actually drastically simplified compared to the one in Dire-Dire Docks, thanks to only the top needing to be shown above water. Moreover, only one is actually loaded at the same time, with the first being unloaded after the cannon segment and Bowser's fully modeled submarine only being loaded while underwater. The game also normally only suffers latency while directly having to render a large number of polygons in the camera's field of view. Despite this, BitFT still shows noticeable lag even when looking directly up into the sky. Furthermore, the exact behavior of this lag is unusual, being a continuous stream of lag frames interrupted every once a second with a slight spike, having no discernable source within the level itself.

This supports the hypothesis that the A.I. is carefully monitoring the gameplay in this area, but suggests at something deeper, more memory-intensive than simple timing and death-counting, a process which already occurs constantly as part of the A.I.'s standard calibration. This is further supported by the abnormally long loading time when warping out from either drowning in the submarine or collecting the reward, which would correspond to the AI computing the difficulty curve to set for future personalization.

Scrapped Floor Remnant
Every other known Bowser level is associated with it's own floor. Bowser in the Dark World with the first, Bowser in the Fire Sea with the basement and Bowser in the Sky with the third. This leaves two possibilities. Either Bowser in the Furious Tempest was originally supposed to be the Bowser level of the second floor, which is unlikely considering it's difficulty, or that of a scrapped floor. The exact nature of this area, or if it even was a floor proper is unknown. However, the high difficulty of the Bowser level suggests it would probably have been accessed after Bowser in the Sky, or at least at a similarly late stage in the game.

This has led to this area being theorized to actually be the elusive fourth floor. However, this may be contradicted by reports of a Bowser level called The Final Stretch already having appeared on some people's renditions on said floor, as well as an entrance to the Eternal Fort. With The Final Stretch also being reported appearing on the third floor, and the fourth floor in general varying drastically between copies it is impossible to truly be sure of what Nintendo's original intents were for Bowser in the Furious Tempest.

Due to the rarity of both anomalies, it is also difficult to compare their difficulties as well. However, one player reports allegedly having unlocked the Fourth Floor in a playthrough later after having completed the level. Althrough not being able to access The Final Stretch, he was able to play Chroma Tundra a course with wind platforming similar to BitFT. This level, despite only being a regular course and not a Bowser level still reportedly surpassed it in difficulty, with the player dying several times on the "8 Red Coins Hidden in the Blizzard" star despite completing BitFT on his second try. This would logically leave it's potential Bowser level even more difficult still, and thus the scrapped area would have to take place after Bowser in the Sky but before the fourth floor. Reports like this should however be taken with very much a grain of salt, since no footage video exists of either level and they can easily be fabricated.

If this indeed was the case, the area must have been scrapped very early in it's development, with only the Bowser level being actually developed to a working state beyond initial conception. The level would then be repurposed as a bonus level, which would then in turn prove to be potentially be a very useful means of tracking the player's playstyle. Development of this was cut short however when the game came to a deadline, and the entire level was forced to be scrapped due to it's incomplete A.I. functionality causing glitches that could render the game unplayable.

"BitFT-Magic"
A method of directly interfacing with the A.I. would be extremely valuable in future research, as it would enable players to communicate with or even possibly manipulate the A.I. itself. Bowser in the Furious Tempest is the location thus far that shows the greatest future promise for this, as it seems that the player's precise movements are monitored exactly and can later influence the induced personalization.

This speculative method of arbitrary code execution, dubbed "BitFT-Magic" would however require not only a level of precision hardly achievable by anybody but the top speedrunners, but also knowledge about the A.I. itself far beyond what is available today, whose inner workings are still almost completely unknown, let alone the extent of what is being recorded. Attempting such a feat could also have hitherto unforseeable consequences, as demonstrated by the A.I. Dementia that occurs with the detection of extraneous damage to the game.