Bowser in the Furious Tempest

Bowser in the Furious Tempest is an additional Bowser level supposedly present in certain copies of Super Mario 64. It takes place in a fleet on the open ocean, during an intense storm. It is mainly of interest for it's unique interaction with the A.I, which remains largely unexplored. Research into this is however hindered both by the level's rarity and the (often game-breaking) glitches that the interactions tend to cause.

Description
The level is similar to Lethal Lava Land in that it consists of a large flat surface, in this case, a sea, with platforms straddled across. It differs, however, in that the area is much larger. Across the water are straddled several submarines, similar to the one in Dire Dire Docks, and ships, similar to the Koopalings' airships in Super Mario Bros. 3. Many of these are quite far apart, while others are close enough to jump between.

The level makes heavy use of visual effects: there is a layer of scrolling mist similar to the fog in Jolly Roger Bay and a rain effect similar to the snow in Cool, Cool Mountain, and the screen periodically flashes white with lightning. The music is the same as the other Bowser levels, but is accompanied by a clip of storm ambiance and the sound effect of thunder when lightning strikes.

Gameplay
The level contains a constant, but slight wind that slowly pushes Mario away in a single direction, necessitating precision while platforming. In the water, the air meter drains unusually quickly, and there is an extremely fast current. Falling off the platforms therefore means certain death.

The level is reported to be unusually difficult in comparison to the base game, in part due to the wind effect and frequent use of anomalous enemies including Cheep Cheeps, Motos and Hammer Bros. It also has very high latency, even more so than Dire Dire Docks, and arguably enough to be a gameplay hazard in itself.

Due to the large distances between ships, cannons are often used to traverse between them. After launch, Mario's trajectory is affected by the wind, which forces the player to adjust their aim from what they'd usually expect. There is also a section where one dives into the stream and has to aim for a ladder onto the next ship. Midway through the level is an unique raft object, which moves quickly forward and can be steered sideways by arrows, similar to the platform in Hazy Maze Cave. Other sections include a series of planks connecting two ships, where one must be especially wary of the wind and Cheep Cheeps, and a large ghost ship, which starts sinking as Mario steps onto it.

Near the end of the level, there is a long underwater section with the Metal Cap, which allows one to resist the current. This path contains multiple metal boxes to replenish the cap's duration, as Metal Mario's walking speed is reduced underwater. At the end, Bowser's submarine is found.

Boss
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, after which he runs towards the player in the opposite direction, 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 stomp attack in which he leaps to one end of arena, tiling it enough to forcefully send Mario sliding. Bowser then lunges upwards towards the top, and as he slides quicker than Mario, one also has to avoid him on the way down.

Defeating him requires only two hits, but is still difficult due to both the jump attack, the shape of the arena and the positioning of the bombs close to the ends. As the timer runs out, the floods cover more and more of the submarine, in turn making the battle more difficult.

Aftermath
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 how it appears and what it's effects initially seem to be, the main effect becomes certain later into the playthrough: heavily increased personalization.

Another notable occurrence is what happens when the timer reaches zero. Bowser teleports away as 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.

Star
Similar to other Bowser levels, the only other mission aside from the boss battle consists of collecting 8 red coins. The eighth red coin is initially inaccessible due to being located on top of the fin of Bowser's sub, with the Metal Cap's time limit rendering it impossible to both collect the coin and survive to collect the star. After the fight however, the submarine is raised to the surface, and it is possible to explore it's outside freely.

Difficulty Gauging
It is theorized that the player's performance in the level can heavily affect the subsequent personalization, being a kind of "hotspot" for the A.I.

The level being a bonus level means that it is playable at any time after unlocking it. How a player chooses to play it, and when, could reveal information about their playstyle in general. Players who attempt it early could be identified as challenge-seekers, players who give up may receive an easier game overall, and players who do not give up may be rewarded by the AI being more lenient on difficulty adjustment. Players who complete the level quickly may be identified as long-time players, and thus receive a greater degree of personalization to make up for this.

Due to the level's rarity, this theory is hard to confirm. However, this very rarity may actually support the theory; such a system would be very difficult to implement and would inevitably cause instability, which combined with time-crunch at the development 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
Further evidence for the above theory comes from the level's unusually high latency.

At a surface glance, this could be explained by the multiple memory-intensive submarines and ships, as well as the heavy use of special effects.. However, performing a Bob-Omb clip while wearing the Metal Cap reveals that all seacraft above water are simplified, with only the top modeled. Moreover, the large distances allow for objects unloading between sections of the level, so that only a maximum of 3 large models need to be loaded at the same time.

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, there is still 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, originating from no discernible object within the level itself. Upon warping out from either collecting the reward or drowning in the submarine, there is an unusually long loading time, and afterwards, there is a slight slowdown that persists for minutes or possibly hours.

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, with the fourth floor's highly variable nature, this is hard to substantiate. Most often it contains a relocated Bowser in the Sky, but notably, there have been reports of both a level called The Final Stretch, as well as (more dubiously) an entrance to the infamous Eternal Fort.

If this indeed were the case, the area must have been scrapped early in it's development, with only the Bowser level certainly being actually developed to an in-game state. It would then be repurposed as a hidden bonus level, and once the difficulty gauging mechanic was proposed, it would be the perfect candidate. Development of this was cut short however when the game came to a deadline, and since the still-unstable A.I. functionality was by this point too integrated with the gameplay to remove, the level was forced to be scrapped altogether.

"BitFT-Magic"
A.I. manipulation, the ability to directly execute commands in the A.I. (rather than playing the game and letting it interpret the gameplay itself) would be trendemously beneficial for future research into it.

It seems that the difficulty gauging system involves monitoring the player's actions to a high level of precision. As evidenced by the glitches, the function was also not thoroughly bug-tested. This makes BitFT the most promising place to search for a loophole that would allow for A.I. manipulation. If one were to be found there, it would likely allow a large amount of player imput immediately, which reduces the need to invent convoluted solutions to deal with limited working space.

However, such a 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 vast knowledge of the AI itself, whose workings are still mostly unknown, let alone how the level's mechanism works. Attempting such a feat could also have hitherto unforeseeable consequences, as demonstrated by the A.I. Dementia and other phenomena that appear in conjunction with (external) tampering with the game.