Swap Forest is an anomalous pseudo-course found in some personalized copies of Super Mario 64. It has so far always been reported as a smaller stage, behaving similar to a Hub world. The level is described as a forested, grassy field environment that is tight and hard to navigate. The level is often found in the Mirror Room some way, either in a painting or behind the mirror. This level's defining feature is that it consistently contains some method of swapping from Mario to another Unintended Playable Character, such as Luigi or Wario.
Description[]
Swap Forest is usually a green, grassy field, similar to Bob-omb Battlefield, though with dense trees and flat terrain. Alternatively, it can appear as some kind of jungle, swamp or rainforest level, with new geographic elements such as mossy boulders, large modeled geometric trees similar to Groovy Grove and a river or lake. Regardless, the stage is considered hard to navigate and generally darker than the field variant due to it being hard to see too far because of how crowded it is.
A consistent landmark amongst all reports is an NPC of some kind standing alongside a structure you can enter. This NPC is typically unique from anything you can find in an unpersonalized copy and can reportedly appear as a pitch-black Toad, a "Shady Toad" with black spots instead of red, a black suit, sunglasses, and/or a hat of some kind (i.e. a tophat), any anomalous character such as Quin or the Prisoner, or a discolored enemy. This character always discusses the structure near them in some way.
The structure itself is usually some kind of tower or hut, but has no visible interior, as entering it will swap Mario with an Unintended Playable Character, either immediately or giving the player a "Character Select" menu to decide who to play as, and either place them back in Swap Forest, Princess Peach's Castle, or even the title screen, altered to fit the new character. If the player is removed from Swap Forest, some copies report the stage becoming unaccessible, either dissappearing entirely or disallowing the player to enter the stage.
Stars[]
The most common star that can be obtained from this level is obtained from the NPC as a reward for finding the structure, in a similar way to the secret stars given to the player by the Toads in Princess Peach's Castle. This star usually does not warp the player out of the level. Other methods of finding stars include climbing in a specific tree to make it pop out similarly to 1-Ups or the Silver Stars from Super Mario 64 DS, defeating a specific enemy or specific amount of enemies, breaking one of the boulders, or swimming to the bottom of the river/lake. Getting to the bottom of the water does not consistently require the Metal Cap. Notably, if the level cannot be accessed again, there will usually not be any extra Power Stars, but if there are the player could get locked out of obtaining every star in their copy.
Notably, several reports claim that certain Power Stars require character-specific abilities that would not be possible when playing as Mario. For example, Wario's strength would allow him to break objects such as the boulders to reveal a Power Star, or Luigi would be able to climb a tree with his higher jump-power. This appears to be a potential inspiration for several missions in Super Mario 64 DS utilizing a new character's unique abilities.
So far, Swap Forest has had 0 reports of the standard of 8 stars of a full course being accessible.
Phenomena[]
Character Swap Glitches[]
Due to the nature of the mechanic presented within this level and it's nature, several reports of the level manifesting have included some malfunction related to the playable characters. This will not include glitches related to the characters themselves, and specifically discuss the level.
- The most common of these is game crashing upon switching characters. Most reports say that upon rebooting the game, the playable character is changed, though some say they remain as Mario, and a few reports even say that they keep the model of Mario but obtain the properties of the new playable character(s). For example, Mario would obtain Luigi's higher jump and/or Yoshi's flutter jump.
- Upon rediscovering the level, if there is no "Character Select" menu, several say that entering the structure will not switch them back to Mario and they will stay as the new playable character. This is likely due to the game attempting to swap the player to the new playable character again instead of swapping back to Mario due to not updating which character it should be giving the player.
- If the level disappears upon swapping which character you are playing as, the character-specific Power Stars would become completely unobtainable. This also applies to any Power Star throughout the game that would somehow specifically require Mario, as the player would be unable to change back and collect the star(s).