This is what we've come to, folks: a guy made a ten minute long video so he could complain about the placement of a power-up in a video game that's nearly three decades old. I would act like I'm surprised but I'm really not. This is it. This is the singularity of culture and intelligence that engulfs our kind. This, right here. We have created a society that cultivates behavior like this because it values money and capital so highly that it breeds media content so utterly vapid and mundane that it could be considered harmful to the prolonging of our species. I wish nothing but the worst upon anyone that encourages or seeks out this deviant content and I only hope that they be granted mercy by whichever higher power oversees us.

*_Man made a whole 10min video because he doesn't like a box in a certain place_*

The Metal Cap was actually the most useful powerup. To know why, you have to think outside of the box. Back in the late 90s, when 3D gaming was still a novelty, SM64 was groundbreaking. The Metal Cap, with its reflective surface, was more than just a power-up; it was a showcase of the graphical capabilities of the Nintendo 64. Those commercials and magazine spreads featuring Mario in his metallic form weren't just about gameplay; they were about selling an experience, showcasing the leap forward in gaming technology. This is the real reason why it was in the game. In many ways, the Metal Cap was a symbol of innovation and advancement. It wasn't just about making Mario impervious to damage; it was about demonstrating what the N64 was capable of delivering visually. The shimmering, metallic Mario caught the eyes of gamers and non-gamers alike, driving curiosity and ultimately sales for the console. So, while in the game it might not have seemed as useful as other power-ups, its impact on the gaming landscape and its role in marketing Super Mario 64 and the Nintendo 64 cannot be understated.

I'd argue the flying power up from Galaxy was more useless because you can only use it at the observatory, and have to beat the game to even get it.

7:00 The reason the metal cap is there is if you read accompanying sign right next to it, it says. "There are special Caps in the red, green, and blue blocks. Step on the switches in the hidden courses to activate the Cap Blocks" Its meant to act as a tutorial example to show you there are more then just red cap boxes and that they can be unlocked if you have not encountered any others by this point. Because at this point the only other cap you seen is the red block sitting off to the side of the ramp down the road of bomb omb battlefields start and your left wondering what that is but cant do anything with it. And then you go to womps fortress after doing some stars making this usually the 2nd box you can encounter now with a sign to aid in elaborating why there are these boxes around and why there locked out. And they went with green because its the most useful for this area as blue is not all that useful here either but also its unlocked last, if it was red there is a real possibility you could unlock the red cap before encountering this sign making the sign make no sense as you would unlock the box before getting the tutorial about the boxes and how to unlock them which is possible if it was the wing cap. Its also to show you unlocking the caps for levels while not required can help future traversal for when you do unlock it if for some reason your having trouble.

I want to give an argument that there's some obscure mario game no ones heard of that has an even more worthless power up... but if such a thing exist I cannot recall it.

As a big Metal Mario fan, I am quite *flabbergasted* at this video.

It's kind of surprising that some rom hacks make far more use of the metal cap than Nintendo did. One unique aspect of it compared to the other caps is the fact that you don't take damage when you fall in lava, so what some rom hacks did was make a platforming challenge where you'd need a metal cap to "climb" up a lavafall.

The one at the beginning of Hazy Maze Cave... uhh, doesn't the metal cap protect you from those fire jets?

Zoomers born after Mario 64's release really need to stop talking about it as they have literally 0 understanding about gaming as a whole at the time. 3D Environments were still relatively new at the time, especially in the home setting. The Metal Cap exists to remove difficulty for people navigating 3D space, especially for non-gamers who may be playing videogames as a whole for the first time. The one in Whomps Fortress exists to remove the difficulty of the falling Thwomps and the Bowser in the Dark World was there to help get the red coins from the fire shooter, the Hazy Maze Cave one at the start is to make bypassing the fire pit. They're also a continuation of the Switch Palaces from Mario World which existed solely to make small areas easier and provide more Power Ups for players.

As a kid that struggled with basic video game controls back then, I died to the Piranhas in Whomp's multiple times. I guess the Metal Cap might've been intended just to easily defeat the two Piranhas that come up right after climbing the Thwomp staircase

it was put there by devs to spark curiosity in new players. seeing a strange green box you cant interact with would lead you to believe theres something to be unlocked, and push you to continue playing. this isn't Chekhov's gun, just because it was put in a game doesn't mean it requires an explicit purpose.

You have to remember the expected skill level the devs anticipated with players on this very primative 3d game. The developers did not intend or think you could fight the jet streams with good pace tapping to get those stars, or think the Metal Cap Courae red coins could be gotten without the caps, or even if they did, they didn't anticipate many players doing that and kept it as a shortcut for players with skill like the warp zones in SMB1. For the Bowser, Hazy Maze entrance and Whomp's Fortress metal caps it seems like these were put in place as conviniences to help after you acquired them. Perhaps they didn't anticipate how easy timing and angling your jumps could be at a time when nobody had 3d game experience, so barreling through the fire from the HMC pits or the red coin guarded by a flamethrower in Bowser could be an easier option for someone who already got fsr enough in the game to unlock Metal Cap. Again, think of what they expected at the time. I doubt they considered kicking up a slope to work and the side flip required to get to the water in Whomp's was harder to perform than they thought, otherwise they wouldn't have those platforms with faces on them acting like they are an obsticle. Hell, Super Mario World did the same with the Switch Blocks, sometimes in a level you will see block outlines for a switch you don't get to later in the game. You already beat it once, it's probably made to make being stuck at the bottom of that hill to make revisits easier. Or at the very least to show the player that the game that there is a green switch to find.

The Tanooki Suit is an EXTREMELY useful powerup it can straight up kill "unkillable" enemies and one-shots bosses.

I mean... this is basically just an invincibility powerup. As far as useless go, it's not as different than other invincibility powerups in the mario games.

I mean the point of it is pretty clearly "you get to revisit stages and be more powerful than on your first visit", despite the very minimal effect that it has here.

This has some "you don't need healing if you never get hit" energy.

This kinda doesn't make sense. It's like saying mushrooms in the original SMB are useless because you can *technically* beat the whole game without taking damage or breaking any blocks. You can, it's just gonna suck. Like... You CAN get all those red coins without the cap, and you can get through the poison gas, but it's gonna suck.

I used to think you needed the metal cap to do Mario Blasts away the wall. took me 10 years to realise you don't need it.

>guys this powerup is USELESS! every example is circumventing the main way of using the powerup to get the star

My guess is the Metal cap was supposed to allow you to destroy every enemies in one shot, but due to technical difficulties, they programmed the Thwump as a moving wall, not as an enemy. Since it's a wall, it can't be destroyed, but since the box was placed in early developpment, they did not bother to remove it. It can even explain why the box is not unlocked yet, maybe the box needing to be unlocked was added after the box was placed in the level.

Formula for this video: 1. Mention a particular metal cap and claim it is useless. 2. Proceed to contradict yourself and share a use for the cap. But hey, it doesn't matter as long as people comment on the video, right?

Saying propeller mushroom isn’t fun to use is like saying the fire flower isn’t useful

I think they just put the metal cap blocks early on to provide intrigue, you don't get the metal cap until MUCH later, and it's arguably the most hidden cap switch -- so, a new player is going to be constantly wondering "when do I unlock this powerup?".

Its purpose is to go up the staircase while jamming out to the metal mario theme, clearly.

⁠I’d argue Yoshi’s power flower ability is even more useless. What it does is give Yoshi the ability to shoot 3 fire breaths. However not only is there like 2 areas that this would be useful in (Cool Cool Mountain which has a red coin in an ice block and same thing in Snowman’s Land but with a star this time) but you could just lick a campfire to get one fire breath (which is all you’ll need for both of them). Speaking of the CCM one it literally has a campfire right next to the red coin). I didn’t even realize I didn’t even use Yoshi’s ability till long after I completed the game.

In my 27 years of playing SM64, i have never once bothered to pick up the Whomp’s Fortress metal cap

You have to remember that this would've been the first 3D platformer most people in 1996 would've seen, EVER, and therefore you had to expect feats of stupidity on the players' part that are basically inconceivable nowadays. I remember some of those scenarios that you, rightly, think sound contrived, commonly happening in normal gameplay when watching kids play in 1997. You'd be unable to get that red coin in the first Bowser level because you kept getting burned by the fire, and so you'd skip the red coin star until you unlocked the metal cap. This is something I both saw and suffered myself (when I finally got the game in 1998) because this was baby's first video game for a LOT of people. It's hard to conceive of people being that bad at video games, because it's difficult to remember the sheer extent this game had to basically literally rewire people's brains. It couldn't even assume you'd acquire better gaming skills from playing something else, because when it was released, it couldn't even guarantee its ideas about how to move a character in a 3D world would catch on as much as they actually did. It was one of a kind, and HAD to instill the basic skillset needed to play the game into its audience. It also seems designed around being 100%-able for someone whose brain needed to be rewired from the ground up. There's that Mario themed Got Milk? commercial where a couple kids can't make an incredibly simple jump and that's honestly barely an exaggeration of what it was like when this game came out.

When I was a kid I thought it was fun to squish Metal Mario over and over again. Thanks random Nintendo guy.

I love how all his arguments against the metal cap are "you don't need this if you're good at the game or know speedrun strats" I should go back and tell ten-year-old me to just get good

I think it's in Whomp's Fortress to give the player a sense of mystery, like "Hey, I need to find the Green Switch Palace".

7:02 The incentive was likely that they wanted to reward players by having a way of making part of the level easier. This was the very early days of 3D. Not to mention they also intended players to move about the different levels and allow for players to acquire more stars in a previous stage if they needed or wanted to do so. They likely wanted the Metal Cap in that specific spot so that players could nullify damage from Thwomps for a short time and safely deal with the two Piranha Plants.

There's actually a pretty good reason for the location of the metal caps in Whomp's Fortress, Bowser in the Dark World and the start of Hazy Maze Cave. The caps in Whomp's Fortress & Bowser in the Dark World are placed before the player can posably unlock metal cap to tease to the player that there is something that can be unlocked. This helps to plant the idea in the mind of a first time player that they should not just be completing objectives for stars, but exploring and looking for secrets. The cap block at the beginning of Hazy Maze Cave, along with the metallic-pool level entrance, is a hint that the green switch in that level, and and a clear indicater to the player as soon as they enter the level whether they have or have not found it yet. Yes, in isolation these cap placements have little/no practical use in the levels/locations where they are found, but from the game design perspective of guiding a first time player to explore and find the metal cap so it can be used in other levels they are far from useless.

Super Mario 3D World Goomba Mask, though?

if your argument for it being useles is “using tricks i can avoid using it”, then all caps are useless except for the flying cap in one star (there’s a pannenkoek video about it).

Doesn't vanish cap make you intangible, not invisible ?

I think it's easy for us all here in the future to laugh at how bad you'd have to be to need these power ups, but I imagine some nervous developers making the first ever 3D game on a new system with a new controller expecting players to be exactly as bad as described. Cuz I agree it's useless, and the only way to justify it is to imagine a level designer going, "they're gonna suck, give them something shiny."

How is the propeller mushroom not fun???

Yes, actually! The metal cap in WF has a use in the real time attack A button challenge, or RTABC. By breaking it open and having the cap get stuck against the wall, we can break open a second cap to get hat in hand, which allows us to pick up objects without modifying the stored variable for where a held object should appear when you release it. This allows us to grab a cork box on the same frame that it unloads so that we're holding a vacant object slot, where a falling platform object can load into its place. If we then throw that object to a specific location while we're standing on it, it will displace us high into the air, allowing us to collect the star from king whomp and the star on top of the fortress without pressing the A button. Clearly this was the dev's intended use for this metal cap.

I like how there's simultaneously tons of things and nothing to analyze in the Super Mario series.

Your perception and analysis of the game is made with way too modern of an approach. You should view the game as it was back then and how they might've thought to set up the world and wonder, not judge it with what we know now with a purely practical view.

This is one of the first 3d platformers. The metal cap is to help you clear the level easier. Nintendo thought about the casual gamers and gave them an easier way to play. This was at the time where video games started taking off and it makes sense to cater towards a wider audience. EDIT: Also, the metal Mario music is literally the same music you get whenever you pick up a star

if they REALLY wanted to sell the "Metal Cap = Heavy" bit, and since Metal Mario still takes Fall Damage, youd think theyd INCREASE the amount of damage taken from falls (like, "one-chunk" falls take Two, "two-chunk" falls take Three, etc)

Nintendo removed the metal cap in whomp's fortress in Super Mario 64 DS, which suggests they too thought it served no purpose.

What are you talking about? This hat clearly exists so that you can use the hat-in-hand glitch for the A Button Challenge to collect To the Top of the Fortress 0xA.

I mean you can get all those stars without the metal cap but you can also beat any mario 3 stage without any of the powers in that game. So you know.

The whomp's fortress metal cap is even more useless since in one corner of that section of the level is a warp to the tall pole, past the thwomps and rotating platform.

SM64DS had the flower that turns you into a balloon that's arguably pretty useless but it might've been used as a part of a puzzle at some point of the game...

Well there's one thing the Metal Cap has going for it, it doesn't control horribly like the Wing Cap

I went my whole life not knowing it made Mario take no damage.

the only thing i learned from this video was that i can have both metal and invisible caps activated at the same time.

Does the Spring Mushroom from Galaxy 2 count as one of useless power-ups

It may be the most useless power-up in Mario, but at least it makes for an interesting character if Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart are anything to go by.

Can we just appreciate that this guy still makes 4:3 videos in 2024

it obviously can't be the worst powerup since it has a kickass tune and who wouldn't want that? beats whatever gimmick invisibility is supposed to be any day

If you asked me if there was a metal cap box in that stage I would say a big fat no.

We need a new speedrun category: whomp metal% speedrun through the game until you are able to use the metal cap in whomps fortress, timer starts when you gain control of Mario at the start of the game, and ends with you getting crushed by the nearby Thwomp with the metal cap equipped.

“The propeller mushroom from New Super Mario Bros Wii isn’t fun to use. At all.” Imagine meeting the doctor who’s going to be performing open heart surgery on you tomorrow, and the first thing he tells you is that he never graduated high school.

Grab the owl before the power up wears off.

I wasn't even aware there was a metal cap there...

The A Button Challenge: Hold my HOLP placement

“Metal Cap is the most useless cap.” Invisible Cap: “Am I not a joke to you?”

As a kid, my brother and I used the metal caps in Hazy Maze Cave to kill the bats constantly. They were a _godsend_ because we’d never played a 3D video game before and our depth perception just _could not_ target the bats correctly. It was easier to let them slam self-destructively into Metal Mario. I always assumed they were put there as a nicety to people playing 3D games for the first time.

It’s not useless for the fact that it has BANGER music 😂

In sm64ds, this is replaced with a mega mushroom instead to let you rampage across the stage and actually break the thwomps

The Tanooki suit not only makes Mario invincible for a short second, it can even take out various enemies you couldn't before, you can even destroy the light circles, and the flamethrowers

The Hazy Maze Cave underwater switch is extremely difficult to get without the Metal Cap and yeah, KZfaq didn't exist back then.

"Greatest game of all time" I just don't agree.

I will not take this Propeller Shroom slander

If we were to include powerups from the spinoffs; Mario Kart Wii's Thunder Cloud is an outright detriment, Blooper is only effective on the AI by slowing down their top speed and making them worse at driving, and Mario Kart 8's Coin "power-up" being an annoyance to deal with at higher positions.

As a fan of the metal cap from Mario 64 I have to admit, you make a very good argument for its more useless nature

You also don't need the propeller suit "if you know what you're doing."

Metal cap allows breathing under water and allows walking under water because everybody hates swimming.

This video gives me a feeling of the old days of KZfaq

I gotta be honest with you, I totally forgot the metal cap was even in WF. It looks so out of place, like someone modded it in.😂😂😂

If I had to guess, you could use the WF Metal Cap to get a safe kill on the Piranha Plant at the top of the stairs

Personally, I'd say the most useless Mario power up is the Red Star from Super Mario Galaxy. It's an awesome power up, but it's only used in one level and the hub world. And even then, its only actual utility which can't be accomplished otherwise is collecting 30 of the purple coins in Gateway Galaxy (which any other level would use a Launch Star to access) and two 1-Up mushrooms in the Comet Observatory. The Red Star would be an extremely useful power up if it appeared more often, but as it is, there's practically no reason for it to exist.

I think the lobby green blocks are more to intrigue new players: "What's in that green block?"

What the hell do you mean the propeller suit isn’t fun?

That stretched out overly specific justification for the one in Bowser in the Dark World describes my first playthrough perfectly lol.

Y'know I always wondered why Bowser in the Dark World needed a metal cap....

6:10 You have no idea how many people get burned trying to get that red coin.

I just think it's interesting to see something I never bothered thinking of get explained.

I like how this video is like "this is useless" Oh but here's what you could use this useless thing for in every level that it's in"

The placement of that metal cap did get me to slow down to find out if there was something I was missing in that particular spot of Whomp's Fortress. Turns out there's a warp in one of the corners there, and I think it might be placed in the corner the metal cap is in (it's been a while since I played SM64, so I don't remember where it is exactly; but, it is in a corner). The warp places you directly above the star you normally side flip and wall kick up to above the blue coin switch part of the level. Which... I guess is useful if you don't wanna traverse up there the normal way, but it doesn't really require the metal cap either because the whomps up there are also easy to avoid getting squished by. But there are 3 enemies (thwomps, whomps, and piranha plants) that you can avoid taking damage by entirely with the use of that metal cap at least. Potentially 4 if you waited to defeat the boss whomp until after you got the metal cap. Even if not, maybe it could help you not take damage from a single bullet bill before it expires? So it does have its uses, just none of them are really practical.

This video is showing it's younger age compared to the age of the game. The thing is people were fascinated and struggling in the courtyard when mario64 was new. The metal cap in bowser and the dark world was in strategy guides and people legitimately found it helpful because navigating in a 3D space was completely alien to everyone at the time. By modern standards you can scoff and go "baby's first video game?" to some of these placements but honestly even if they only SORT OF block one fire torch, that was useful to someone at some point. Me personally I just pick it up for the rockin' tune though. Getting squished by the thwomps really was a thing, I remember my dad crawling past the pirhana plant past the thwomps at the fortress and being gated by the simple spinning bridge puzzle after. You gotta remember this game pioneered so much of the 3D space.

6:56 you are welcome.

he said just like this video and then the like button did the rainbow thingy, youtube fix your buggy... um... youtube... fix?

I didn't think you could prove that the metal cap was so useless. Not only did you prove it but you completely and utterly proved it 😂

I love how it takes 2 1/2 minutes for you reveal what the most useless power-up is when you already showed us what it is in the thumbnail.

Blue doesn't really make you invisible. It makes you intangible.

Metal cap is shown off in safe areas or they wanted to show 'look we made him immune to this damage'.

I will NOT be taking this propeller mushroom slander

the Hudson Soft Bee, or Hachisuke, from SMB Special. It is only found in 1-1, and all it does is give you 8000 points.

Balloon Mario power up is so bad he’s not talking about it

I barely even remember that the metal cap is in Whomp's Fortress because I've fully completed that stage long before I'm ever hitting the green switch in every playthrough I've done in recent memory

Meal Mario theme in smash Bros with the sound of those footsteps are stuck in my brain

A very simple reason why there is a metal cap in whomp fortress could simply be it initialy had an use in the level, but at some poitn in the developpment they cut off the that need, and simply left the cap as it is. There is also an other reason. So far the lien of reasoning of this video was "how useful can the cap be ?". But I think we have to take a game design approach. The reason could simply be "exposure and teasing" You start bomb omb field you see a transparent box, you start JRB you see a transparent box, you start whomp fortress you'll likely see a transparent box....and mostly you start bowser in the dark world you'll see a transparent box. If you've never played SM64 it gotta make you sratch your head what are thoses boxes, it's a bait to hook the player.

If we're going to bring up unintended maneuvers; at least one of which requires some mastery of the controls and physics to be able to bypass something that otherwise would normally require a metal cap, then we can bring up its usage in A button challenges. Not to mention granting invincibility for much less forgiving unofficial levels.

I think the box is specifically near the thwomps to demonstrate that you can’t get damaged from being crushed with the metal cap.