Big Penguin Race

Big Penguin Race is the third mission of Cool, Cool Mountain in Super Mario 64 and its remake, Super Mario 64 DS. Its objective is to race the Big Penguin down the interior slide, and in the Nintendo 64 version, it can be attempted only after the player completes the first mission.

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Inside the cottage from the first mission is the Big Penguin. When approached, he claims to be the world-champion sledder and challenges the player to a race to the end of the slide. If the player accepts, he immediately turns around and starts to belly-slide down, starting the race. If the player takes any kind of shortcut, which includes both skipping part of the course by jumping down and taking the hidden path inside the wall, the Big Penguin tells them that they cheated, disqualifying them from the race. Once the player wins the race legitimately, the Big Penguin congratulates them for breaking his record and gives them a Power Star as a reward.

The game uses two methods to detect cheating. One of them is an invisible trigger placed inside the hidden path. This trigger remains active even after the race finishes, so if the player uses Jump Kicks to ascend back up the slide and go through the hidden path, the Big Penguin accuses Mario of cheating. The other method is a timer that increments whenever Mario is airborne but resets when he lands. If Mario remains airborne for two seconds during the race, the game determines that the player must have skipped part of the slide and considers them to have cheated. This allows the player to perform a skip by sliding off to the right on the turn immediately before the hidden path; since it takes less than two seconds of airtime to perform this shortcut, the Big Penguin does not accuse Mario of cheating. This method remains active until the Big Penguin finishes the race, so if the player performs a Wall Kick and Pound the Ground attack past the finish line to extend Mario's airtime past two seconds before the Big Penguin finishes, he accuses Mario of cheating. In the DS version, if Luigi uses his Backward Somersault, that is also considered cheating.

After the player collects all 120 Power Stars in Super Mario 64 or all 150 Power Stars in Super Mario 64 DS, they can go back to the Big Penguin to find that he has become massive and more difficult to beat due to being "out of shape." There is no reward for winning the race again except for further praise.