10 Genius Ways Video Game Developers Outsmarted You
6. The Endless Stairs Are Caused By Teleporting The Player - Super Mario 64
Any Super Mario 64 fan worth their salt will remember the infamous Endless Stairs in Princess Peach's Castle, where players without 70 Power Stars will find themselves endlessly running up a seemingly infinite flight of stairs without actually getting anywhere.
But rather than design an actual never-ending staircase, Nintendo's dev team came up with an altogether more ingenious solution, by simply building the one staircase and coding the stairs to trap the player in a teleport loop between a few steps.
The loop is seamless enough as to be totally imperceptible to players, such that for 25 years many have tried to discover sneaky ways to reach the top, such as using the famed backwards long jump glitch to basically brute force their way past the loop.