I picked up a few months back and after an initial burst of “this is really fun!” I got distracted by other things for awhile. Recently I resumed my quest to collect 120 friggin’ “power stars” from the game’s “Galaxies,” and I’m down to just one remaining. And it’s a bitch (“Luigi’s Purple Coins,” in case anyone’s curious).

The challenge at hand is to collect 100 purple coins that are scattered across a range of floor tiles cleverly arranged to resemble the 8-bit version of Luigi. There are 150 coins actually present in the area, and once 100 are collected, the star you’re trying to earn appears at your starting point for that area. Sounds like a cakewalk, right?

Bzzzt. Every single piece of the floor is comprised of one of two types of tile: the first type starts slowly flipping/rotating around its horizontal axis once you step on it. It never stops moving once it starts. The second type shrinks and vanishes a few seconds after you step on it. It never reappears. The frame that supports these tiles won’t support your character’s weight; you’ll just fall through if you try. You can’t stay on the rotating sections for long because they’ll just dump you through the floor, and the vanishing sections, well, vanish.

There’s only one path to and from the starting point (remember how the star appears here when you’ve collected 100 coins? Yeah — you get to come back to the starting point, now with a bunch of the floor either missing or rotating). Many of the coins are positioned over “dark matter” puddles (you die if you touch it) or simply floating over nothing (you can jump out to claim them, but you have to hope a quick mid-air spin can bring you back to a more stable perch). It’s an exercise in hair-pulling frustration. Adding insult to injury is a timer: three minutes to collect them all. Amusingly, unless you stand on the block where you start, you can’t actually run out the clock while actively trying to collect coins; you’ll either fall through the floor or collect enough to win, simply because you can’t stand still once you leave the starting block.

The biggest punchline? It’s not over yet. When I collect this final star, bringing the count to a total of 120 of them, there’s much left to do. You can “win” the game by collecting 70 stars and then fighting the final boss. The end credits roll and everything. Even after you do so, the game will still permit you to keep playing. In fact, some of the hidden stars aren’t even accessible until you’ve beaten the final boss battle at least once. If you do beat the final boss when you have 120 stars, another playable character (Luigi) is unlocked, and you then get the joyous privilege of running through the whole game again, collecting all 120 stars as Luigi, for a grand total of 240.

Once you’ve done that, you fight the final boss again with Luigi, and finally a “Grand Finale Galaxy” is unlocked, wherein you go on another purple coin collection run. Apparently the game throws you a bone, though — that final galaxy is supposedly a quick and easy tour of the opening area of the game, with no actual challenges or difficulties. It’s supposed to be easy; a simple “last” star. 241 of the damned things, and I’ve only gotten 119 of them so far.

Whimper.

Technorati Tags: Gaming Silly