Super Mario 64 Beginner's Guide: How to Collect All 120 Power Stars

Getting Started: Controls and Camera

Before chasing a single Star, spend five minutes in the castle courtyard just moving. The analog stick governs speed as well as direction, so a light tap walks while a full push sprints, and that distinction matters the moment you need to tiptoe across a narrow beam instead of barreling off it. Practice the jump chain here too: a standing jump into a running jump into a well-timed third press triggers the triple jump, which clears gaps nothing else in your moveset can touch.

The C-buttons control Lakitu's camera, and you'll use them constantly, not just when things go wrong. Pull the camera in behind Mario before any blind jump, and when Lakitu's angle fights you in a tight corridor, don't wrestle with it. Reposition Mario first, then let the camera catch up.

• Z-targeting: holding Z while stationary centers the camera directly behind Mario, the fastest fix for a bad angle.
• R button: Mario-eye first-person view, useful for scanning a wide area for distant Stars before committing to a path.
• Long jump into a dive roll: holding Z mid-sprint and tapping A chains into the longest horizontal distance in the moveset, essential once you reach Rainbow Ride and Tick Tock Clock.

Navigating Peach's Castle

The castle itself gates content by Star count, so don't expect every painting to be open from the start. The ground floor hands you Bob-omb Battlefield, Whomp's Fortress, Jolly Roger Bay, and a handful of others immediately. Clearing enough Stars unlocks the basement, which holds a second batch of courses, and the upper floors stay sealed behind locked doors that only open once your total climbs high enough.

• 8 Stars: unlocks the basement level and its courses.
• 30 Stars: opens access to the second floor and its locked door.
• 50 Stars: the big one, granting entry to Metal-Cap Bowser's stage in the basement and most of the upper castle's remaining content.

Don't force your way through a single course for every one of its Stars before moving on. If a course is fighting you, back out, grab an easier Star somewhere else, and come back later with a clearer head.

Early Stars: Bob-omb Battlefield and Whomp's Fortress

Bob-omb Battlefield is the tutorial course in everything but name, and it's worth fully clearing before touching anything harder. Its six Stars range from a straightforward climb to the mountaintop, to a timed race against Koopa the Quick that punishes hesitation more than poor platforming. Beat Koopa once for the Star, then race him again on a return visit for a second Star tucked behind a faster time requirement.

Whomp's Fortress ramps the verticality up a notch, stacking platforms on top of each other rather than spreading them across open ground. Its boss Star, earned by ground-pounding Whomp himself off the fortress's peak, teaches the ground pound's actual combat use rather than just its block-breaking one. Treat these first two courses as your moveset crash course. Everything from here assumes you've internalized what they teach.

Mid-Game Priority Stars (the ones worth rushing)

Not every Star deserves equal priority. Once you've cleared the castle's first unlock threshold, a few specific Stars are worth chasing ahead of schedule because they make everything afterward easier.

• Wing Cap Stars: both of the castle grounds' Wing Cap Stars are short detours that teach flight controls you'll lean on in Tiny-Huge Island and Rainbow Ride later.
• Metal Cap in Hazy Maze Cave: grabbing this early turns the rest of that course's underwater sections into a non-issue, since Metal Mario sinks and walks the lake floor instead of fighting the current.
• Vanish Cap Stars: these teach the timing window for passing through cage bars and thin walls, a mechanic several late-game Stars reuse without warning.

Grabbing these out of strict course order front-loads skills you'd otherwise learn the hard way under pressure.

Boss Key Doors: What Each One Unlocks

Three Bowser fights gate the game's major progress checkpoints, and each one hands you a Key rather than a Star.

• Bowser in the Dark World (basement): defeating him drops the first Key, unlocking the door to the castle's second floor.
• Bowser in the Fire Sea (basement): his Key opens the door to the third floor and the stairway to the castle's upper reaches.
• Bowser in the Sky (top of the castle): the final fight, reachable only once your Star count clears 70, and beating him plays the ending regardless of how many Stars you're actually holding.

Each Bowser fight uses the same core trick: grab his tail with Z, then spin the stick to build momentum before releasing with A to fling him into one of the spiked mines ringing the arena. Three hits ends every one of them.

The Hardest Stars and How to Beat Them

A handful of Stars consistently stall first-time players, and knowing the trick in advance saves real frustration.

• Tick Tock Clock's "Get to the Top" Star: the course has no floor to stand on if you fall, so commit to momentum over caution and use the clock hands as moving platforms rather than waiting for them to align.
• Rainbow Ride's carpet rides: the floating carpets drift while you stand on them, so aim your jumps for where a platform will be, not where it is now.
• Wet-Dry World's "Top of the Town" Star: raising the water level to its maximum first makes the rooftop route trivial. Hit the correct switch before attempting the climb, not after.
• Any 100-coin Star on a course you've already 1-starred: these run long because they force backtracking through sections you've already cleared, so treat them as a final pass once every other Star on that course is already in hand.

100-Coin Stars: A Faster Approach

Fifteen courses each hide a Star behind a 100-coin threshold, and chasing these first is the single biggest time-waster in a completionist run. Clear a course's other Stars first. Doing so naturally routes you past most of its coins anyway, since collecting Stars means exploring the whole level rather than one narrow path through it.

When you do sit down for the 100-coin Star specifically, prioritize red coins and blue-coin switch rooms over scattered yellow coins. A single blue-coin switch can flood a room with temporary coins worth five apiece, closing out a 100-coin run in under a minute where yellow coins alone would take several passes.

Reaching 120 Stars and the Final Bowser Fight

Once your count crosses 70, the door atop the castle's central staircase opens onto Bowser in the Sky, and nothing stops you from ending the game there. Push for all 120 instead, and the castle itself hands you the last one: collecting every other Star unlocks a final Star sitting in the castle's third-floor corridor, placed there specifically as the 120th reward.

Finishing with 120 instead of 70 doesn't change the ending cutscene, but it does confirm you've wrung every secret out of a game that still rewards close attention to its rooftops, moats, and basement corners thirty years on. Take the extra hours. The game was built assuming you would.