First he played Pow It and Living Fire, and he found the intended solutions.
It was going all right until then he tried "Often Overlooked" and "A P-redicament". I talked about "Often Overlooked" in the Beach Koopa Saga post, and he did it mostly as expected, using the pipe to clone the koopas. However, there's a part where you are supposed to use the red shell to jump to the top (Either with a shell jump, or, much easier, by spin jumping on the shell to get height). But what he did was much more clever and... I am pretty sure it's a glitch.
This is so strange and ... changes everything. It's not really a big deal in this level as the spin jump was far simpler, but I wonder how this can affect some other puzzles out there.
This inspired me to make a whole new puzzle. It requires this trick and also some extra knowledge from the Beach Koopa Saga... : BA1E-0000-00EF-245D - Grow your Koopa.
Then he tried "A P-redicament", I never explained how to solve it, but the solution is definitely not to jump from the starting point to the exit -.-
So of course this means I had to update the level to remove that unintended solution. I don't want to exterminate ALL possible unintended solutions. The existence of some of them can improve a level rather than take away from it. And a puzzle with many different solution routes is nice. But when the solution removes the focus away from what I intend, and instead turns the level into a "do this precise jump" instead of a puzzle, I have to fix it.
Spoilers:
- Really all this level is about a small mechanic: Shells that Mario kicks or throws can collect coints for him.
- The contradiction is that you need to walk on some of the lower row of that bunch of blocks in the middle. So you need some of them to be solid. You also need to some how destroy the upper row. A P is not that help here, because you'd fall.
- Hints: All the coins are hints, I want to show the player that you can grab a coin while on the row above it, if it is just 1 grid square left/right and 1 grid square lower. All you need to do is move slightly left/right to be on top of the coin without falling and it gets it. The other 16 coins are there so hopefully playing with the red Koopa while figuring things out shows you that the shell can grab coins for you.
- Diversion: The koopa is initially needed to destroy those two blocks on top, but you need to keep it for later.
- Implementation: Carefully use the koopa to destroy the wall on the top, make sure to keep the shell somehow. Go towards the thomp, which will activate the P switch. Grab the top-left coin of the bunch of blocks/coins blocking the path. Wait for P switch to end and now put the shell in that new missing corner and kick the shell. This will get rid of the top row of blocks. For the rest, you need to go towards the Thomp (The shell needs to keep bouncing while on top of the blocks as you do this) and time it so that the shell will create the proper path for you.
