Rennenhoek1991

Template:Lowercase title Alex Rennen known online as rennenhoek1991, often shortened to rennenhoek is a Super Mario 64 analyst and YouTube personality. rennenhoek1991 is known for creating highly technical videos detailing the mechanics of Super Mario 64, in which he explains techniques he uses to beat levels of the game while completing various self-imposed challenges such as not using certain buttons, such as the B button, the C-left button or even the joystick when completing objectives in the game. He is best known for his work on the "A-Button Challenge", which aims to fully complete the game while pressing the A button the fewest number of times possible as a proof of concept. This is a significant task, as the A-button is primarily used for jumping, which is integral to platform games like Super Mario 64, and a normal run-through of the game can be expected to take hundreds of A-presses.

In 2014, he received media attention for collecting a coin, known as "The Blood Coin", previously thought unobtainable in the level "Big Boo's Haunt". In 2015, he offered a US$1 bounty for anyone who could recreate the specific way Dota_Teabag became very high, which as of 2023 has yet to be claimed, as no one has been able to figure out the key ingredients for getting high.

Super Mario 64 videos

Super Mario 64 was the first video game rennenhoek1991 played as a child. In 2013, while still in college, where he majored in computer science, rennenhoek1991 started uploading videos of him reaching Super Mario 64 objectives without jumping, to his rennenhoek1991 YouTube channel. Though Mario's primary skill is considered to be jumping from platform to platform, rennenhoek1991 attempted to clear the entirety of Super Mario 64—without pressing the A-button (the jump button)—by using the game's environmental hazards and various glitches.

rennenhoek1991 has produced a large number of in-depth YouTube videos deconstructing the mechanics of Super Mario 64, which have been described as esoteric "programming lessons". In one video, rennenhoek1991 explains how a player can manipulate the random number generator of Super Mario 64 by kicking up dust in a certain way. Despite the highly technical nature of these videos, he regularly amasses hundreds of thousands of views on his main channel by making them digestible to the layperson.

He also operates a second channel, UncommentatedRennen, where he uploads raw footage without commentary. He does not upload videos to his main channel if they fail to meet the high standards he has set for it.

A-Button Challenge

A closeup of a Nintendo 64 controller showing the with the A button removed, to help rennenhoek1991 in his challenge to avoid pressing it.

The bulk of rennenhoek1991's videos focus on the "A-Button Challenge", which aims to fully complete Super Mario 64 while pressing the A button as few times as possible. This is significant because the A button, which makes Mario jump, is one of the fundamental game mechanics of Super Mario 64, a game that has been described as "about jumping". In one video, rennenhoek1991 showed that he was able to collect the "Mario Wings to the Sky" objective without pressing the A button by exploiting glitches that enabled him to "clone" a large amount of Goombas to form a ladder. This took two years of planning to achieve and the video took 55 hours to make.

On January 12, 2016, rennenhoek1991 uploaded a commentated video in which he explained how to complete the "Watch for Rolling Rocks" objective in 0.5 A-presses. This strategy originally took 14.8 hours in-game from start to finish, most of which were spent using a glitch to accelerate Mario to the speeds necessary for the "parallel universe" movement (millions of units per second), but was reduced to 5.4 hours in 2017. The video became widely spoofed online for its highly-technical terminology, especially his "half A-press" notation (not using the entire utility of the press by beginning the level with the A button held down) and his use of "parallel universes" (a collision glitch caused by integer overflow) In August 2013, when rennenhoek1991 began working on the A-Button Challenge, 211 A-presses were required to complete Super Mario 64. As of February 2023, a 120-star playthrough of Super Mario 64 can be completed in as few as 13 A-presses.

Impossible coins

In June 2014, rennenhoek1991 collected what was known as "the Blood Coin", an item hidden in the "Big Boo's Haunt" level of Super Mario 64 that was deemed impossible to reach. In 2002, the coin was discovered by a GameFAQs Super Mario 64 message board member named Josiah. The coin was placed out of bounds near the shed, likely by one of the game's developers by accident. Considered unobtainable, rennenhoek1991 managed to collect it by performing a BLJ on the nearby elevator. rennenhoek1991 noted that it should be possible to collect the coin without tool assistance, but he added that doing so would be highly difficult and require a lot of practice.

In the Super Mario 64 level "Bowser in the Sky", rennenhoek1991 discovered a misplaced Goomba located at the bottom of the level, which he dubbed the "Mystery Goomba". Since Goombas drop a coin once killed, and the enemy currently seems to be impossible to kill, he called the Mystery Goomba's held coin the "new" impossible coin In October 2016, rennenhoek1991 discovered another impossible coin in the stage "Tiny-Huge Island". The enlarged version of the course was found to have a line of four coins, even though all other lines of coins in Super Mario 64 contain five coins. He showed that there was a fifth coin that activates a failsafe that no other coin in the game activates, causing it to be immediately removed from play, leaving only four coins in the line.

Other videos

In September 2013, Twitch Streamer DOTA_TeaBag encountered a glitch in the Super Mario 64 level "Tick Tock Clock" where he suddenly became very high for seemingly no reason. The incident, as it is described, caught rennenhoek1991's attention, as finding out how he became very high was of great interest. rennenhoek1991 offered a US$1 prize to anyone who could figure out how to replicate the incident. The bounty has not been successfully claimed, as no one has been able to figure out the key ingredients for getting high.

rennenhoek1991 started working on a video detailing the workings of Super Mario 64's geometry in summer 2016. He eventually finished this video in May 2017, releasing it under the title "Walls, Floors, & Ceilings". The video details how Mario's movement is measured in the game – which varies depending on whether Mario is located on the ground, in the air, or in water – and how the character interacts with the hitboxes of objects along the way. rennenhoek1991 noted that he considers the information in this video "extremely important", as he has been using this information to help him execute or dismiss strategies for years. Gamasutra described this video as a "passionate delve into the most granular details of level design". Since then rennenhoek1991 has released two more videos on this subject, titled "Walls, Floors, & Ceilings Part 2" and "Walls, Floors, & Ceilings Part 3", respectively. These videos contain more in-depth analysis of how the mechanics of hitboxes work.

In March 2019, rennenhoek1991 uploaded a large number of "No Joystick Allowed" videos in which he completes levels in Super Mario 64 without moving Mario with the controller's analog stick.