System of a Downtown is the fourth course in Super Mario 74 Extreme Edition, and the first one to be located in the second overworld. The level entrance is a green painting on a white castle wall on the left side of the second overworld. The level is a mirrored remake of the System of a Town stage from Super Mario 74, with some significant changes to make the level more difficult. The level is now a literal ghost town, with a handful of Boos placed around the map. Most of the safe grassy paths in the original stage are now overrun by a quicksand swamp that will instantly drag Mario under and cause a death if he steps in it. This swamp means that just traveling around the town is a challenge, as Mario will have to make careful jumps across patches of safe ground and use skilled wall kicks to get onto the tops of the town's many buildings.
Stars[]
Star 1: Ghost Odyssee[]
If he turns left from his starting position, Mario will see a tall mansion with an open door, entirely surrounded by quicksand. He can just barely reach the entrance to this house with a long jump across the quicksand, but only flamethrowers and blue coins await him in this entrance. What he actually needs to do is find a way to get on top of the nearby buildings and use them to get into the mansion's second floor entrance, just as he did for star 1 in the original System of a Town. The intuitive way to do so is to follow the path drawn on the ground (avoiding the quicksand covering much of it) until Mario reaches a small patch of safe ground against a low wall. With a side flip and a wall kick, Mario can get on top of this wall, and from here can jump to the ledge past the wall to his left. From here, he can directly jump onto the rooftops of the house below. Alternatively, if his position and angle are good, he can skip all of that and simply long jump into the side of the third building from the starting position. With good timing, he can kick between this building and the one beside it until he lands safely on its roof. In any case, once Mario is safely on the rooftops, he can jump his way into the second floor entrance of the mansion, and defeat the Big Boo inside for a star.
Star 2: Guardian of the Village[]
This star is visible from the starting position, high above a tall wall in the distance. To collect it, Mario must follow the path along the ground until he gets on top of the ledge with the Kuromame on it, just like in the first route of the previous star. From this ledge, he must jump into the wall to his right, and wall jump off of it to angle himself into the nearby well around the corner. Though the well is drained of all water, the route through it is fairly simple: If Mario simply takes an immediate right, he'll face no obstacles and quickly reach the end, where he just has to do some wall kicks or side flips to climb the ledges out of it. Though it may seem like the area he's reached is walled off from the rest of the stage, on of the walls surrounding him is notably lower than all of the others (The one immediately right of the ledges in the well). He can jump over this wall with a triple jump, and walk straight from where he lands to the star.
Star 3: Expanded Secret Room[]
If you've played the original, then you should know where this star will be hiding, since it's based on star 4 from System of a Downtown. From the start, Mario must climb up the small pillars before him, avoiding the Chuckyas patrolling them. The area past the pillars leads him to a single house with seemingly nothing but a few Goombas, and a conspicuous texture on the ground in one corner of the house. Break the cork box hidden in the middle of this texture, and you'll enter the secret room: The ground is filled with quicksand, but there's a ledge around one side of the room that's safe to walk on, and a small hole on the opposite side of the room. The trick is to do a slide kick from the ledge into the hole (since the first bounce out of a slide kick is unaffected by quicksand) to land in the small, safe room at the far end of the hole. From this tiny room, Mario can see nothing but a medium-sized wall of quicksand he bounced over when falling down the hole. If he can manage to double jump over this wall, he'll land in another tiny room on the opposite side of it, but this room holds the star he's been searching for.
Star 4: Death Pit[]
This red coin star is very hard to combine with the 100 coin star since it involves surfing a shell over the quicksand, and collecting the 100 coin star while riding a shell will destroy that shell, leading Mario directly into the quicksand he's above. The death pit in the star's name is behind a house on the upper area of the town: Follow the path to get to where the Kuromame is, leading to the well's entrance. Then jump to the ledge to the left, and carefully wall kick your way between the sides of the two buildings here to climb on top of them. Mario will be able to see a ! Box on a nearby safe patch of ground, and a pit in the middle of the quicksand swamp to its left. He can open the ! Box to find a shell, which he'll have to use to collect the red coins in this quicksand pit, but he must be careful: It is impossible to climb back up to a higher ledge in the death pit, so if he falls down to a lower level before collecting all of the coins on the current level, death is the only option. For reference, there are:
- Three red coins on the upper level of the death pit
- Two red coins on the second level of the death pit
- Two red coins on the third level of the death pit
- One red coin on the bottom level of the death pit
If Mario safely collects them all, the star will spawn at the end of the small dead-end path at the bottom of the death pit.
Star 5: So Close and Yet so Far Away[]
If Mario looks from his starting platform to the left edge of the mansion, he'll see a star on a tiny platform, far out of reach of any kind of jump (Though due to an oversight, it is possible to reach this star with precise repeated wall kicks back and forth between the wall on the edge of the level and the outer wall of the mansion). The intended way of reaching this star is going back into the well, as in star 2. Once in the well, instead of taking the first right, Mario must go forward, and must be prepared to dodge the flamethrowers that will try to catch him offguard about halfway down this path. If he takes it slow, he'll be safe and reach the end of the tunnel. Unlike the path to star 2, there are no ledges to climb up here. There's only a tall pillar in the middle of the well exit, and Mario will have to wall kick between it and the inner wall of the well to gradually climb his way up. This exit leads to the highest ledge in the level, right behind the mansion. A long jump will get Mario onto the mansion's roof, and from there he can drop down onto this star, collecting it after traveling through the entire level.
Star 6: Hidden Coward[]
Finding this star is much harder than collecting it, but fortunately there aren't too many places left to look since Mario's already explored the majority of the level. He just has to climb up the pillars to the house holding star 3 again. Instead of breaking his way into the secret room in the house, he has to get on top of the house by wall kicking between its outer wall and the course's rock wall border. Once on top of the building, he just has to walk to the back side of it, where the star hides on a tiny patch of safe ground.
Enemies[]
- Chuckya
- Boo
- Kuromame
- Mad Piano
- Goomba
- Snufit
- Scuttlebug
- Big Boo