Nintendo updated Super Mario Odyssey with new, free content yesterday. This introduced the Balloon World online mode that enables players to have fun with an asynchronous hide-and-seek mode. Players can either hide a balloon and earn coins as other players take turns failing to retrieve it, or they can try to find other players’ balloons before the timer runs out.
This is a fun end-game mode that enables players to use their knowledge of the level maps and how to control Mario to earn a lot of extra coins. You can then use that in-game currency to unlock new costumes or moons. But this mode has also exposed some of Super Mario Odyssey’s seams because players are using glitches to hide balloons out-of-bounds.
For example, here is one in the Mushroom Kingdom level:
Are people using OOB glitches in Balloon World? #SuperMarioOdyssey #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/wH0nfmU6MR
— Jeffrey Grubb (@JeffGrubb) February 23, 2018
Other players have noticed balloons hidden in this wall, and they are talking about it on Super Mario Odyssey forums.
To get this balloon, you’d have to empty out the pond by pulling the four stoppers, and then you’d have to perform some precise movements with Mario to get him to slide through the geometry. For this wall, you’d need to ground pound into a roll toward the wall. As Mario first touches the wall, you need to press Y and B at the same time to throw your hat and to exit the roll simultaneously. This should put Mario inside of the wall.
That’s not impossible to do, but this favors the hider. If you are seeking, you have to wager your coins. So you could easily run out of money before you succeed at this challenge. The hider doesn’t have to risk anything, and they can try as many times as they want without losing any coins. And the more people who fail at your balloon, the more coins you get — so the game encourages this kind of cheating.
Finally, when you go to seek balloons, the highest-risk/highest-reward missions are these kinds of nearly impossible balloons. But you can’t see if they are using a glitch or not until after you pay. And even then, you may have to pay a couple of times to understand that a particular balloon is impossible unless you understand how the glitches work.
Thankfully, this is just a distraction, but I hope Nintendo addresses this mode — because it’s one that I want to use to earn the coins I need to get to 999 moons and 100-percent the game.
