Waluigi’s Taco Stand

Waluigi’s Taco Stand is a hack of Super Mario 64 made by Kaze Emanuar released on 11 August 2018. It’s a game where you have to make tacos for a variety of Mushroom Kingdom residents.

You can get the ROM patch from its download page by using the password waaaaaaaahluigi or from mario64hacks and apply it to a Super Mario 64 ROM called Super Mario 64 (U) [!].z64 using Flips.

About Waluigi’s Taco Stand’s history

This is a hack with a little bit of history. Since 2002, there have been rumours of a game called Waluigi’s Taco Stand circulating around the internet. It has since become a meme with people posting fake reviews and articles and just having a laugh in general. Nobody really took it too seriously like the L is Real hoax, but it was a somewhat obscure part of the Super Mario 64 online culture.

Then in 2018, a couple of mysterious videos were posted by Kaze of what appeared to be an actual version of Waluigi’s Taco Stand:

These were of course made by Kaze himself as part of a joke to hype the release of his new ROM hack.

The game itself

The story of Waluigi’s Taco Stand is basically that Waluigi lost all his money gambling so his landlord comes around and offers him a job at his taco stand to make ends meet.

The gameplay consists of clients coming to the taco stand and requesting a taco made of specific ingredients. Waluigi then needs to memorise the order and go on to find the ingredients.

The various ingredients are found on four different stages, which I named after the taco rank required to visit them:

• Taco Amateur (Bob-omb Battlefield)
  • Beef (goombas)
  • Cheese (outside the mouse hole)
  • Lettuce (field)
  • Tomato (field)
  • Mushrooms (near Chain Chomp)
• Taco Enthusiast (Jolly Roger Lagoon)
  • Fish (swimming in the water)
  • Cheese (kick a mouse)
  • Garlic (atop the tower)
  • Coconuts (by the trees)
  • Beef (goombas)
• Taco Connoiseur (Hazy Maze Cave)
  • Lettuce (field)
  • Cheese (outside the mouse hole)
  • Beef (goombas)
  • Tomato (field)
  • Cactus (pokeys)
  • Chicken (Klepto)
• Taco Professor
  • Spiderlegs (skeeters on the wall islands)
  • Beef (goombas on the crescent islands)
  • Spicey Sauce (atop the volcanos)
  • Eyeballs (Mr. I on the circle islands)
  • Bully Horns (bullies on the dumbell island)
• Taco King
  • Ending (no level)

Once you’ve collected at least one of each of the requested ingredients (and no non-requested ones), you can exit the stage and move on to the next order.

Review and conclusion

Waluigi’s Taco Stand is one of the simpler Super Mario 64 hacks to play though given that there are no pits and enemies don’t cause any damage. The first and second level are very simple, they have pretty much zero obstacles besides a few cliffs to scale. The third one is the hardest since there are a lot of ingredients that require reaching the top of the mountain, particularly the chicken which relies on the wing cap and its timer. The last level would be very difficult because traversing the islands on metallic Dorrie is almost impossible due to how slippery she is. Fortunately, you can just burn your butt on the lava all the way through.

There are a few glitches that make the game a bit unpleasant. The wing cap in level 3 has about a 50% chance to freeze the game and crash the system. The earlier levels can’t be exited until you frolick around for about 5 minutes. And that dang Dorrie, either impossible to get on or constantly in the way.

That said, Waluigi’s Taco Stand is a fun game that can be completed within an hour. It does save after every stage so even if you do get a crash, you can just load it back up again from where you left off. I always love when this amount of effort is put into pretty much just making a joke.