Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! For many people of my generation, Super Mario 64 was our first encounter with 3D platforming. For people who've played, like, any 3D game before, King Bob-omb is a trivial challenge, but that wasn't the case for everyone in the '90s. As it turns out, those of us still figuring out the whole "analog stick" thing had a secret defense against King Bob-omb's attacks this whole time. "In Super Mario 64, it is actually possible to escape from the grasp of King Bob-omb or a Chuckya after they grab Mario, by whipping the Control Stick back and forth and mashing the A button a combined total of 11 times before they throw him," Mario trivia hound Supper Mario Broth reports on Bluesky. Attached is a video demonstrating the technique, and yeah, it sure seems to work! The idea of mashing buttons to escape a grab sounds obvious in hindsight, but the obvious answers aren't always that apparent when you're a literal child. Maybe I did flick the control stick enough to escape King Bob-omb's clutches when I was nine, but Chuckyas – a late-game enemy with a similar grab attack – still strike a level of paranoid fear in my heart that suggests I never managed to break free of their grasp. New speedrun discovery "will change Super Mario 64 forever" by making "one of the hardest tricks in the entire game" completely trivial to pull off Super Mario 64 speedrunner sets wild new world record following groundbreaking hack: beating the game with one star on a drum kit Modder puts Super Mario 64 on PS2, hacks in co-op, and adds online multiplayer with the N64 version In Super Mario 64, it is actually possible to escape from the grasp of King Bob-omb or a Chuckya after they grab Mario, by whipping the Control Stick back and forth and mashing the A button a combined total of 11 times before they throw him.— @mariobrothblog.bsky.social (@mariobrothblog.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-02-19T22:00:06.722Z In Super Mario 64, it is actually possible to escape from the grasp of King Bob-omb or a Chuckya after they grab Mario, by whipping the Control Stick back and forth and mashing the A button a combined total of 11 times before they throw him. But hey, maybe there's a reason for that too. Supper Mario Broth notes that this technique "does not actually always work on Chuckyas, as they may randomly give you too little time to perform 11 such inputs." The fact that they're often positioned near instant-death pits might also be a factor in why I still fear them to this day. Now, I'm just amused by the precision with which we've narrowed down the exact number of button mashes this technique takes. 11 control stick whips or A button presses, or any combination thereof. "It's simply 'reach 11 of a combined total of both,'" Supper Mario Broth adds in a follow-up post, "so there are no restrictions. It could be 11 of one, or 11 of the other, or 5 of one and 6 of the other, etc. The only caveat is that if you do both on the same frame, it still only counts as 1." Don't go mashing too fast, now. These are the best N64 games of all time.