The Susan 128 Experience.
Excellent news, it's technically probably possible to beat the first level of Susan Taxpayer with 128 Susans at once!
Yeah so since it's SMBX2 the supermario128 cheatcode works just fine in Susan Taxpayer meaning you can do this, can't pretend this was my discovery or anything (imperfect-cherry-blossom pointed it out this morning) but it's fun to mess around with
What I didn't realize after playing with this was that it'd carry over into other levels and the hub world so when 127 Susans split from the first after I entered the hub, I decided to see if I could beat the first real level with them. Verdict: Probably?
The first challenge is that for whatever reason, at least when I was doing this, only one Susan could Briefcase Bash or Ground Pound. I dubbed her Alpha Susan, and she's the most important player on the field at all times. Do NOT let Alpha Susan die, otherwise your mission is impossible.
Alpha Susan basically needs to stay at the front of the party at all times which is easier said than done. Briefcase Bashing at the beginning can help at least for the first section which is important since the stage starts off with a wall of papers only Alpha Susan can destroy. The enemies aren't so bad as long as you keep track of where Alpha Susan is so she doesn't die.
The first real challenge is the papers you need to roll into because all the other Susans are guaranteed to get in your way. Thankfully, since this is built on SMBX2, you can do that cool Mario glitch where crouching under a 1-block tall ceiling will push you out the opposite direction of where you're facing, and Alpha Susan can at least destroy the first stack of paper with a Briefcase Bash. Once Alpha Susan gets pushed through, the problem becomes all the other Susans.
See, the camera won't only follow Alpha Susan, it follows ALL the Susans as a collective mass and any Susans that try to leave those boundaries teleport a bit closer to the group. So basically, you end up having to slowly push a group of Susans through the wall until any Susans that got stuck behind the last few obstacles get teleported back into your group. A feat that took me maybe 6 minutes to do because the camera REALLY tries to fight Alpha Susan.
Getting past that obstacle gets you to the donut and you really just have to hope Alpha Susan gets it, in my case she didn't and I have no idea which one of them did. Alpha Susan immediately died after that, which made the level impossible but I kept pressing onwards anyway.
The next biggest task is opening a door.
This door, to be specific. The Susans can handle the rest of this room pretty easy since they all push each other up but that works to their detriment in the end of the room since they need to go down to progress and the camera, as I said before, will respawn any that try to leave the group. This probably took me longer to get through than the rolling obstacle to be honest, it required me to push a third of the Susans behind the wall separating the previous obstacle from this door and then hoping they would keep the camera low enough to let a Susan get through the door.
The next room had no problem until I reached a wall of papers that none of the Susans could destroy without the Alpha Susan who died several rooms ago. The Susans DID manage to push themselves into the hidden door you use to escape during Crunch Time but unfortunately there's a floor blocking their path so they all just get bunched up into a corner.
This is right when I got stuck (and also apparently when I took the only screenshot of the attempt) and I didn't want to fight the Susan Horde to get past that one door again so I called it quits and ruled that this is probably possible for someone more persistent than me.
Rest in Peace Alpha Susan you did not deserve death by potted plant.
UPDATE: the funnel.
Update again: The Susans got through the funnel after literally an hour of button mashing.
Getting through the barrier to Crunch Time was a bit annoying but really not too hard, especially since the game lags enough that the timer slows down.
The problem is that you need to go down to get through the door.
Whatever strategy you went into for the first time? Won't work here. There are just too many to fit down into the hole.
You will need to kill some Susans.
Which is much easier said than done because enemies really don't stand much of a chance of actually killing many Susans when there's so many in the air that can accidentally stomp on them.
oh my god.
I am determined to complete this level but killing Susans is a hard task both emotionally and in practice.
