Crash
A Freeze or Hardlock is the event of Super Mario 64 becoming permanently freezed and Irresponsive to the player commands or actions, forcing the player to Reset the console/emulator.
Softlock
Is the event of Mario becoming irresponsive to the player, but without the game Freezing, may still need a reset.
Corruption
Corruption Is a mostly unintended or intencional change of the stored data of the game's Cartridge or ROM during Reading, Writing, or Processing of the data, leading to errors, crashes, Freezes and even rendering the Cartridge/ROM unplayable.
Known causes of the game Freezing or Corrupting
Warning! The reprodution of some of the mentioned methods may lead to Game Malfunction and/or permanent loss of your save files, Cartridge or Console! You have been warned!
- Exceed the Objects limit in the Course (Freezes the game)
- Too many Objects at once on the screen (Freezes and also corrupts the game)
- Getting a 100 Coins Star at the same time that brakes a Star Block (Freezes the game)
- Trying to enter a Course with the game Corrupted (Freezes the game)
- Hacking the game in some way (May corrupt the game)
- Using Gameshark incorrectly or using way too much (Freezes and Corrupts)
- Sending Lakitu into a PU on the Console version (Freezes the game)
- Tilting the game cartridge (May Freeze and Corrupt under certain conditions and/or actions)