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For many, Super Mario 64 was the first glimpse or experience of gameplay in a 3D environment. The beguiling pre-rendered promo art sparked my interest before I ever picked up an N64 controller: the game went to the top of my holiday wishlist in 1996.
My personal memories of playing Mario 64 are somehow like those about a physical location — or perhaps more like an uncanny dream of a place that never existed — than like memories about a game. As a kid, I spent time running around Mario 64 just for the fun and mystery of the game’s expansive environments, which ranged from snow to desert to under the sea, just as often as I acquired stars within courses and hidden throughout Princess Peach’s Castle.
Super Mario 64 (partially found Spaceworld ’95 demo of Nintendo 64 3D platformer; 1995)
Mario 64‘s popularity has endured through the years. People have returned to the game again and again, or discovered it for the first time, including in a new form on Nintendo DS with additional playable characters and features in 2004 and as part of a limited 35th anniversary release for Nintendo Switch in 2020. Additionally, the community of Mario 64 speedrunners angling for new world records has resulted in the discovery of glitches and techniques that enable progressing through the game in creative ways.
The persistently fun, occasionally clunky, and strange charm of Mario 64, hazy memories of childhood mystery, and the drive of passionate players to modify and manipulate the game in seemingly unlimited ways have ensured that rumors, videos purporting to contain lost footage, and more have been circulated around online. The dark and weird side of all this has perhaps reached its ultimate form in the shape of the Mario 64 Iceberg.
The iceberg illustrates, tongue-in-cheek, the deepening levels of galaxy-brained obsession and questioning that spending a little too much time in the grasp of Mario 64 and its unanswered questions can lead to. Here, I will spend some time on 10 intriguing items about the game. This will include a few iceberg offerings as well as other tidbits that piqued my interest, and plenty of links to go around should you wish to dive deeper.
Wet-Dry World’s “Negative Emotional Aura”
“Considered one of the most bizarre levels in the game because of its strange atmosphere, Wet-Dry World is commonly associated with negative feelings and anomalous sightings.” – MIPS Hole SM64 Conspiracies
Wet-Dry World is a stage in the game that involves raising and lowering its water level strategically to access different areas divided into “Uptown” and “Downtown”, the latter of which is like an abandoned village in appearance. The lower or higher that you jump into the stage’s painting determines how high or low the water level will be when you arrive.
Skyboxes in video games form a background that helps to create the illusion of a more expansive world. The skyboxes of the courses in the Nintendo 64 original are a little uncanny to begin with, but there is something even more off about Wet-Dry World’s skybox.
This could be because Wet-Dry World’s skybox, shown at the bottom left in the collection of them above, contains an edited photograph of Casares, Spain that looks rather out of place in Mario 64. It is no surprise that this curious image ended up on the massively popular Twitter account Images with Elegiac Auras (“Images with haunting, unexplainable auras.”).
Wet-Dry World also includes doors that cannot be opened, which happen to share textures with those used in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. In the massive 2020 leak of Mario 64 beta content, it was confirmed that an early version of Wet-Dry World did indeed share assets from an early Ocarina of Time town.
Lastly, one my personal favorite pieces of recently released “beta” material has been this alternative soundtrack interpretation:
Luigi / “L is Real 2401”
One of the best-known Mario 64 rumors concerns the idea that Mario’s brother Luigi can be unlocked as a playable character. The star statue in the castle courtyard, with illegible writing beneath it, has helped fuel this rumor, as many have interpreted this text as a coded message: ‘L is Real 2401’. A supposed letter from Nintendo of America clarifies that it has “no meaning”. Nonetheless, over the years there have been countless elaborate rumors about “how to unlock Luigi” include specific instructions on what order to get the stars in, playing the game without saving, and jumping into the volcano in Lethal Lava Land.
One of many fake screenshots circulated over the years.
It was confirmed that Luigi was originally intended to be in the game:
Yoshiaki Koizumi (Assistant Director of Super Mario 64): When we made the first prototype, Mario and Luigi were on a flat field…We ran it that way, but when we made the landforms, because of hardware limitations we had a choice between cutting Luigi or making more elaborate landforms. Then, in tears, we had to ask Luigi to leave. (Iwata Asks)
A kind of satisfaction was achieved at last in the July 25th 2020 leak, which included parts and color palettes for a Luigi model with different proportions from Mario.
Super Mario 64 DS
Super Mario 64 DS is the Mario 64 experience with a few additional bells and whistles, such as being able to play as other characters. Not Waluigi, though.
The white room mentioned above refers to a DS-specific secret star you can only get as Luigi after becoming invisible, walking through a mirror, entering the reflection of the door you originally came through, and entering into a white void.
I would add more, but…there is something about Mario 64 DS that makes it actually almost too weird for me to play. Perhaps I will summon the courage to reach for it next time I am in the mood to re-enter the world of Mario 64.
Camera Strangeness
Super Mario 64 introduced the camera as a friend and foe in video games
Throughout your Mario 64 journey, you are being filmed by one of the Lakitu Bros. Recalling the framing device of Super Mario Bros. 3 as a stage play with curtains, Mario being filmed as part of a live television broadcast is part of the game’s story from the very beginning.
Many Nintendo 64 players will be familiar with the trials and tribulations of early 3D gaming and finicky camera controls. A wrong turn when trying to perform a difficult wall-jump, perhaps, could send you into the abyss as the perspective swerved to a wall rather than to Mario.
Unused / Beta Assets
Early, harrowing penguin renders used on a Kellogg’s cereal box
Though touched on in other areas so far, the number of unused assets and (actual) beta differences in general is worth a special mention. The Cutting Room Floor contains a great run-down of these assets, including entirely different enemies, textures, and sounds.
The artist mushbuh has created a delightful hi-res interpretation of the beta enemy Motos (uncovered in the 2020 beta leak):
Super Mario 64: Chaos Edition
Chaos Edition is a romhack that activates / deactivates codes that modify how the game functions. All kinds of surprising effects can occur, including being chased by game assets, Mario’s head spinning through his body, growing unexpectedly larger, and starting a course embodying a sign-post instead of Mario’s body.
Super Mario 64 Theme Park Lost to Time – Reino Aventura, Mexico
I was pleasantly surprised to see a video had been made dedicated to an explanation of this strange theme park I had, up to then, only seen in pixelated, hazy photos circulating on social media that I initially presumed to be fake.
Parallel Universes
“A Parallel Universe, or PU, is an area in a Super Mario 64 map at which the game creates phantom collision for objects “outside” of the level. This is because some of the values for collision detection are truncated into the range of the real map’s coordinate system, allowing some space that is intended to be Out of Bounds to become habitable.” – Unofficial Pannen Wiki
If you ever want to end up utterly enmeshed in the programming and mathematics of how Super Mario 64 works, and see some baffling tricks, you must visit pannenkoek2012’s channel. I can’t promise that you’ll immediately understand everything you hear, but it is fascinating.
If you haven’t acquired quite enough stars to reach the final boss behind the Big Star Door, you’ll end up getting stuck on an infinite staircase. The effect is caused by Mario warping backwards repeatedly.
“The music which plays while climbing the endless stairs is a Shepard tone, a sequence of notes which are made to sound as if they are infinitely ascending in tone when in fact they are looping.” – Mario Wiki
“Every Copy of Mario 64 is Personalized” / 1995/07/29 Beta Mario 64 Build
Every Copy of Mario 64 is Personalized is relatively new on the block when it comes to Mario rumors. Part meme, part creepypasta, and part nostalgic indulgence in the conventions of a bygone era, it has captured the attention and creativity of the fan community.
Inspiration for the concept originated in the appearance of a “Wario apparition” voiced by Mario’s voice actor, Charles Martinet, at video game trade event E3 in 1996. Snowballing from the apparition as “a ghost that manifests itself in select copies of Super Mario 64, and will eventually manifest itself in the real world,” to “the belief that every copy created of Super Mario 64 differed from each other at release date” based on an advanced AI that adapts to the player, the idea has spawned a collection of videos and images purporting to contain beta footage from commercials and gameplay.
A compliment to these theories, and returning to ideas touched on earlier regarding Wet-Dry World, are the experience and presentation of liminal spaces and the concept of backrooms. The articulation of these spaces, and what they mean, does well to capture what the landscape and gameplay of Mario 64 has symbolized to so many of us.
“I know for me, when I was younger I always had this nauseating urge to just explore the rest of the world of the video games I played. The rational part of me knew there was nothing, but still I was drawn to areas I couldn’t normally reach, and I would stare at static skyboxes forever, just wondering what was out there. I get a similar feeling as an adult when I view these liminal images. I’ve seen posts about the uncanny settings of the Mario 64 backgrounds, and I think it’s because everything is so unexplained. Where am I? What are these huge sprawling wastelands of nothing completely surrounding the level? What else is out there?” – u/Starman926 in r/LiminalSpace
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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, I know the name Zazou, maybe because you’ve mentioned it. Cool attire (in the pic). Watch out for that guy on the far left. No, I didn’t know that Zidane had a successful start. I know about the Manchester City thing only because I came across a screen grab in my socials scrolling yesterday wherein Liam Gallagher semi-threatened to kill anyone who believed the charges. I’ll start following. ** James Bennett, Yeah, I’m really surprised I’d never read Ernaux before. I read ‘Do What They Say or Else’, which I think was her second novel. Her prose is super exciting and complex. I definitely want to study and try to learn something from it. ** Sarah Palmer, Hi! My pleasure of course. No, I haven’t yet done my Marais gallery rounds. Ultra-soon though. Hm, thanks for the Biennale report. I do hope to be able to get down there before it ends, although it sounds like it won’t be the end of the world if I can’t. Geneva, nice, you get around. Next for me, I think, are the openings of the new Pinault and Lafayette Anticipations shows. Although I’ll probably see the Kerry James Marshall show and etc. at MAM before then. I hope your remaining time there is very fruitful. ** Bill, I’m definitely a rubber and latex mask man myself. And of course they have to be a little fucked up, either deliberately or due to bad construction. You’re back way out east again? Amazing how much you get to travel. I’d be envious if all that jet lag wouldn’t literally kill me. ** Dominik, Hi!!! No, thank you. I think the French should cease their efforts to make proper mozzarella sticks and muffins and donuts and concentrate on figuring out how to make proper Mexican food. The London venue is an art gallery, but maybe they’ll hang a few scary paintings or something. There was a kind of soulfulness to postal mail and telegrams and so on whose absence from the world can feel quite melancholy. Good for love. I’m going to try to use him a role model. Love wondering if he accidentally bought decaf coffee because his brain just doesn’t seem to be functioning properly so far this morning, G. ** Carsten, I will say that it wouldn’t shock me if you liked Visconti’s early, pre-operatic films like ‘Rocco and His Brothers’ for instance. I think my personal surprise at the small-seeming scale of Euro castles probably has to do with growing up in spacious LA where giant mansions are somewhat common and possibly also because of having had the castles in Disney parks as a starting point. Big luck with the real estate agency. Grr. ** i🌙, Hey, i🌙! Great to see you. I’m good. Come back to Paris, yes. And the heatwaves seem to be history now. As I just mentioned to Dominik, my brain is still at least half asleep this morning for some reason, so I’ll read what you wrote a little later when I have deserving brain cells in place again. It looks lovely at a hazy first skim. I’ve read a few Marie Darrieussecq novels: ‘Pig Tales’, ‘White’, and ‘ Brief Stay With the Living’. I liked the first two. She seems like a sometimes quite interesting writer. Concussion? Glad that’s a memory now. And you’re 18! Wow, that’s big. I’m fine, and, yes, mostly film stuff: getting ‘RT’ out and starting work on our next one. No complaints at the moment. ** laura w., Hi. Color Bressons are still winning. I’m there. ‘Paris, Texas’ is worth watching for sure. I haven’t seen the new Japanese one. People say it’s a comeback, but they’ve said that before. Herzog’s documentaries can still be really good. But, yeah, he seems to have totally lost his feel for fiction films for a long time now. Yeah, Lynch deification, it’s true, although I guess because films are so mostly unadventurous and non-visionary these days, especially in the US, it’s hard not to get into really treasuring what he did. ** Steve, I should try to find out if the blog’s nasty habit of eating comments runs on a schedule. Doubt I could, though. Your old laptop is scaring me even in description. And it sounding Halloween-appropriate is not enough. ** HaRpEr //, Oh, sure, me too on a film’s interests being so up my alley that my forgiveness trigger gets pushed. I don’t know Mark Jenkin’s work, and I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to discover him, thank you. Moritsugu’s cool. There’s a director whose continuing existence proves that there still is an actual underground. The Nobel thing kind of put me off reading Ernaux, even though Claude Simon won the Nobel too in some seeming happy fluke, but, boy, based on one book, she’s really a prose master. ** caro, Hi, caro! It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you for being so kind about my work. How are you? What are you up to and all of that? If you feel like passing more about you along. In any case, cool, take care. ** Thom, Thanks, yeah, I tried to cover as many mask bases as I could without getting blah. I haven’t read that Roubaud book, but he’s pretty terrific in general. ‘Project for a Revolution in New York’! Now that’s a great book. Among my favorite Robbe-Grillets. And not just because of its spectacular title. Week ahead remains vague but with intriguing glimmers so far. Yours? ** Okay. If you’re of a certain inclination, you have a really excellent post in front of you today made for the blog years ago by the artist Marilyn Roxie. A treat instead of a trick. See you tomorrow.
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