8 ms·

Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code

150 points by bueny 6y ago

Waterluvian 6y ago
I love these discoveries but I dislike the guaranteed follow-up by game conspiracy theorists who don’t appreciate how games are built. For any game, the odds are that it has unused assets or partially completed systems that hit the cutting room floor.
- grawprog 6y ago
  What are these theories? I always thought It was fairly well known Luigi (and a bunch of other things)was cut due to budget and limitations of the n64 carts. Not just in mario 64 but most n64 games. I'm honestly curious, i've never actually heard any theories about Luigi and mario 64 other than he just cut due to above mentioned reasons. Much like Yoshi.
  - KMag 6y ago
    I think the GP doesn't know the conspiracy theories, but expects them to be invented in attempts to rationalize the inclusion of unused assets. Let's see... the Luigi portions of the game actually coded in a sound stage on the dark side of Mars (which is flat), but the roundtards don't want anyone to know that Mars is flat, and the Luigi character would have given away the existence of the sound stage studio, exposing the flatness of Mars.
    - serf 6y ago
      > I think the GP doesn't know the conspiracy theories, but expects them to be invented in attempts to rationalize the inclusion of unused assets. It takes less effort to google 'mario 64 conspiracy'[0] than it did to create the fan-fic you came up with while assuming that the GP was rationalizing things. Why not assume the best of people? [0]: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/super-mario-64-iceberg-conspiracy-theories/ https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/super-mario-64-iceberg-con...
      - KMag 6y ago
        > Why not assume the best of people? Why assume negative connotation where there is none? It was a silly conspiracy poking light-hearted fun at conspiracy theorists. The GP's phrasing "the guaranteed follow-up" that made me suspect the GP had seen conspiracy theories about other video games, but hadn't yet seen any conspiracy theories about this latest find, and was anticipating a future conspiracy theory. Sorry if my phrasing sounded malicious.
  - bargle0 6y ago
    There’s a whole mythology of Mario 64 conspiracy theories regarding Luigi, Wario, Wet-Dry World, and other things. Googling “Mario iceberg” will get you started. A lot of it is just bad fakes, so it’s not as entertaining as something built purely out of unused assets.
    - canjobear 6y ago
      Thanks, this was a fun rabbithole.
- Kye 6y ago
  See also: the Star Fox 64 Arwing left over from implementing a boss in Ocarina of Time. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/how-to-get-star-fox-64-ships-into-ocarina-of-time-no-hacking-required/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/how-to-get-star-fox-6... Ocarina of Time started with the Mario 64 engine, so there are probably bits and pieces all over.
- madsohm 6y ago
  Please tell us more. Why are the assets not simply deleted when the developers realize it's not needed, especially on a N64 cartridge to save space?
  - sharpneli 6y ago
    The model is not in the cartridge. It was only in the game assets in the source code dump. Why delete it? You never know if they might reinstate it (before release that is, and why bother deleting on release day?) or the model could be used in another game, making them costs money, storing them not that much.
  - badlucklottery 6y ago
    > especially on a N64 cartridge to save space? The space obviously wasn't needed during development (this is leaked source, I don't know if it made it to the gold version) so there's two likely possibilities: a) They knew about it but didn't have the dev/tester time to vet the change. This is coming from an era when most game testing was done manually and the N64 toolchain had some big issues around launch. Higher priority fixes might have just pushed a cleanup task like this off the list. b) They just didn't know. This is also from an era where DCVS weren't particularly common in the games industry and CVS was still black magic in some circles so auditing changes or doing code reviews were very rare.
  - ClikeX 6y ago
    I'm going on a limb here and assume the codebase wasn't as easy to manage back then. They missed a lot of fancy tooling to review it. Also, as a developer (game and webdev), there's tons of leftover stuff. Most of which is assets. For games, the artists would've put them in the codebase at some point. For web, it's usually just forgotten when removing features.
- Smithalicious 6y ago
  I've always considered these theories to be a genre of speculative fiction, somewhere in between creepypasta and a real theory. I thought it was generally understood that these things are more for the sake of entertainment than real investigation?
- ColeyG 6y ago
  Right, this is something I've been talking about on other forums as well. I can almost see the thumbnails already circling Luigi's model with a shocked expression....
briga 6y ago
Delete your unused code, people
- Forge36 6y ago
  For what reason?
  - briga 6y ago
    Smaller file sizes, less bloat
    - toast0 6y ago
      This model presumably didn't make it onto the cartridge, which is where the size would matter (and even then, the size would really only matter if it pushed them to use a larger rom at added expense). Extra files in the source directory that might not even be used by the build process barely matter.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      How in the world would I find a flight simulator in my word processor?
      - waste_monk 6y ago
        I don't know, but you might find one in Excel [1]. [1] https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw
  - infogulch 6y ago
    As long as delete means "commit the deletion of unused files to source control", I agree. Though I don't know what kind of source control they had back then, and if they used it for such assets. In my opinion if something is not serving any current purpose in your code base it should be deleted from source control. The repo should be a reflection of the precise range of capabilities that you intend for the project to have; leaving dead vestiges of the past just laying around is like growing a garden and never cleaning it of deadwood and debris, giving more places for weeds to grow unnoticed. I think we need better tooling for browsing historical artifacts that may be valuable in the future -- which I think is the main reason I've seen people intentionally keep dead code. Maybe the solution to that is to just tag the commit in which you deleted the code with a note on what it was so you can find it again. Edit: An uncle comment mentions that this may have been a discovery from digging around in the CVS history for the game, so they may have kept the assets in source control after all! Some might reasonably take away from this to protect your source repo, but I think it's pretty cool it's possible to find these historical artifacts.
jtokoph 6y ago
This was predicting the future world of launch day DLC that's pre-downloaded.
- adamrezich 6y ago
  nah that was the Naboo Starfighter in Rogue Squadron for the N64, which was released five months before The Phantom Menace. the cheat code wasn't revealed until after the movie released. the PC version did NOT include the Naboo Starfighter at launch and you had to download a patch to get it
earthboundkid 6y ago
L is real 2401!
- johnsoft 6y ago
  This leak happened exactly 24 years and 01 month since SM64 was first released :)
  - labster 6y ago
    That's too coincidental. Given the size of the Mario iceberg, maybe it's time to get the SCP Foundation involved?
  - gield 6y ago
    And the leak happened on the 25th of July. 24+01 = 25. 2+4+0=1 = 7.
    - x62Bh7948f 6y ago
      Half-Life 3 confirmed.
FillardMillmore 6y ago
Maybe I missed it, but how exactly is the source getting leaked? Who has access to this stuff and why has it taken so long for it to be leaked? Curious find though. Always wanted to play as Luigi in the game back in the '90s.
- droffel 6y ago
  There was a recent major hack/leak of data from Nintendo. The Mario 64 source code was included. http://www.pcgamer.com/amp/gigaleak-of-alleged-nintendo-source-code-includes-major-games-from-n64-and-nes/ http://www.pcgamer.com/amp/gigaleak-of-alleged-nintendo-sour...
noodlesUK 6y ago
It’s so interesting to see what didn’t quite make it into such culturally important works. It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. I get that’s kinda how copyright was meant to work with books and similar, but the code is never published, so nobody has it to preserve it for posterity...
- dgellow 6y ago
  As proven by the emulation scene, access to the source code isn't a requirement to preserve games. Edit: Could someone downvoting explain what is wrong with my comment? We would all love to have source code of everything because that's what we like to dig into and hack on, it's also a fact that it isn't required if the goal is preservation.
- RetroSpark 6y ago
  > It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. Unfortunately, many game companies lost the source code for their classic games years ago. They couldn't release it even if they wanted to. One of the big surprises coming from this leak is simply the fact that Nintendo's source code still exists. The company seems to have been very thorough in archiving material related to its older games.
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has the source code for most everything they've made. You don't become a 150 year old company without fastidious bookkeeping. Now if they'd just pay the emulator people a bucket of cash to make officially supported emulators that run on the Switch and all future hardware (without having to rebuy the titles), they'd make so much money they'll be around for the next 300 years.
    - SifJar 6y ago
      > pay the emulator people a bucket of cash > without having to rebuy the titles How does this lead to making "so much money"? Purely from hardware sales?
urda 6y ago
I'm amazed at how much detailed investigations into just this single game have been. From the glitches, to how the game works internally, and now neat little facts like this make it such a cool little game.
marmshallow 6y ago
Is there a rendering of Luigi 64 yet?
- app4soft 6y ago
  Guess your mean "in game render"? Here is one from 2016.[0] And here is its 3D model loaded in Blender with textures preview mode ON.[1] [0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_of_the_days_when_a_super_mario_64_tease_tormented_luigi_fans https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_o... [1] https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752 https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752
- sigotirandolas 6y ago
  There are some (alleged) links to it in this Reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/hxtqei/seems_like_oot_mm_and_sm64_source_leaked/fz8ehwb/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/hxtqei/seems_lik...
sergiotapia 6y ago
L IS REAL

150 points by bueny 6y ago

I love these discoveries but I dislike the guaranteed follow-up by game conspiracy theorists who don’t appreciate how games are built. For any game, the odds are that it has unused assets or partially completed systems that hit the cutting room floor.

grawprog 6y ago
What are these theories? I always thought It was fairly well known Luigi (and a bunch of other things)was cut due to budget and limitations of the n64 carts. Not just in mario 64 but most n64 games. I'm honestly curious, i've never actually heard any theories about Luigi and mario 64 other than he just cut due to above mentioned reasons. Much like Yoshi.
- KMag 6y ago
  I think the GP doesn't know the conspiracy theories, but expects them to be invented in attempts to rationalize the inclusion of unused assets. Let's see... the Luigi portions of the game actually coded in a sound stage on the dark side of Mars (which is flat), but the roundtards don't want anyone to know that Mars is flat, and the Luigi character would have given away the existence of the sound stage studio, exposing the flatness of Mars.
  - serf 6y ago
    > I think the GP doesn't know the conspiracy theories, but expects them to be invented in attempts to rationalize the inclusion of unused assets. It takes less effort to google 'mario 64 conspiracy'[0] than it did to create the fan-fic you came up with while assuming that the GP was rationalizing things. Why not assume the best of people? [0]: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/super-mario-64-iceberg-conspiracy-theories/ https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/super-mario-64-iceberg-con...
    - KMag 6y ago
      > Why not assume the best of people? Why assume negative connotation where there is none? It was a silly conspiracy poking light-hearted fun at conspiracy theorists. The GP's phrasing "the guaranteed follow-up" that made me suspect the GP had seen conspiracy theories about other video games, but hadn't yet seen any conspiracy theories about this latest find, and was anticipating a future conspiracy theory. Sorry if my phrasing sounded malicious.
- bargle0 6y ago
  There’s a whole mythology of Mario 64 conspiracy theories regarding Luigi, Wario, Wet-Dry World, and other things. Googling “Mario iceberg” will get you started. A lot of it is just bad fakes, so it’s not as entertaining as something built purely out of unused assets.
  - canjobear 6y ago
    Thanks, this was a fun rabbithole.
Kye 6y ago
See also: the Star Fox 64 Arwing left over from implementing a boss in Ocarina of Time. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/how-to-get-star-fox-64-ships-into-ocarina-of-time-no-hacking-required/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/how-to-get-star-fox-6... Ocarina of Time started with the Mario 64 engine, so there are probably bits and pieces all over.
madsohm 6y ago
Please tell us more. Why are the assets not simply deleted when the developers realize it's not needed, especially on a N64 cartridge to save space?
- sharpneli 6y ago
  The model is not in the cartridge. It was only in the game assets in the source code dump. Why delete it? You never know if they might reinstate it (before release that is, and why bother deleting on release day?) or the model could be used in another game, making them costs money, storing them not that much.
- badlucklottery 6y ago
  > especially on a N64 cartridge to save space? The space obviously wasn't needed during development (this is leaked source, I don't know if it made it to the gold version) so there's two likely possibilities: a) They knew about it but didn't have the dev/tester time to vet the change. This is coming from an era when most game testing was done manually and the N64 toolchain had some big issues around launch. Higher priority fixes might have just pushed a cleanup task like this off the list. b) They just didn't know. This is also from an era where DCVS weren't particularly common in the games industry and CVS was still black magic in some circles so auditing changes or doing code reviews were very rare.
- ClikeX 6y ago
  I'm going on a limb here and assume the codebase wasn't as easy to manage back then. They missed a lot of fancy tooling to review it. Also, as a developer (game and webdev), there's tons of leftover stuff. Most of which is assets. For games, the artists would've put them in the codebase at some point. For web, it's usually just forgotten when removing features.
Smithalicious 6y ago
I've always considered these theories to be a genre of speculative fiction, somewhere in between creepypasta and a real theory. I thought it was generally understood that these things are more for the sake of entertainment than real investigation?
ColeyG 6y ago
Right, this is something I've been talking about on other forums as well. I can almost see the thumbnails already circling Luigi's model with a shocked expression....

briga 6y ago

Delete your unused code, people

Forge36 6y ago
For what reason?
- briga 6y ago
  Smaller file sizes, less bloat
  - toast0 6y ago
    This model presumably didn't make it onto the cartridge, which is where the size would matter (and even then, the size would really only matter if it pushed them to use a larger rom at added expense). Extra files in the source directory that might not even be used by the build process barely matter.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    How in the world would I find a flight simulator in my word processor?
    - waste_monk 6y ago
      I don't know, but you might find one in Excel [1]. [1] https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw
- infogulch 6y ago
  As long as delete means "commit the deletion of unused files to source control", I agree. Though I don't know what kind of source control they had back then, and if they used it for such assets. In my opinion if something is not serving any current purpose in your code base it should be deleted from source control. The repo should be a reflection of the precise range of capabilities that you intend for the project to have; leaving dead vestiges of the past just laying around is like growing a garden and never cleaning it of deadwood and debris, giving more places for weeds to grow unnoticed. I think we need better tooling for browsing historical artifacts that may be valuable in the future -- which I think is the main reason I've seen people intentionally keep dead code. Maybe the solution to that is to just tag the commit in which you deleted the code with a note on what it was so you can find it again. Edit: An uncle comment mentions that this may have been a discovery from digging around in the CVS history for the game, so they may have kept the assets in source control after all! Some might reasonably take away from this to protect your source repo, but I think it's pretty cool it's possible to find these historical artifacts.

jtokoph 6y ago

This was predicting the future world of launch day DLC that's pre-downloaded.

adamrezich 6y ago
nah that was the Naboo Starfighter in Rogue Squadron for the N64, which was released five months before The Phantom Menace. the cheat code wasn't revealed until after the movie released. the PC version did NOT include the Naboo Starfighter at launch and you had to download a patch to get it

earthboundkid 6y ago

L is real 2401!

johnsoft 6y ago
This leak happened exactly 24 years and 01 month since SM64 was first released :)
- labster 6y ago
  That's too coincidental. Given the size of the Mario iceberg, maybe it's time to get the SCP Foundation involved?
- gield 6y ago
  And the leak happened on the 25th of July. 24+01 = 25. 2+4+0=1 = 7.
  - x62Bh7948f 6y ago
    Half-Life 3 confirmed.

FillardMillmore 6y ago

Maybe I missed it, but how exactly is the source getting leaked? Who has access to this stuff and why has it taken so long for it to be leaked? Curious find though. Always wanted to play as Luigi in the game back in the '90s.

droffel 6y ago
There was a recent major hack/leak of data from Nintendo. The Mario 64 source code was included. http://www.pcgamer.com/amp/gigaleak-of-alleged-nintendo-source-code-includes-major-games-from-n64-and-nes/ http://www.pcgamer.com/amp/gigaleak-of-alleged-nintendo-sour...

noodlesUK 6y ago

It’s so interesting to see what didn’t quite make it into such culturally important works. It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. I get that’s kinda how copyright was meant to work with books and similar, but the code is never published, so nobody has it to preserve it for posterity...

dgellow 6y ago
As proven by the emulation scene, access to the source code isn't a requirement to preserve games. Edit: Could someone downvoting explain what is wrong with my comment? We would all love to have source code of everything because that's what we like to dig into and hack on, it's also a fact that it isn't required if the goal is preservation.
RetroSpark 6y ago
> It’s a shame that for most classic games, the source code will never be released. I wish that after a while, and things were no longer commercially viable, code would be released. Unfortunately, many game companies lost the source code for their classic games years ago. They couldn't release it even if they wanted to. One of the big surprises coming from this leak is simply the fact that Nintendo's source code still exists. The company seems to have been very thorough in archiving material related to its older games.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo has the source code for most everything they've made. You don't become a 150 year old company without fastidious bookkeeping. Now if they'd just pay the emulator people a bucket of cash to make officially supported emulators that run on the Switch and all future hardware (without having to rebuy the titles), they'd make so much money they'll be around for the next 300 years.
  - SifJar 6y ago
    > pay the emulator people a bucket of cash > without having to rebuy the titles How does this lead to making "so much money"? Purely from hardware sales?

urda 6y ago

I'm amazed at how much detailed investigations into just this single game have been. From the glitches, to how the game works internally, and now neat little facts like this make it such a cool little game.

marmshallow 6y ago

Is there a rendering of Luigi 64 yet?

app4soft 6y ago
Guess your mean "in game render"? Here is one from 2016.[0] And here is its 3D model loaded in Blender with textures preview mode ON.[1] [0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_of_the_days_when_a_super_mario_64_tease_tormented_luigi_fans https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_o... [1] https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752 https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752
sigotirandolas 6y ago
There are some (alleged) links to it in this Reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/hxtqei/seems_like_oot_mm_and_sm64_source_leaked/fz8ehwb/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/hxtqei/seems_lik...

sergiotapia 6y ago

L IS REAL