The motherlode of unreleased Mario content

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Back in 2018, there was a major hack that hit Nintendo, and various information obtained from it have filtered out over the years. Today's the biggest drop and one of the biggest leak in video game history as ton of stuff is getting released including protos, master roms for Nintendo's entire 8 bit library and the source code of several games. As you'd expect, that's a lot of juicy content. There's a lot of stuff now being circulated and all of this stuff is still being actively prodded and mined so you'll forgive the grabbag nature of this post!

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Among things that have been discovered include...

A lot of early Yoshi's Island stuff, including a mysterious prototype know as "Super Donkey"!



(The music was added by the uploader)

Rad animated map!


Yoshi's Scorched Napalm World

Never let a good idea go to waste

Moomin Bowser

Yoshi was apparently going to escort a random wizzard baby at one point. How odd!
https://twitter.com/x/status/1286789008081719304

Salaryman lungefish!


A very early Super Mario Kart build!


Also tons of early Super Mario World sprites!

Evolution of the Yoshi species over millenias of adaptation

Early Blargg!

Bowser cut off his legs for the final version of Super Mario World. (He was very dedicated to the part)

This twitter thread look at a lot of ressources, but if I have an highlight, it's Wiggler with a dunce cap!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1286732061051686913

Mario with a pilot cap!


Gritty Koopa redesigns!

What are your favourite findings? And got anything else of interest not yet in this post?
 
SMRPG is also in the list, but oddly enough, nothing has really come from it, guess people just didn't check yet, I bet we are going to get a million Smash fan art if there is a Proto Geno in there, lol
I just wish Nintendo was more open to just telling people about stuff that didn't make it more often, it's litterally not going to hurt them unless something bigoted shows up.
Just make a Nintendo secrets day on their social media accounts, it's better than people's private data being to the open to the all so wonderful place called 4chan, at very least, you can make some money off showing it off in lincesed books
 
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ooo one of those early Koopa sprites looks like one of the Koopalings TV show designs lmao

anyway this is insane. makes me wonder what extent of content might still be yet to come out. hoping for proto-Sticker Star and SPM for GameCube but that may be pushing it lol
 
these findings are all so SO COOL
super donkey apparently was going to be miyamotos version of dkc, and even has a few donkey kong sprites in the data, and then it somehow became plok. what an enigma
 
Inspirational quote spotted in Prototype Yoshi's living room:

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Not sure how I feel about lanky Yoshi, but that early giant Bowser is pretty cool.
 
ZelenPixel said:
super donkey apparently was going to be miyamotos version of dkc ... and then it somehow became plok. what an enigma
Click to expand...

There's no actual proof of any of this, it's just off-the-rails speculation.

If anything, it was probably just an engine test that was ultimately used to make Yoshi's Island.
 
They could've made good money selling an artbook showing off those assets huh
 
that yoshi's island Bowser was probably before they decided to make him a baby.
 
I wonder what it'd look like textured...


 
at this point (Star Fox?), probably would use vertex coloration than texture
 
Prelude to the Super Mario Maker crossover costumes

 
Too bad that Yoshi was then given shoes

That a Starfox 2 developer confirmed he made the tool is very important, it confirms that the leak isn't lolmadeup content by someone with a lot of creativity...
 
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Well, holy... holy shit. I, I can't believe my eyes. After over 20 years (or 24 years and one month to be exact) of being a lost novelty in a lost dimension far beyond any mortals reach, Luigi has been recovered. Looking at this model, I almost cried. I really, truly did. And I still feel the urge to just become a happy, bawling mess right now. I just can't help it. This is well and truly beyond incredible. Not just from a gaming standpoint, but much more a personal one for me.

Judge me if you want. Yes, this might mean too much to me. But I don't give a fuck. And you know what, I'm bored, and in a writing mood, so I'll just spill my thoughts real quick about how much this means to me, finally seeing the impossible.

SM64's beta has always been a real fascinating thing to me. It's one of the earliest things I ever got truly engaged in. If I'm being real, the beta (and the modding, fan scene, and just the general culture around the game) are much more fascinating to me than the game itself. It's hard to put into words. Its like, how can this one game basically be a little world of its own, with infinite discovery everywhere you look, a box full of mysteries independent from the normal gameplay." I know technically its the same Mario World we've always been in, but as a kid, SM64 always felt weirdly separate for those reasons. And to some extent, it still feels like a separate "world" in the weirdest way possible that I can't explain. It's like some engaging lore. Yeah, lore. I think that's the best way to describe it. Like, I can only think of a slim handful of other games with a culture and general atmosphere around it that give me similar feelings to SM64s.

While there is something to be said about most of SM64's secrets and I could probably make a book series on them, I think I'm getting off track. Out of these mysteries, the most interesting ones to me were always the ones revolving around Luigi, or the L that was Real. I remember playing around the game wondering "man, this is cool, but I really wanna play as loogi now". But I couldn't. And I didn't know why. (I was young, cut me some slack.). I asked friends, they gave me the general "Run around the fountain 2401 times" crap we all know is fake now. I did eventually realize Luigi just wasn't there, but for some reason, I wasn't satisfied. It was cut and dry, yeah? He wasn't there, he never was.

I joked around with it. Hell, I even came up with some fake unlock methods myself and shared them with friends for shits and giggles. But I always felt that Luigi was there in some way. I know, he isn't even in the game files, but I still had the urge he was there, even when I was old enough to stop believing other superstition. But not like there was much I could do about it, right?

For a time, yeah. Then I saw this little interview a couple of years back.

Koizumi: This may not be a direct answer, but personally, when we made Super Mario Galaxy, I had regrets about some things. I was able to do those things in Super Mario 3D World.
Iwata: Regrets?
Koizumi: One goes all the way back to Super Mario 64. When we made the first prototype, Mario and Luigi were on a flat field.
Iwata: Both of them.
Koizumi: Yes. We ran it that way, but when we made the landforms, because of hardware limitations we had a choice between cutting Luigi or making less elaborate landforms. Then, in tears, we had to ask Luigi to leave.
Click to expand...

My mind was blown. I was right all along! Luigi was supposed to be in the game! But I still wasn't satisfied. Now I just wanted to see what he looked like. Yeah. I wanted to see the missing plumber in action. What did he look like? It sure didn't help the developers were so upset about it. It made it feel like an important piece of the game and its history was irreparably destroyed. He didn't even get a small cameo like Yoshi, he was just... gone. And you could tell how much they wanted the Bros to share the adventure. You could practically hear the hurt as they described "telling Luigi to leave". And I completely understood.

I hate when anything is lost. In my ideal world, every little thing that gets lost on the internet would be available somewhere for those who looked.

Just once, I wanted to see Luigi and Mario on that flat field, running towards each other. I wanted to see Luigi return to the world he was pulled from. But I knew that was never gonna happen. The prize was so close, yet so far. I knew they removed all traces of him from the game and I'd have to accept these answers (and Luigi) were gone to time.

And I didn't. At the time, I knew I was being unreasonable. But I insisted on hope. He was gone... but I like to think that even if he had nothing to do with the final game, his spirit lived on throughout the final version, just too interconnected with everything else to ever truly disappear. When I played the game, I always got the nagging feeling that Mario shouldn't be alone. That something important was missing. I'm sure a lot more had those same thoughts. Thats probably how the rumors awoke. They were bunk, but they kept his presence alive and well.

And even with all that, I just settled into bitter defeat and started to accept maybe it was just gone. Hell, not even 2 days ago I made a post saying it'll never happen. And then we got this. Exactly 24 years and 1 month after the game came out to boot. It almost feels too perfect to be chance. It feels almost supernatural. My quest has finally come to a close. He is here.

You know, I just want to say, it's amazing. Amazing that one of the most important characters to the world of SM64 and one of the characters most tied to the game's identity and legacy was a character who wasn't in the game at all and until a few hours ago didn't even have a face.

But he really was. Maybe not in person, but his spirit stayed alive. He refused to be forgotten. I don't even know if this makes sense anymore, but he stayed, in a weird little limbo disconnected from everyone else in his world, even when nobody knew of his existence. Only recently did they find he existed at one point, and then, years and years later, people broke through, discovered him, and spread the news that yes, he was here the whole time.

And that's not even talking about the developers. Even though technically, this is a leak, and it wasn't supposed to happen, I have a hard time believing that the SM64 devs aren't at least a little overwhelmed with happy tears seeing Luigi alive and kicking, finally reunited with his world, and finally running around, reunited with his other half that had been running half-empty for 24 years without even knowing.

Like I said, the thing that keeps me drawn to SM64 and its culture is how much mystery there still is over 2 decades later. And I like to think that Luigi and his story was the ultimate symbol of that sense of discovery, that mystery, that sense of intrigue in the SM64 community, the mysteries of the beta, and hell, even the game itself. You could call this, the last mission.

Not even being removed from existence and broken to pieces could keep him from coming back. I saw a tweet from SwankyBox saying that his inner child was made very happy by this. And I can't think of anything that describes my own thoughts on it better than that tweet. My kid self never got to see this. But he is smiling right now. His journey has come to a close, and the best possible one at that. And when I almost cry, I like to feel that was him coming back to witness this spectacular moment.

Today was truly a magical day for me. You can rest now, L. Your legacy has been carried through. Thank you for giving me one of the most thrilling and magical mysteries of my short life.
 
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