Always ready to unpack a little more of Nintendo's history, a collaboration between preservation site Forest of Illusion, @Render_Archive and @Nintoid has amounted in the upload of a long sought-after Nintendo Company Report from 1996. The edition includes a wealth of nostalgic gaming material from sales reports to upcoming hardware features, and it also gives a look at some exclusive early promo renders. And the best part? It's free to read online!
The company report, which you can download and read over on Forest of Illusion's blog, has all of the things that we would expect to find in Nintendo's yearly round-up accompanied by images of all its figureheads (we refer, of course, to Mario, Kirby and Link). But perhaps the most interesting nugget of rare retro goodness comes from a screenshot reel of the 1995 Nintendo 64 B-Roll, which shows a small section of Super Mario 64 in a stage that many die-hard fans of the game may not recognise.
Don't worry, you're not losing your touch and need to go play Super Mario 64 again (although, that's never a bad idea), no no, this mysterious ghost stage never made it into the final game, making it one of the many mysteries in Nintendo's development history. @forestillusion has taken these five separate scans and stuck them together in GIF form so we can see this mystery, eyeball-filled stage in action:
It's true that this is only a second of 'reconstructed' footage and hardly amounts to a full level run-down, but even this small peek at this cut level is enough to make us breathe a sigh of relief — taking on those nightmare-inducing Mr. I eyeballs in an underwater stage? No thank you!
The 1996 Nintendo Company Report contains much more besides single-second snippets of gameplay including taking a heartbreakingly optimistic tone in advertising the pros of the Virtual Boy (keep dreaming folks). Of course, the entire report is in Japanese so those of you who want to get an in-depth idea of the features and writing will have to settle for a "best attempt" by translation software we're afraid. But hey, the pictures are nice to look at nonetheless!
What do you make of this never-before-seen look of the ghost Mario stage? Get your overalls on and let us know your memories of the game down in the comments!
[source forestillusion.com, via twitter.com]
Comments 22
I mean from the looks of it, it wasn't fully scrapped, it presumably just evolved into parts of Big Boo's Haunt over the course of development.
@EarthboundBenjy Yeah, my thoughts exactly
Great stuff. Legendary
If that water is chlorinated, those Mr. I eyeballs are going to get VERY red and irritated.
The fake scanlines on page 6 and 7 are interesting. They are definitely added to the image, not from an actual CRT (you can see the edges of some of the actual lines on the crt up end on the wrong side of the scanline). I guess even in 1996 they thought that they helped with making the image look better at a large size!
All look like elements that have been used in other stages that are in the game, so doesn't seem like much of a loss!
The plant is on Whomp Fortress
The Eyeballs in Big Boos Haunt
The penguin and mountain.. you get the idea lol
These look beautiful.
That gif is just like 4 FPS. Awful.
/sarcasm if it needs to be said.
Also it’s really cool all these years later to see unused stuff from Mario 64.
I feel like I've seen some of these images before from an old Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine I had way back then, in an article promoting the game before its release. Could be remembering wrong though.
I love this kind of stuff!
Would like to see it filed under a specific category instead of “Random”.
Perhaps “Discoveries”, “Lost & Found”, “Findings”, or “Dig Dug”.
I bet y’all can come up with even better suggestions
Ever since I saw that island on the Dam level in Goldeneye, I've been fascinated with cut content from video games. Good find!
This is incredible! Wasn't the game supposed to have like 40 levels, but half of them were cut due to hardware limitations? What I would give for Nintendo to release "Super Mario 64: The Lost Levels" someday! Or to have gotten the 64DD sequel that was in development for some time before getting scrapped. It's a crime we never got the asset-reusing sequel to Super Mario 64 that Majora's Mask was to Ocarina of Time. When I go to bed, I often have dreams that I'm playing Super Mario 64 and am discovering some never-before-seen level hidden somewhere inside the castle walls. It's one of my favorite games of all-time (second only to Paper Mario: TTYD). Even in the year 2022, I'd pay full retail price for an official sequel in the same 64-bit engine.
@Not_Soos
I thought we would at least get SOMETHING back then in terms of a sequel. All the "play as Luigi" and "ride Yoshi" ideas finally came to fruition down the line, but man it was a long wait. I really just want a complete remaster of SM64 in the graphic style of ODYSSEY's Peach Castle stage. Throw in those unused levels as a bonus and I would throw $60 at a pre-order.
Id love nintendo to release bonus playable early development builds with a special release like mario 3d all stars same for mario sunshie
@Slowdive was there ever a showcase or a screenshot of Mario in a room with multiple Mr. I's?
I seem to remember seeing something similar in a commercial or a magazine back in 1995 or 1996. I remember the first time I defeated one of those eyeballs by running circles around it, and dreading the thought of having to deal with three or four of them at once.
It's over 25 years ago, I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me.
Can‘t wait for Kaze Emanuar to reconstruct the whole thing.
@WhiteTrashGuy @Not_Soos I actually saw a "screenshot" of Super Mario 64 2 in a magazine in the 90s. I know now that no serious development was done on a sequel, but at the time I thought the game was just a little further down the pipe. I mean, there was a screenshot! But I suspect the magazine mocked that up themselves.
Reminiscing about unseen levels or ideas that could have been implemented is one of my favorite aspects of visiting this site over the last 9 years. I will always appreciate the articles the Nintendo Life team create that cater to us 90's (or earlier) gamers that grew up with these games. And there always seems to be another new piece of history being uncovered on a regular basis.
This throws me back to when I used to buy monthly gaming magazines on my way back from school before taking the bus home, and when the previews about the 'Ultra 64' were all the rage in the schoolyard. <3
Does Ben Stein make an appearance? Seems like a perfect opportunity for some Clear Eyes product placement.
@calbeau
Yes me too, especially those screenshots with the eyes.
Not sure which magazine though, but seen them before, no pun intended.
@GX_64 My guess is these screenshots were probably pulled from an in-progress build running on development hardware, and they added the scanlines to give more of an impression of what it would look like running on an actual console.
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