
Luigi Model found in Mario 64 source code - bueny
https://twitter.com/bigcti/status/1287127746120998912
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Waterluvian
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.

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madsohm
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?

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sharpneli
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.

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noodlesUK
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...

~~~
RetroSpark
> _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
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
> 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?

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RetroSpark
I assume the suggestion isn't that Nintendo should give the games away. Just
that if you buy a game on the Switch you shouldn't have to buy it again when
you upgrade to their next console.

~~~
SifJar
Yeah, I got that, my point is more that it takes away a potential recurring
revenue stream for the sake of maybe a slight boost in software sales right
now (I doubt there are a massive number of people who would suddenly purchase
a whole bunch of virtual console games right now if it was announced they'd
transfer over to all future Nintendo consoles)

~~~
huffmsa
Isn't that exactly the point of Steam though? Single, highly transferable
library.

I certainly know that I'd be loading up if they made everything available in
perpetuity.

And thinking of how many people want to get get into a series but simply can't
because there's no real way for them to. Nintendo isn't really even doing VC
this generation. So they're turning to emulation, if they're technical enough.

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FillardMillmore
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
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-
sour...](http://www.pcgamer.com/amp/gigaleak-of-alleged-nintendo-source-code-
includes-major-games-from-n64-and-nes/)

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urda
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.

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earthboundkid
L is real 2401!

~~~
johnsoft
This leak happened exactly 24 years and 01 month since SM64 was first released
:)

~~~
gield
And the leak happened on the 25th of July.

24+01 = 25.

2+4+0=1 = 7.

~~~
x62Bh7948f
Half-Life 3 confirmed.

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

~~~
adamrezich
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

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marmshallow
Is there a rendering of Luigi 64 yet?

~~~
app4soft
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_o...](https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/12/random_a_glimpse_of_the_days_when_a_super_mario_64_tease_tormented_luigi_fans)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752](https://twitter.com/firubiii/status/1287283654436298752)

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sergiotapia
L IS REAL

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briga
Delete your unused code, people

~~~
dylan604
# Nah, commenting out is better in case decisions are reversed.

# Once it's deleted, there's no way to get it back.

# Version control isn't reliable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Nah, commenting out is better in case decisions are reversed.

But worse in all other cases. If your decision process is such that that
weighs in favor of cluttering your codebase with dead code, that's a problem.

And, actually, since the commented code almost certainly isn't being
maintained and uncommented for testing as the rest of the codebase evolved,
it's probably not even better in the case that decisions are reversed.

> Once it's deleted, there's no way to get it back

There's rewriting it in light of the actual requirements and current state of
the rest of the code base.

> Version control isn't reliable.

Neither is unmaintained, commented-out code dragged along with your code base.
If your VCS isn't the vastly more reliable of those two things, that's a
problem you ought to address.

(Of course, at the time of Mario 64, the calculus might well have favored a
different approach.)

~~~
dylan604
Man, you took that comment seriously. Doh!

