Some old games can continually yield new secrets and Super Mario 64 is one of the most recent examples. One hack in particular has revealed that the smoke texture in the game was the result of a glitch and not an artistic choice. And another slightly earlier hack also figured out that Nintendo didn’t compress the game properly, leading to some slight lag.
Twitter user BlazeHedgehog tweeted this revelation earlier today. A certain ROM hacking website recently posted a patch on March 18 that pointed out that the smoke effect that emits from Mario after he gets burned is not the intended texture. Instead, the game shows “black garbage pixels” that are a result of texture displaying in the wrong format. The hack shows the correct texture, which is much more voluminous and looks like actual smoke an N64 would make. The instructions also point users to one specific line of code, meaning that this fix is quite simple. You can see the comparison below.
But this is not the only weird glitch that someone recently rectified. Another patch posted on March 11 makes the game run just a bit better. Apparently, this hack discovered that Nintendo had not compressed the game properly and didn’t fix it. This stumbled resulted in just a bit of lag that has continued until now. However, it’s unclear if this is input lag or just general issues with the frame rate.
ALSO: Multiple Super Mario remasters reportedly coming later this year
These are quite odd findings for such an old game. Hopefully, Nintendo can smooth these out for the rumored Super Mario 64 remaster allegedly coming later this year.
