#SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE 64 HAZY MAZE CAVE CODE#
#SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE 64 HAZY MAZE CAVE PLUS#

One of the geeks trying to help me solve this mystery asked if I'd ever seen stills from the beta, and I confirmed I had not. The thing that first led to the 'you have a beta copy' theory: there were sprites in my copy of the game that were different from a standard cartridge. Some of it will unfortunately be incomplete because 1996 was a very long time ago, but quite a few of these memories are very vivid to me (I've even done weeks-long playthroughs trying everything I could think of to activate this content, to no avail).

I'll describe here the content available in that cartridge that is NOT in the Wii digital console port nor either of the two N64 cartridges I've owned since. We have a game my mother purchased at Radio Shack in 1996, new in box in a companion deal with the N64, and the only possible explanation a group of super-hardcore geeks could come up with is what's above. (Needless to say the cartridge was damaged beyond recovery long before the offer was made, or I wouldn't have so many student loans now.)

#SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE 64 HAZY MAZE CAVE PLUS#

He was actually really excited and offered me $10k plus a replacement cartridge on the spot if I would sell him my 'beta' cartridge, as no known English beta copies of SM64 survive and even a partially-debugged 'how the hell did this happen' cartridge would be of massive value to video game historians.

#SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE 64 HAZY MAZE CAVE CODE#

3) One of these geeks very kindly went through the source code of both an English and Japanese rom and couldn't find any evidence of the cutscene I'll describe below, nor anything that would indicate the possibility of the glitch related to the cutscene. There's no way you'd end up with a single cartridge that randomly had completely different programming on it. 2) Cartridges available for purchase were mass-produced. As per this same group of geeks, you had to own a special testing machine because of the possibility of horribly gamebreaking bugs damaging a regular machine. What they came up with is 'somehow, some way, you owned a partially-debugged beta copy of this game that would play on a regular Nintendo 64.' Here's where that theory falls apart: 1) Beta cartridges in the N64 time period were not made to play on 'standard' machines, nor did they come in the same shiny market packaging as normal cartridges. I figured if anybody could explain it it'd be them, and they had a go at it, but admitted their solution didn't make much sense even to them. The kind who do things like combing source code for fun and cataloguing cool glitches and unreleased cutscenes for us mere plebs who find them interesting but can't code. So first, I described this game several years ago to a group of hardcore gamer geeks. (You'll quickly see why I think it may be ME, instead.) Then we'll do a rundown of the changes I'm looking for confirmation/denial of.

So I'm going to begin with the 'implausible as hell, but what else could it be?' explanation I've had for this for years.

Super mario sunshine 64 hazy maze cave