A YouTube video with VHS footage from Nintendo’s Japanese Space World show from 1995 has seemingly given us our first-ever look at the multiplayer mode with Luigi that never saw the light of day in Super Mario 64.
As reported by VGC, we get the briefest look in a video uploaded by Now In Game Channel of what appears to be Luigi doing a spin jump next to Mario in Super Mario 64. This is obviously of note as Luigi was never part of the final version of N64’s Super Mario 64. He did appear in the DS version alongside Mario, Yoshi, and Wario, however.
Image via Now In Game’s YouTube
This room could be part of the early days of Super Mario 64 development, as Shigeru Miyamoto previously talked about how Luigi was part of the game but was taken out near the finish line in a roundtable interview (via shmuplations.com) for two official Japanese strategy guides from 1996.
“Well… until February, he was in the game. (laughs) Ultimately, due to memory issues, we had to take him out,” Miyamoto said. “Then we were going to include him in a Mario Bros. style minigame, but because most users probably only have that one controller when they first buy their N64, for that reason (and others) we decided not to.”
This Mario Bros. style minigame could be what we are looking at, or more likely it could be the room that helped the team at Nintendo learn all they needed to make Super Mario 64.
“Well, in the beginning… we were working on something really simple—deceptively simple, even, from the perspective of the team that would go on to finish the huge, final game. (laughs) There was a room made of simple lego-like blocks, and Mario and Luigi could run around in there, climb slopes, jump around, etc. We were trying to get the controls right with an analogue 3D stick, and once that felt smooth, we knew we were halfway there,” Miyamoto said.
In an Iwata Asks from 2009, Miyamoto also shared a bit more about what this multiplayer mode would have been.
“The screen was split and they went into the castle separately,” Miyamoto said. “When they meet in the corridor, I was incredibly happy! (laughs) Then there was also the mode where the camera is fixed and we see Mario running away, steadily getting smaller and smaller.”
In 2020, the Nintendo Gigaleak provided us with an early build of Super Mario 64 called “Ultra 64 Mario Brothers” that contained files that referenced Luigi. Modders took those files and went about recreating Mario’s brother and how he’d look.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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