“Every copy of Super Mario 64 is Personalized” is a concept that draws on the flaws of the human memory, dreams, theories, rumors, and unused content.
Super Mario 64 is already a weird game. It is home to glitches and oversights like the famous “Backwards Long Jump”, as well as empty and “liminal” feeling areas. It’s also a game burned into the collective gaming consciousness: One of those games you hear about regardless of wether you were around to play it when it came out. For those who were there, it was the kind of game you spend all day playing before going to sleep and dreaming about it.
People claim to remember different things about the game. Being able to enter the eel’s tunnel, going through the mirror in the mirror room, the existence of a “Ghoul Medal” in King Boo’s haunt, etc.
The explanation for this is -as the story goes- that every cartridge of the game is “personalized”. Each is different and adapts to how it is played by adding, changing, or removing features depending on a how you played it. Anything could have been real, if only in your copy.
Back to the real world, in 2020, a massive amount of internal data from Nintendo was illegally leaked online. This is known as the “Gigaleak”, due to its size of several gigabytes. Among the data were a lot of development and beta content for Super Mario 64, and the public saw early unused features and areas of the game for the first time.
Inspired by this, the “Super Mario 64 Iceberg chart” image was created by a fan and circulated online. It is a list of oddities in the game (real and fictional) presented as layers of an iceberg, with the deeper levels being more obscure (or made-up) facts. I will not be including it here because it is a large image and there is no way you would be able to read it at this scale.
Every YouTuber and their mother made a video about this image, giving their own interpretations of each fact, and even adding their own. I watched SO many of these videos in 2021-2022. Even if they were repetitive, something about them was captivating.
“L is real”
One of the most famous rumors from back in the day, the statue in the castle courtyard has a blurry texture that depicts writing. People have said that it reads “L is real 2401”, or less commonly, “Eternal Star”. The main theory was that this was a hint to unlocking Luigi in the game, as he was noticeably missing. Of course, this is not the case. The words on this texture are still unknown, but it was also used in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
“Trapped inside the castle walls”/Toad Projection”
The toads that appear in this game always stand next to walls, and fade away as the player moves away from them. This is likely so that the game doesn’t have to use resources on rendering them at a distance, but it is unsettling if you think about it beyond that. One of these toads says “We’re all trapped inside the castle walls”, leading people to believe that the toads are literally trapped in the walls, and using some kind of magic to project an image of themselves outside so Mario can talk to them.
“The Bowser Room”
A room said to be found on the game, that has a window you can see Bowser through. This is completely made up, and I happen to think the image used for it is really funny. There’s also a running joke that this is Nintendo director Shigeru Miyamoto’s “favorite room”.
“The Wario Apparition”
The Wario apparition a giant floating wario head that is said to appear in front of the warp to dire dire docks. This is very commonly used imagery in reference to Mario 64 personalized and it’s scary!!! Thankfully it is something invented by the community.
B3313
Want to play your own "personalized" Super Mario 64? B3313 (short for Build 3313 ) is a fan game inspired by the Mario 64 personalized story. Unused enemies, new areas, the “internal plexus” of the castle, and many new unsettling-to-terrifying elements can be found here. The map is a huge maze, and you will spend the majority of the time exploring and enjoying having no idea where you are.
I’m a huge scaredy-cat, and this was the most afraid I’ve ever been while playing a video game- running down a hallway in the middle of god-knows-where and hearing the disembodied voice of Princess Peach call “Mario” from somewhere in the dark.