That whole "L is real 2041" thing in SM64

[Jorpho]

Random thought of the moment:

It occurred to me just now that I never did figure out the origins of "L is real 2041" in SM64. Rumors about the meaning of this phrase were rampant at the time of the game's release. Of course, now that people have begun hacking away at SM64 in earnest, it seems pretty clear that there is no dramatic hidden secret lurking somewhere.

A gander at Youtube turns up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luUpQFR8j9A . Is that what all the fuss was about? A blurry texture that could actually read as anything?

[Aussie2B]

Short answer is, yes, it's just a blurry texture and people's imaginations going crazy.

There are some intriguing secrets in Super Mario 64 that have been discovered, though, stuff that's way more interesting than that dumb sign (although the exact same texture was used in Ocarina of Time, which is worth noting). My favorite discovery is that, through glitching, it's possible to bring MIPS the rabbit into deep water, revealing that there are unique animations for Mario dropping MIPS in water, MIPS sinking, and MIPS landing (if I'm remembering them all correctly), despite that you're never supposed to do such a thing. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFDoT8OENGg

While it's filled with a lot of nonsense and the aforementioned wild imaginations, this is a pretty interesting read on the stuff that actually has hard evidence to back the discoveries:

http://www.sm64.com/misc/Mysteries%20Guide.txt

[TheChristoph]

http://www.sm64.com/misc/Mysteries%20Guide.txt


Perhaps as a result of the lack of Luigi in this
game, it was soon theorized that the L represents Mario's green-behatted little
brother.

Holy crap. Ease up on the colorful writing, cowboy.

Edit: It gets better (well, more entertaining) as it goes along.

[mattimeo310]

Haha I'm actually really enjoying reading this not because of the content but because of the language.

[Ed Oscuro]

Unreadable texture, I remember you!

Now we know that you are the fire that burns a thousand lead wookiees with great passions.

These things usually turn out to be extracts from a handy README included with whatever software the developers were doing. (So far I've spotted that in Resident Evil Remake and Klonoa GBA.)