Thanks to an old videotape, we can see Mario’s brother in action in the revolutionary launch title for the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately, he was cut from the final version due to storage problems.

 

1995, Space World Show. At the time, the Japanese company held an annual event on its home turf, and several of its games that were still in development at the time would make an appearance. Such was the case 28 years ago, when the Nintendo 64 made its first appearance at Space World. At the time, the console was no longer called the Ultra 64, and the games included Super Mario 64. The quality of the camera footage isn’t the best, but what you’ll find in the video embedded below at the point where the video starts (if it starts at 00:00, it starts at 13:21) is quite something…

There are two screens. Mario on the left and Luigi on the right! He was last seen in the big Nintendo leak in 2020, when he appeared as a model in Super Mario 64. He was originally supposed to be the second playable character, said Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary game designer of the big N, in a 1996 interview. In a simple space like LEGO blocks, Mario and Luigi could run around, but climbing and jumping wouldn’t have been left out. This characterization is similar to what we see in the video…

“We wanted to include him in a Mario Bros. style mini-game, but since most users probably only have that one controller when they first buy their N64, we decided not to do it for that reason (and others). I think it would have been great if we could have made it two-player, with Mario and Luigi. But if we’d done it wrong, it would have turned into a fighting game or something (laughs), so we’ll leave that challenge for next time,” Miyamoto said. In a 2009 Iwata Asks interview, he mentioned the canceled Mario 64 multiplayer mode: “The screen was split and they went into the castle separately. When they met in the corridor, I was incredibly happy! (laughs) Then there was the mode where the camera is fixed and we see Mario running away, getting smaller and smaller.

It’s a shame that Luigi was cut out.

Source: VGC

Here’s your only official footage of multiplayer Super Mario 64 from a Spaceworld 95 video kiosk as the camera clearly focuses on both charactershttps://t.co/cLCdSIl5B9 pic.twitter.com/RdtTGb8LpJ

— Yakumono (@LuigiBlood) December 15, 2023

 

We finally have a glimpse of what the early multiplayer mode for Super Mario 64 looked like! This is also the first time we have seen Luigi’s SM64 model outside of the Nintendo Leaks! Take a look! pic.twitter.com/Ev3R7NDBtp

— Marionova (@Marionova64) December 15, 2023