Princess Peach's Castle

Princess Peach's Castle is a recurring local in the Mario universe, being the royal castle of Princess Peach. The expansive castle serves as the hub world of Super Mario 64, with the paintings within it acting as the portals between the game's several levels. In Super Mario 64's story, Bowser infilitrated the castle and trapped all the Toads and Power Stars within the castle walls.

November 22nd 1995
Found in the patent for the Ultra 64 (the original name for the Nintendo 64) are six images displaying Princess Peach's Castle in greyscale. These images show a slightly different version of the castle. Most notably, the stained glass window has been replaced with one of a clock and there's a large cloud that intersects the central tower of the castle.



Shoshinkai '95 Demo
With the first true unveiling of Super Mario 64 to the public came the first iteration of the castle, as well as the first look into the interior of the castle.

While the outside of the castle appears mostly unchanged from the patent aside from the removal of the cloud and other minor changes, the interior is vastly different from how it appears in the release. Instead of the walls being painted to look like a sunny meadow, it is instead painted to look more like a twilight sky with oranges at the bottom and dark blues at the top of the walls. The stairs that lead up to the second floor are also notably missing, instead replaced with two large steps Mario has to jump up.

Fourth Floor

 * See Princess Peach's Castle/Fourth Floor

In most copies of Super Mario 64, there are only four floors to Princess Peach's Castle: the basement, the ground floor, the second floor and then the final floor which houses the clock room and endless staircase. However, a mysterious fourth floor has been rumoured to exist within some copies of Super Mario 64.

Most interpretations of the fourth floor have spanning halls that seem to go on endlessly, with rows of Boos floating through the hall aimlessly.