MariOS 64

MariOS 64 was a cancelled operating system/GUI developed by Nintendo that was supposed to be a mixture between a personal computer, the game Super Mario 64, and an engine used to modify/make user-made content for the game. It was a program meant for a wide variety of audience including families, hardcore gamers, and programmers. The interface of the program was akin to Microsoft Bob, with screens portraying rooms of Princess Peach's Castle that contain various objects that are representative towards applications, and characters in the Super Mario franchise providing guidance for using applications (like Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and Toad to name some).

The intended release date of MariOS 64 was around 2001, the 5th year anniversary of Super Mario 64's release. Along with this, it is highly suspected that the program was based off of Microsoft Bob in particular, due to similar interfaces and quirks that are in both systems. Considering that Microsoft Bob was a commercial failure, it probably didn't go so well with MariOS 64's development.

The program itself was found from a private chat forum in which one of the users there had gotten into contact with an anonymous programmer for Nintendo. The programmer had leaked the somehow finished build of MariOS 64 to the anonymous user, in which it was spread onto the chat. It was agreed upon to not leak the build of the program to the public due to the dangers that come with Super Mario 64 and its Personalisation A.I. However, a lot of information has been documented of the program and the contents that it has.

Applications
The main interface of the program is of Princess Peach's Castle, akin to the house from Microsoft Bob's interface. The castle in the program contains various rooms in which various applications are used in. The castle's rooms can be decorated with various objects, along with custom made objects and images downloaded from the internet. The objects have various amounts of ways they can be altered, including size, color, being added or removed, duplicated, among many other options. Some objects that can be placed do special animations when clicked on.

Applications of the program are represented by unremovable, "special" decorations in the rooms, that which can be clicked on to execute them. One of the main applications of MariOS 64 would be the special version of Super Mario 64 that was contained in it which seemed to have a severe, more accelerated/advanced version of the Personalization A.I inside of it. Along with this, the version of Super Mario 64 has been enhanced because of its connection towards the internet and additional features that come with it and the applications/advances of the MariOS 64 program itself.

Another set of applications are akin to many operating systems/GUIs in which functions like making documents, checking the calendar, changing languages, and many other features in the program that aren't related to Super Mario 64. Applications like a web searching service have also been added in the program, meaning that accessing the internet is possible for MariOS 64.

One last set of applications regard custom made content for Super Mario 64. Through the applications, it is possible to create sound effects, objects, levels, models, animations, and many more things that can be placed into the game. It's also possible to alter existing content in the game. This set of applications could be related to the development programs used to make Super Mario 64.

MariOS 64 also contains desktop assistants that can be used to help out with using the program, which are characters from the Mario series. Along with helping out, these assistants can also tell jokes, sing songs, talk with the user using a chat engine, tell stories, among other amusing functions. It is also possible to make custom made assistants through one of the applications for MariOS 64.

Programmer Anecdote Regarding Development
'' The following text is an alleged claim of the development of MariOS 64, sent out by the anonymous programmer. This is unverified, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. ''

"I don't know if I should be talking more about this, but if you really must know about what I had worked on for Nintendo and how this whole program was going to be, then fine. I'll fess up and say what I can tell you that I know of. Many of you people have heard about the artificial intelligence used for the Nintendo 64 version of Super Mario 64, and how it cannot be run on emulators. The reason why these emulators cannot run the AI is due to how the bond between the console and the game ROM had caused the AI to function, and that many of these people don't know how that bond can be replicated.

''I was hired as one of the programmers of the MariOS 64 operating system, and was one of the people in one of the development teams tasked to modify the AI used for the Nintendo 64 game to run on the system. My specific task was to replicate the bond between the console and game through the operating system in question. The detail on how this works is that I had to port the "bonding code" of the Nintendo 64 onto the operating system, which was a hard task to do. I cannot share the code in its raw form, and it has been modified to not appear if it's decompiled. It's probably a good thing in case anybody was stupid enough to use the AI to do stuff in their games. I hadn't known of the side effects it had caused onto people at this time, but now with the whole rumors being out I had second thoughts on showing off what causes this thing to work. The decompilation censoring was assigned by Nintendo, claiming that it had to be done for "safety purposes relating to people potentially plagiarizing our work". I didn't think that was suspicious at the time, but hey, the company takes down fan-made projects daily, so I don't really know what they were thinking.''

''Originally, MariOS 64 was just going to be a PC port of Super Mario 64 with a few modified tweaks here and there to optimize the game to run on computers. Before this whole AI thing, Nintendo hadn't really been interested in making PC games at all, considering the consoles they make. However, Nintendo thought that the capabilities of computers would allow for the AI to be more advanced and can work more efficiently. The shift in development started one of the people who are in charge of Nintendo, I think it was Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Mario himself), had seen and played with one of Microsoft's GUIs. This GUI he had played was known as Microsoft Bob, and I know how much of a failure that was. Nonetheless, Miyamoto seemed to take a liking towards it and thought it could have potential. To him, it being made for offices and workplaces was one of the main reasons that the GUI didn't take off as much; when it could've been targeted for families and children due to the visuals and characters used in it being child-friendly. He told all of us who had worked on making just the PC port of the game to make it also an operating system connected to the game.''

''About the advancement of the AI, I was not actually involved in the coding for the new parts of the AI that made it do more than it did on the original console and game. I merely just ported the console's coding that allowed the AI to function in Super Mario 64. How Nintendo had advanced the AI and made the original so that it originates in Super Mario 64 first is completely beyond me. None of the employees in out development team were involved in making the AI more advanced, as it was taken to another development team to do so, at least to my knowledge. The development team who did all of this did not want to explain or show what they did, nor did Nintendo give us the information on what said team did.''

''There were also aspects of the operating system made for custom generated content for the version of Super Mario 64 on the operating system. Nintendo had a lot of experimental works with "creating" things, so to say, like Mario Paint for example. There always was this sort of sense of experimentation with Nintendo on making unusual things with what they had. We also toyed with the idea that since the operating system could connect to the internet, that it should be a part of the custom generation too, meaning that people could share their works with others and have them see their creations. I think that this was later used for Super Mario Maker, albeit less compact and only having the whole level editing thing.''

''We really wanted to release this OS around 2001, which was the 5th year anniversary of the release of Super Mario 64. Along with this, another set of developers worked on the sequel of the game too, which I have not that much information on. However, both of these products were never released, and were cancelled. For the sequel to Super Mario 64, it has been stated by Nintendo that the failure of the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive was the cause of the cancellation. Nintendo never announced anything related towards MariOS 64 though. I had lurked around the internet for quite a long time, and saw one of the iceberg images of Super Mario 64 which had claimed as one of the deeper conspiracy theories that Super Mario 64's sequel was actually canceled due to a "temporal leakage" of some sort. What this means is not a complete mystery to me, as the wording was probably made to sound more sophisticated; "temporal". If this theory is true, then I think somebody had leaked on some deep part of the internet many of the rumors and such about Super Mario 64 itself, perhaps maybe the AI itself, which could have caused Nintendo to cancel anything related to the game. Perhaps it was the "Full Oman Archives" that were leaked, since both the release date for the sequel was for 1999 and the Oman Archives were leaked in that same year. With that same boat, it may be a possibility that the AI from the 64 version was leaked from the full archives, but don't quote me on that.''

''The strangest part about it all was that, booting up the final build that we had, I think that the game had "finished" itself, so to say. Some features that I recall that were not finished by the time Nintendo cancelled MariOS 64 seemed to now be finished, but it could be because of faulty memory that I couldn't remember them being finished. Maybe making the AI more advanced made it learn to "code" itself? It's a stretch, but considering what you people have said in the past few weeks, I am not sure if it's actually true or not. The point is, Nintendo indirectly did finish this cancelled program, at least to my knowledge."''

Early Builds
Early alpha builds of MariOS before the Microsoft BOB-like desktop was made seemed to have used early versions of the K Desktop Environment. Not much is known about these builds except a few images where in one you can see a basic window with a 2 panel layout. The wallpaper had a grayed out Mario on a dark teal wallpaper with the panels gray.

When the BOB-like desktop was being made it didn't look like Microsoft BOB at all, it looked more like a traditional desktop at the time still keeping the 2 panel layout