Corruption

Game corruption is a non-inclusive concept within the realm of video gaming, often as a result of external hardware effecting a game such as tilting the cartridge.

In Super Mario 64, corruption is an occurance that will happen when the game has too many objects on screen at once. This concept was covered extensively in a video made by pannenkoek2012. Corruption can also occur by other means, and can therefore be accidentally triggered by the Personalisation A.I.. However since corruption cannot occur on natural Nintendo 64 hardware, these will often result in crashes instead.

Behaviour
When too many objects are on screen at once, the game's graphics will begin to glitch out. The game's HUD will disappear, the enemy shadows will become white boxes that are layered on top of everything else, and white meshes may fill the game's screen. These are all likely the game trying to save on resources. This is indicates that the game is corrupted, although this behaviour doesn't have to happen for the game to be considered corrupted.

With the game now corrupted, the player is completely unable to enter any paintings. The rippling effect of the paintings becomes too intensive for the game to handle, which results in the crash. This means every main course is inaccessible (except Big Boo's Haunt and Rainbow Ride), and the only way to leave the level without crashing the game is to exit out of the level by the pause screen; any other method will crash the game since Mario leaves the painting.

Corruption persists even after selecting a different save file. The corruption can only be stopped by resetting the game entirely.