Dancing Flowers

The Dancing Flowers is an unused topic in Super Mario 64.

In Super Mario 64, some areas have environmental effects that create particle effects in the stage. In Cool Cool Mountain and Snowman's Land, a snow effect creates the falling snow particles seen in-game. In Lethal Lava Land, an lava effect creates the lava bubbles that pop up and explode seen on the lava.

There are, however additional unused effects in Super Mario 64. One is a more intense version of the snow effect, and the other is a dancing flower effect.

The dancing flower effect creates flowers with the animated sprite shown on the right and places them on the level's horizontal surfaces. What's notable however, is that the sprites for the dancing flowers are actually found in the resources for Lethal Lava Land, but are never actually seen in the stage. Lethal Lava Land is a large inferno of an world; any plant-life in Lethal Lava Land would burn up very quickly.

This creates possibilities on why a sprite of a plant would be loaded in a stage unsuitable for plant-life;

1: Lethal Lava Land was originally not a fire-themed world and was instead a stage where the dancing flowers would be more appropriate to be found, and the flowers are just a leftover from it.

2: There was or is an area in Lethal Lava Land that had the dancing flower effect in it, and the flowers are just a leftover from it.

3: The dancing flowers effect was originally created for another stage that wasn't Lethal Lava Land; that stage was later scrapped (or is a stage from the current game that had the dancing flowers in it before they were removed) and the reason why the graphics for the Dancing Flowers are loaded in Lethal Lava Land is because the effect was being modified to create the lava bubble effect seen on the lava in the stage, and the flowers are just a leftover from it.