A recreation of what the Purple ! Box's sprites may look like.
The Purple ! Box is an anomalous type of ! Box that is purple in color, hence the name, that appears in several personalized copies of Super Mario 64. This anomalous box can contain numerous different objects, or have several anomalous effects upon being located and/or opened in the copy. The Purple ! Box is a rather unique anomaly, as it is one of the few reported anomalous ! Boxes not consistently tied to Cap Switches.
Description[]
The Purple ! Box is often not anomalous itself beyond being a unique 5th ! Box, though is often reported in anomalous levels, particularly the Switch Palace and Floor 2B's Switch Dungeon level, likely due to the association between switches and most ! Boxes. However, the Purple ! Box reportedly does not have a set Cap Switch, meaning that it is commonly activated from the start of the game unless something else has to be triggered, such as pressing the purple ! switches, notably seen in the base game, being pressed to spawn boxes used to access parts of the levels they are found in, clearing the Switch Palace or Switch Dungeon levels, or just collecting a certain amount of Power Stars.
The Purple ! Box itself can reportedly appear anywhere in the game, often in place of regular ! Boxes. The contents of the Purple ! Box are varied, either being any object inside of the 4 types of ! Boxes in the base game, anomalous Power-Ups such as the Fire Flower or Safety Cap, anomalous collectibles such as discolored Power Stars, or entirely unique objects often associated with the Purple ! Box, often being specific to certain levels in order to progress nicknamed "Quest Items," such as a water bubble to cool down some lava in Lethal Lava Land to reach a Power Star or other collectible.
Several strange anomalies have been reported after encountering the Purple ! Box for currently unknown reasons, with the most commonly accepted theory being that the box is an indicator of future personalization, similarly to the White-Eyed Chomp. However, it appears to indicate less major anomalies, instead indicating lots of Dynamic Level Rearrangement and Enemy Discoloring, and at most a new, relatively small area in the castle, commonly scaling with how anomalous the items inside of the Purple ! Box are. However, this does not appear to be 100% consistent, as the Purple ! Box has been associated with the Switch Dungeon level, primarily appearing in Floor 2B, an entirely new floor, which does not appear to fit with the rest of the anomalies said to appear after seeing the Purple ! Box.
Theorizing[]
The Purple ! Box has been theorized to be connected to objects that were not reimplemented alongside the anomalous object, causing it's item variety and lack of consistent method of unlocking it. However, this has caused several to question why the box is implemented and not the other objects associated with it, though this has been countered by people saying that the objects that are associated with the Purple ! Box in the copies are the objects meant to be associated with the anomaly.
There have been several theories meant to explain why the Purple ! Box appears to indicate future, relatively mild personalization in the copy upon being encountered. Some claim that this is simply a coincidence, as well as that the Purple ! Box is simply mild personalization that appears amongst mild personalization, being the simplest explanation. Another theory is that the Purple ! Box was intentionally designed as an indicator of personalization, meant to test the Personalization A.I., explaining the lack of associated objects with the Purple ! Box, as this theory suggests they were not meant to exist in the first place. However, why a box was used instead of something more fitting such as a meter of some sort is unexplained.
The Throne Room
The video in question where the Purple ! Box briefly appears.
Trivia[]
- The Purple ! Box briefly makes an appearance in BlackJoystick's video on the Throne Room, appearing in the background of the Throne Room as a decoration, being warped and distorted. The implications of this are not quite clear, with many coming to the conclusion that the object was not entirely reimplemented or was reimplemented incorrectly, causing the model to become glitched. Whether or not it could be interacted with is unclear.
