The planned boxart for the game.
Super Mario 64 DSi was a cancelled game which was planned to release on June 14th, 2009. It was originally planned to be the same game as Super Mario 64 DS but with more features that were specifically made for the DSi. The star count for completing the game (which means beating Bowser) is now 136, because of the microphone-only stars you need to get in order to complete the game and as well as the new levels.
New Features[]
Camera Usage[]
The software working in action, showing the computer user selecting a file from their file list.
One of the new features of Super Mario 64 DSi is in the start menu. The player is able to draw or even mess around with a pre-drawn character, and they would also be able to take a picture of themselves using the DSi’s front camera. The game would then turn the picture into a drawing, and allow the player to mess around with the image in a similar vein to original pre-drawn images.
The icon of the aforementioned software.
When the player completes the game, they would have unlocked a new option in the Options Menu which unlocks a gimmick in which the player could replace the faces of the original pre-drawn characters with the player’s own face via the camera. There is also an option which allows the player to connect their DSi to a Windows computer via local internet and upload a photo file from there. The user first needed to download a piece of software from the Nintendo website, which was called Super Mario 64 DSi Selection Program, the placeholder name at the time. The computer user was then able to use the Local Connect feature of the program in order to import their photos. If the computer found the end user’s DSi on the local network, it would then automatically open up the default file path for photos for which version of Windows the end user was running and allow the end user to pick a photo from File Explorer. There is only one known screenshot of this program working in action, and there is only one screenshot that shows the Desktop shortcut of the software. Both of the aforementioned screenshots were found in a leaked game manual for Super Mario 64 DSi.
Microphone Usage[]
Another new feature was the addition of a microphone system; at some points of the game, a Toad would be stuck on a tiny floating island or a cloud reminiscent of a Lakitu's near the course, and the player would have to use the microphone to yell at the Toad to get off of the tiny floating island, startling them and causing them to fall to the ground. This will cause the cloud to dissipate, or the island to break apart, depending on which appeared. Doing this would allow you to get an extra star, which is required due to the game having a higher star count.
Something else that was planned during development was that the player could make Yoshi breathe out fire, ice, or just simply his tongue using the microphone. This was planned to be mainly optimised for Touch Mode, although it was still arranged so that the player could use this feature for other Control Modes too.
New Playable Character[]
The magazine.
A new character was planned to be added in the game; Waluigi, presumably the developers wanting to bring him back due to his presence as an unused character that was almost entirely finished before being scrapped in the original game requiring minimum effort. According to one source, Waluigi would have been unlocked on the third floor in a room behind a black brick box Wario would need to break. Inside, there would be a hidden room with a Waluigi painting that leads to the Piranha Pit.
Waluigi was planned to have his own abilities; he would be able to jump higher than the other characters, and when he collects the Power Flower he would be able to move extremely fast, allowing him to traverse entire levels with ease. These abilities, notably enough, were outlined in the notorious Purple Prizes magazine.
New Levels[]
There are only two recorded levels that are known to leakers.
Motoman Factory[]
This level is likely based off of the randomly-appearing Motos Factory from Super Mario 64, albeit it is additionally believed that the Motos Factory was at least planned to be added to the game early on but was scrapped very early. It was going to be locked behind a 10-star door on the first floor.
Piranha Pit[]
See the page appropriate for this level: The Piranha Pit | MIPS Hole Wiki | Fandom
New Enemies[]
There are four new enemies that are presented in some of the already-used levels.
Motoman[]
The Motoman, named after the original cut character of the Motos, functioned the same as Chuckyas, and were originally going to appear in similar levels such as the aforementioned. There was, additionally, two brand new levels planned for them (Piranha Pit and Motoman Factory), albeit they would get cut early on during development for reasons relatively unknown, albeit it is likely because that they were seen as being too similar to the Chuckyas. Wario was going to be able to ground-pound them.
Moticeman[]
The Moticeman, also known as the Chilly Motoman, are an ice-variant of the Motomen that Wario is unable to groundpound. They appeared in Cool, Cool Mountain and Snowman's Land
Chief Motoman[]
The Chief Motoman was going to appear in a scrapped sub-level of Big Boo's Haunt. The level itself was removed very early on in development, albeit the Chief Motoman was only scrapped just about some time before the game was cancelled, making it one of the longest-surviving elements in the game.
There was some planned dialogue for this character that differs on who you are playing as albeit only the version that plays out if you are Luigi has been leaked so far:
"Huh? Who are you? I don't remember inviting you here.
Hold on--you're Mario's brother? Haha, you're that little weaking Luigi, aren't you?
Well, as we Motomen always say--GET 'EM!!!!!"
This is the dialogue of when it gets defeated by Luigi:
"Augh! Why did you have to hit me on the head so many times with your stupid spinny-jump attacks?
Ugh, fine, you can have my power star, weakling! Here it is..."
Slicker[]
The Slicker was originally set to appear in Hazy Maze Cave and Dire Dire Docks. Their appearance is that of a low-poly black sphere. It would have bouncd towards the player and leave a kind of 'trail' (as a modified fire texture) behind them. They would have died if they had touched water.
New Minigames[]
5 new minigames were introduced in Super Mario 64 DSi. It is unknown what these minigames were, but it has be speculated that they were some of the anomalous minigames players have found in the original Super Mario 64 DS. which. However, it is commonly accepted that the 5 are Badly Wanted!, Sort and ‘Scape, War-io, Collapsing Coinage, and a minigame from Mario's Game Gallery to explain their manifestations in SM64DS as they do not appear to be based off of any unused text string.
Multiplayer Co-op[]
Perhaps the biggest feature that was added was true multiplayer co-op. Using Nintendo Wi-Fi, the player would have been able to connect to the network and play with other players. The limit of people who could play depended on the characters unlocked by the one hosting the multiplayer.
The co-op mode would be like normal SM64DS, but new features are added that require cooperation from other players, such as in Cool, Cool Mountain, where in order to get a red coin near the mountain, a Wario player must throw a Yoshi player in order to get it.
If a player had already chosen a certain character, that character would be unavailable to others. Players would be able to technically bypass this by getting the cap of that certain character, unless it was Yoshi, by simply having a Yoshi player enter a certain course and finding the respective caps. There were also hats set around the castle for Yoshi players to use in the case of them needing it for the powerup at the top of the castle.
There was also an optional mode for co-op that was restricted to local networking, of which was playing minigames together. It added 5 other new minigames that were co-op only. These specific minigames are also speculated upon, but were likely other unused or anomalous minigames from the original game. Online networking was planned for this mode as well, but it was cut and ultimately restricted to only be local multiplayer due to Nintendo servers at the time experiencing errors with the co-op only minigames.
Leaks[]
On February 15th, 2013, the game was leaked by a former Nintendo employee who simply goes by the alias of “R”. The leak showed off multiple features of the game, and an entire website was created dedicated to documenting this cancelled game, albeit it was deleted in 2014/2015. The reason for deletion is unknown, with the most common explanation being copyright, but another rumour has been spread around lately that Nintendo Ninjas may have had something to do with it.
Manual[]
One of the leaks involved an unreleased manual for the game. Unfortunately, only 2 pages have been recovered from the leak, one of which seems to go over the camera feature of the game, the other appears to go over what features were added to the game.
The 2 leaked pages of the aforementioned manual.