The "Super Mario Movie" Phenomenon (shortened to the SMM Phenomenon) refers to multiple reported instances in Super Mario 64 where the game itself corrupted so hard in a way to depict events that aren't supposed to happen but make sense in their own way. This phenomenon's results can vary from person to person's copy of Super Mario 64.
The SMM Phenomenon's cause could be aligned to multiple reasons like game corruption, cartridge tilting, over-personalization, and the increased aging of Super Mario 64 cartridges. However, the most likely causes of the SMM Phenomenon can be aligned to the Personalization A.I. malfunctioning and trying to salvage what it can to make the game function. Such instances of the phenomenon could be related specifically to severe corruptions and malfunctions related to The Self-Patching Anomaly, in which the glitches of the game are added in, along with corrupting some parts of the game.
Reportings[]
Everything reported here should be taken with skepticism, as these reportings are unverified.
Report #1[]
Since I had heard about recent Super Mario 64 rumors about the game being "personalized", I think it's appropriate for me to tell my story about what happened in my copy of the game. I think it all started when I went to Wet-Dry World, shocker I know. I personally think that the place felt desolate and uncomfortable for me, but that's beside the point. The star I was trying to collect was the five secrets one on the upper portion of the level, and I was on my last life. One thing I had noticed while playing beforehand was that Mario was panting all the time when he was still as if he had low health, even if it was full. It didn't affect the game to my knowledge so I didn't mind, but now I think it was foreshadowing on what was to come.
I never really liked being in Wet-Dry World, so I tried to get the star as fast as possible. That was probably how I got into this mess, considering that rushing can make you prone to mistakes more. What made me lose my last life was me miss-calculating a jump to get one of the secrets; the one near the platform with the Amp and coins circling said platform. I expected the normal sequence of events where the Bowser silhouette covered the screen and then cut back to the Title Screen with Mario all down, but it seemed that the silhouette wasn't there at all. The screen still focused on Mario's dead body, with the music still playing. After some seconds, I repeatedly heard the voice of Mario say "So long" over and over for some time. Since I thought that this was some sort of weird softlock, I proceeded to restart the Nintendo 64 console. Maybe that was a good or bad idea, I'm not certain, but the results were not what I was expected.
When I got back to my save of the game, it seemed like the game sort of saved its progress, with Mario now having -1 lives (shown as M1 in the game). Along with that, Mario seemed to be invisible with the shadow of him strangely not. The trees were also gone too, and the grass textures were colored a dull brown instead of a vibrant green. The castle's outside's colors seemed to be different too, using the shading of the final boss fight version of Bowser in Bowser in the Sky. The castle's interior was also dulled out, with the colors of it being replaced with monotone blacks, greys, and whites. The Toads were not there either, and the music seemed to be just crackling sounds in frequent volumes.
Most of the courses seemed to have been corrupted in their own right, with the colors being all over the place. No enemies, coins, or even anything else were found. Not even the stars and bosses were there, which made progress seemingly impossible. The music was still there, which contrasted harshly with the visuals I saw. One of the last courses I had investigated was of course, the course that I had gotten a "game over" on; Wet-Dry World. Of course I had to investigate there, I thought to myself.
The contents on what I had seen in the area were normal in some capacity, barring that the objects Mario had interacted and gotten rid of before he died still being in the state that they were in before I restarted the console. However, one thing I had seen really did perplexed me, and that was the body of Mario still being where it was when the game softlocked. I knew about the astral projection glitch, but that was in one game and involved a Chuckya to cause it. That couldn't be what was being shown in my game. When the shadow touched Mario's body, the game had crashed with a loud buzzing noise blaring out. It was time for me to restart the console again.
What's even stranger was when I got back to my save file again, things seemed to be normal again. Mario started with his usual 5 or 4 lives (couldn't remember that detail on top of my head), and the castle was back to its normal state. However, I noticed that the star counter had increased by one star. When I got back to Wet-Dry World, the 5 secret star seemed to be collected. That was a wild experience, but it seemed to be quite odd how the game seemed to execute a "bad ending" of some sort when I restarted the console for the first time; that Bowser was the victor and turned the worlds around him into desolate places with nothing to be seen. I don't think anyone else had experienced this before, so I think that this could be proof of personalization in the game.
Report #2[]
Has anybody ever experienced this with their copy of Super Mario 64 before? What do I mean is that I had found some weird, unintended event in the game that no one has really seen before. I don't know where to start with this, considering that it occurred when the star select screen was prompted up when I went to one of the paintings of the game. Of course, usually there are only 6 stars that are obtainable in the screen to select, with one other being rewarded when you collect 100 coins, but somehow I was able to select other courses and their stars. The course number even changed depending on the course.
That may sound quite the lucky event to occur, considering I could be able to collect any star without the star requirements. But, there seemed to be a catch. Going from course to course, I noticed that I can select stars of the secret and Bowser courses, but the course number did not increase. I had heard about secret levels in the game before via rumors, so I decided to go further with my exploration to see if these rumors were true. It seemed to be disproven, when I saw that the course name and the star names were nowhere to be seen and that I can't seem to choose the stars. Somehow, the HUD of the game seemed to appear every time I went from blank course to blank course, with the star count incrementing by 7.
When the star count extended from 120, something odd seemed to occur. The text that was supposed to appear seemed to come back, but the text was ineligible gibberish. I still couldn't access these blank courses, so I couldn't tell you if there were unused areas in the game. I noticed other effects while I continued to go through course to course such as the screen flickering, the course number being randomized from 1-15, the star placement being all over the place, and the parts of the HUD for Mario's lives and coins randomly disappearing and reappearing. Eventually, the gibberish text became corrupted with garbled lines and such replacing it.
The effects of the game seemed to worsen the higher the stars I got, until I got to 999 stars. Everything from the screen disappeared except for one star, the star count in the HUD and eligible text that read out "All That Glitters Is Not Gold". Trying to go back to the other courses was impossible at this point, so I had no choice but either to choose the star, or restart the console. I chose the former option, and Mario was back to the starting point outside Peach's castle. It seemed like the game had restarted itself, since now I had 0 stars left.
The only thought I had that could explain some of what had happened was that there was an anti-cheat system of some sort that was at least in my copy of Super Mario 64. Nintendo seemed to want me and possibly other people to deter away from going the easy way out by punishing me in the game, which can explain the whole "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" name being there.
Trivia[]
- The name of this anomaly is based off of Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad's Super Mario Movie, in which they had altered the NES game Super Mario Bros. to present a movie.
- Similar events had seemed to happen in emulated corrupted versions of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To the Past with "The Legend of Sen" and a bootleg Sonic NES game with "Sonic Has Passed". Both of these corrupted events were shown in videos made by Vinny from Vinesauce.
