Nintendo preservation site Forest of Illusion, in collaboration with Render Archive and NintendoWarden, have uncovered what appears to be a cut stage from Super Mario 64.
The screenshot reel from a pre-release build of the game was found in the long-sought after 1996 Nintendo Company Report.
The report, which has been carefully scanned and uploaded here, includes the standard yearly company round-up, plus some accompanying images of Nintendos star roster and various consoles including the Nintendo 64 and the destined for failure Virtual Boy.
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But the most interesting part of the report is the page that shows various screenshots of B-roll Nintendo 64 footage from 1995. Its here that we see still frames from a never-before-seen look ghost stage.
Forest of Illusion combined these stills into a GIF so we can get a better impression of what the gameplay would have looked like.
Now for the insane part…One of the pages shows various screenshots from the currently missing “extended” 1995 Nintendo 64 B-roll. Why is this a big deal? It shows a never-before-seen look at Super Mario 64s mysterious ghost stage! Below is a gif to view each frame in action. pic.twitter.com/KsifRUaSg2
— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) September 21, 2022
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Most of the text in the report is, however, in Japanese and not in a machine-readable format which doesnt make it easy to stick in a machine translator.
Still, its pretty cool to see some new tidbits from a game that was supposedly thoroughly broken down and examined.
