Paper Mario Fan Finds Secret Messages in Original Game
By John Jacques 01 November 2016
16 years after Paper Mario arrived on the Nintendo 64, one glitch-using fan has uncovered secret messages in the game left behind by Nintendo developers.
While it’s common for game developers to stuff their creations full of Easter Eggs for curious gamers to stumble upon, sometimes their work is truly never meant for the public eye. A strong example of the latter reared its head this week in an unexpected place: a 16 year old game called Paper Mario. One Nintendo fan unintentionally uncovered some cryptic-sounding secret messages that have laid dormant since August 2000, and it didn’t take long for those messages to spread like wildfire once they were posted to Twitter.
This week has already borne witness to a 20 year old Super Mario 64 secret, so we have to imagine the plumber must be hiding a few secrets in many of his other titles, too. We have little doubt the upcoming open world Mario title (rumored) would provide ample space for such things, but for now let’s take a gander at the 16-year-old messages below:
Hey @NintendoAmerica just heads up
Translated: "You shouldn't be able to get here yet. If you did, it's a bug, so please get in contact." pic.twitter.com/uyAVfTKbnI— Stryder7x (@Stryder7x) October 24, 2016
Stryder7x explained that he found the secret Paper Mario messages by going out of bounds using the game’s infamous ‘log skip’ glitch, which also requires that players perform another glitch called the ‘Rowf clip’. The glitch lets players progress to the southern side of Toad Town before they complete Chapter 1, an act which is supposed to be impossible due to the path being blocked by logs. By doing so, gamers arrive in Toad Town’s south side far earlier in the storyline than they should be allowed to do.
However, it’s evident that the inhabitants of Toad Town know something is amiss when Mario shows up to the party early, as in the Japanese version of Paper Mario the self-aware citizens eerily tell Mario that he “shouldn’t be here” and to “let them know.” While that message sounds very creepy at first, it’s likely Nintendo is encouraging anyone who somehow views the message to contact the developers and make them aware of the bug – so that’s exactly what Stryder7x did.
Nintendo hasn’t responded to the gamer’s Tweet, but we like to imagine somewhere there’s a developer who just woke up, saw that a 16-year-old glitch notification had been discovered, and then went right back to bed.
Gamers can always take a more modern Paper Mario adventure with their favorite plumber by taking a gander at the new Paper Mario: Color Splash for the Nintendo Wii U.
Source: Kotaku
