The plaque’s message has haunted the Internet for 30 years.
Super Mario 64 Fans have been obsessed with a blurry plaque in the castle courtyard for more than 30 years. We might finally know what’s written on it, according to a report from Chronicle of video games. That’s thanks to a programmer who used open source computer analysis software to get to the bottom of it.
This is not graphics scaling software. The image is just too blurry for that. Even modern reissues still have that same fuzzy plate, so that didn’t help anyone.
Instead, programmer Mochi64 used the analysis engine to examine millions of combinations of words and fonts, looking for something that matched the pixels on the plate. The end result? Mochi64 thinks the top of the plaque says “Eternal Star” and the bottom says “We hope so.”
This is not an absolute answer. These are simply the two sentences that provided the closest possible match through the analysis software. It’s still possible that it’s something else, but the software has done millions of comparisons.
There were several high-profile rumors throughout the 1990s and beyond that the plaque read “L is Real 2401”. This was seen as a tease that Luigi was hiding somewhere in the game. IGN actually offered a $100 bounty to anyone who could unlock Luigi and Nintendo Power even mentioned the “L is Real 2401” theory in an April Fool’s issue.
Here’s your only official footage of Super Mario 64 multiplayer from a Spaceworld 95 video kiosk as the camera clearly focuses on both charactershttps://t.co/cLCdSIl5B9 pic.twitter.com/RdtTGb8LpJ
– Yakumono (@LuigiBlood) December 15, 2023
This rumor gained new life when game director Shigeru Miyamoto noted that the team had been experimenting with a two-player mode. He also said that they abandoned the idea of preserving the memory, but that didn’t stop the rumor mill. An early version showing Mario and Luigi running around a bare room didn’t help matters.
So there you go. The phrase “Eternal Star” makes sense because the plaque sits beneath a giant star statue. Perhaps the second sentence of “We hope so” indicates that the developers wanted players to collect all the stars. Either way, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever get an official confirmation from Nintendo.
Gn tech
