Yes, it's almost been 30 years since Super Mario 64 released on the N64, and we're still finding out secrets and glitches in the game after almost three decades. Kaze Emanuar has been deep diving into the game in a bid to find out hitherto unknown facts about Mario's seminal 3D title, and he's discovered that time isn't always our favourite plumber's side.
Obviously, bugs are always going to get through the net in games, and as Kaze rightly says, it took Nintendo around 24 months to make SM64, so they weren't going to wait another 14 just to leave it running to see if any potential bugs emerged from people leaving the game on in the background.
Games have to keep track of time, but they can't deal with infinity. Eventually, timers will run out, and when they do, things start to turn weird. Take the Sushi the Shark bug - the gurgling sound that Sushi makes is supposed to happen every 16 frames, but when you leave the game on for 14 months, the sound disappears entirely, leaving you with just the soundtrack of Dire Dire Docks. There's also a glitch where the wings of the Rainbow Cruiser stop flapping after 14 months, but only on the Japanese version of the game - this one was squashed in the US and PAL versions.
Kaze has done a great job of explaining how this all works and the computer science behind it as well as exposing other SM64 glitches in the video below, so I'll leave it to him to give you the full lowdown and for you to enjoy the hard work he's put into this!
