Many secrets have already emerged from Mario’s first 3D adventure adventure, Super Mario 64, after the Nintendo Gigaleak, but now the plumber’s karting career is also being thoroughly investigated. Now a full track that has been scrapped from the final version of Mario Kart 64 has been discovered and reassembled, and even in its beta phase, it appears to be quite vast in size and detail.
TCRF User Streams has managed to load the model more clearly into Blender with the correct textures.
Now we can see that this is definitely the Mario Kart 64 city cut referenced in old interviews, unrelated to the prototype Zelda 64 city map, despite the visual similarity. pic.twitter.com/5SI26oVe9l
– MrTalida (@MrTalida) July 27, 2020
in a 1996 interview with producer Shigeru Miyamoto From Japanese Mario Kart 64 strategy guide, Miyamoto actually seems to refer to this newly recovered track, and even explains why the team decided to remove it from the game. “U.S […] It made a great track of the city, with a castle and a nice pond, where you have to run through all these different houses and buildings, “Miyamoto explained.” Unfortunately, it was a very large map and it took too long to traverse it. “
I wasn’t kidding when it comes to track size; It looks much bigger than the tracks seen in the official launch of Mario Kart 64, even giving Rainbow Road a run for its money in terms of length. In the following video, completing a single lap around the track at a reasonably fast and constant speed takes two full minutes!
YouTube user micro500, who provided the images above, also provides additional information. “We believe that the brown rectangles around the course should be arrow signs that indicate the direction in which it should go,” they state in the video description. “These don’t seem to be configured correctly in the level data.”
They also touch some of the infrastructures that surround the pond to which Miyamoto referred 24 years ago. “Around the pond in the center of the level there is a geometry for a fence to keep you out of the water, but the textures were not set up correctly, causing the fence to not show.”
Along with the delivery of N64, assets for the original Super Mario Kart have also been found. The most notable runner in these sprite sheets is a generic, unused, human character with a racing helmet that hides his face. There are also some slight differences to the first few sprites on the existing roster: Koopa Troopa looks particularly weird when viewed from behind, with a much more rounded head than its final counterpart.
Super Mario Kart first sprites. pic.twitter.com/jp5wRXX7VT
– toruzz (@toruzz) July 26, 2020
In the aforementioned 90s interview, Miyamoto also confirmed that another track was cut from the final version of Mario Kart 64, which features “a large multi-story parking lot-like structure.” We look forward to seeing this other legendary song come to light as Mario Kart 64 fans continue to search the leaked files.
