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As anybody who as grown up with the Nintendo 64 knows, Zelda OoT and Mario 64 to a lesser extent have a grand mystique about them that only grows as time goes on.

The latest developments being decompilation projects and Nintendo leaks only add to this. Naturally, many of us who grew up looking at magazines of early dev builds openly ponder what lies under the surface of the code.

Anyway, grandiose intro aside I like this hack because the concept of inserting prerelease content back into the game is amusing and interesting all the same.

I had fun replaying many of the stages of Mario 64 and looking at various differences I could find. Some changes are better than others.

So far my observations include:

Bomb-bom (I forget how to spell that). The Pink friendlies are now faceless Black bombs, the lack of eyes is somewhat irking. Don't know why. The addition of a shell that can be picked up is interesting yet using it as a weapon isn't that great. The lack of wing cap box on the floaty bit makes completing that star a bit tricky. The addition of landmines are an interesting touch. King Bob-omb being replaced with Chuck-King is interesting. The flowers are nice too I suppose.

The second area, the tower in the sky, I guess, I haven't got too far in that one yet. I'm actually at a loss as to how to proceed in that one. The star that you find behind a wall in the tower that you break by punching is interesting as I don't recall that in the original game.

In the snow area, bringing the baby penguin down to its mother is easier said than done as mom seems to have vanished. Not sure what's up with that.

The pirate ship in the sky is interesting, makes the entire stage feel a little creepy to be honest. Anyway, the eel is yellow and the clams are white. Getting the first star is not possible as the box is too high up for Mario to reach, bit of a snag there.

Other observations:

The side jump is lower, that could make some places a bit difficult later in the game.

I like the beta HUD and coin design much better than the final one. I'd encourage the author to release a separate hack that just changes the HUD and coins they look so good.

The switch to enable shell boxes is interesting. Not sure why it's in the secret slide, but that's as good a place as ever I suppose.