Nintendo Patented the 3D Camera Midway Through Super Mario 64, and the Team Was Stunned
The Making Of Super Mario 64 – full Giles Goddard interview (2001)
In a 2001 interview, Nintendo coder Giles Goddard recalls the making of Super Mario 64: a team of about 15, no talking in the office, and Miyamoto obsessing over Mario's movement and camera feel. The game began on SGI Onyx emulators with modified Sega controllers, and the Mario face was an experiment that became a secret playable bonus. Halfway through, Sega's patent on switching 3D camera views left the team shocked.
So, suddenly, halfway through the Super Mario 64 project, one of the people from downstairs came up and said you realise Sega has the patent on being able to switch cameras. Jaws dropped.
- deltaburnt
I often think about how crazy it must have been to be a game developer around this period. Almost every bit of design, math, coding knowledge was flipped on its head. Overnight developers who were managing relatively simple XY coordinates suddenly had to discover the complexities of 3D rotations, perspective math, and probably more linear algebra than they ever really expected to know.
It’s even crazier we got masterpieces like Mario 64 so early into the first 3D console generation.
- okeuro49
If you are interested in Mario 64 have a look at Kaze Emanuar's YouTube channel.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
From Wikipedia:
> Starting from 2022, Emanuar would begin uploading videos discussing Nintendo 64 technical details and optimization techniques,[15] along with outlining Super Mario 64's bugs, technical shortcomings and poorly optimized features, fixing them in the process.[16][17][18][19] He would heavily rework the game's source code in 2024 and use it as a base for his collaborative ROM hack Return to Yoshi's Island, which resulted in increased frame rate and improved graphical fidelity compared to the original game, even when running on the original Nintendo 64.
- Aissen
> What’s the secret behind that Mario ‘feel’?
> I think that is fine-tuning. Many, many, many hours and days spent actually sitting down and playing the game.
Turns out quality takes time. Who would have thought. Very few games reach this level of fine-tuning, because it takes dedication (and budget).
Funnily, it's almost conflicting with this answer:
> Was much changed during development?
> Apart from the number of polygons use, the characters were first-off – once they were designed, they went straight into the game. There wasn’t really a lot of changing, artists just kept supplying stuff that just got put in the game, conveyor-belt style. That was more or less because of a very, very tight deadline – it had to be out right when the N64 came out.
So it's more nuanced. You fine-tune the fundamentals, but not necessarily everything.
- a1o
> How many people were on the Super Mario 64 team?
> Probably about 15 people in the end.
Whoa, a much smaller team than I imagined! It must have been fun working in this group!! The rest of the interview is also cool but was impressed with this small number!!
- olivierestsage
I appreciated the detail about the silent work environment, as opposed to today (in the US at least), where if you want silence to concentrate, the burden is on you to defend against noise rather than the other way around