Super Mario 128 - Descriptions

Here you'll find Nintendo's official description of the demo, as well as my event-by-event description of the demo.

Official Nintendo Description

The following description was originally by Nintendo, most likely on a special preview website.

Next, Mr. Miyamoto explained the software capabilities of the Nintendo GAMECUBE. "My profession is making games," said Miyamoto. "Our idea is not to promote the creation of games with this GAMECUBE that have incredible graphics, require an increasing number of resources, and escalate development costs." To demonstrate some of the capabilities of the system, Mr. Miyamoto turned to his "Super Mario 128" demo. With the help of one of his staff members, Mr. Futoda, Mr. Miyamoto ran through a very humorous demonstration of the capabilities of the Nintendo GAMECUBE. Within short order he had displayed 128 Marios on the screen, each made up of about 700 polygons (the same model was used in Super Mario 64) running at 60 frames per second. Each Mario ran around on a circular platform, interacting with other Marios and 128 cubes strewn about on the landscape. Throughout the demonstration a green bar at the bottom of the screen monitored the processing time. If that green bar reached all the way to the right side of the screen, the demo would be running at 30 frames per second, the same rate as Super Mario 64. During the entire demo, including the later parts where Mr. Miyamoto warped the flat platform to complicate the demo's real-time physics and collision detection, and applied many special effects to the polygons, the green bar didn't even go halfway across the screen. Despite the impressive aspects of the Super Mario 128 demo, Mr. Miyamoto explained that his purpose was not to show off the power of the hardware. Rather, he summed up: "We software developers have been fooled in the past by claims from hardware people of high performance. Speaking from past experience, there have always been catalogue-like theoretical claims of high performance figures for hardware CPUs. As always everyone was very impressed by this figures, but if you looked at the actual product only about 1/10 of the claims were true. Even though we were aware of this problem and tried to avoid it with the N64 the same thing happened. So today I did not plan on professing to you any catalogue-like capabilities. Instead I wanted to show you what it can do by using realistic game processing."

Event-by-event Demo Description

  1. Mr. Miyamoto shows off the Wavebird controller and hands one to his assistant. The demo is controlled by two people simultaneously, although none of the actual Marios will be controlled, only the stage, camera, boxes, and effects.
  2. Mr. Miyamoto announces the title of the demo, Mario 128. The crowd laughs as a black screen displays the words "Mario 128" in small, white letters.
  3. A classic, 8-bit Mario runs onto the screen to classic Mario music. The super mushroom sound plays as the Mario becomes super-sized.
  4. The camera zooms in at a curved angle to reveal that the Mario is actually a series of boxes on a Monopoly-like circular board. A green bar is displayed at the bottom of the screen that indicates the total amount of Gamecube system resources that are being used. The bar is a little more than a fourth of the way across (a fourth of the total resources). Also, at the top of the screen, a giant red, orange, and yellow.
  5. "0" is displayed.
  6. Suddenly a box rises up and reveals a Mario underneath while the zero turns into a one. He walks over to the edge of the stage and throws the box off with a "Waa!"
  7. Mr. Miyamoto introduces the Mario as he runs over to get another box.
  8. The Mario picks up a new box to reveal another Mario underneath. The camera focuses on the new Mario as he picks up another box. Mr. Miyamoto continues to talk as the camera keeps switching to look at new Marios. Boxes start getting moved exponentially faster and the "Mario Count" reaches 10.
  9. The camera zooms out at a circular angle. Mr. Miyamoto continues to talk while the number of Marios reach 64 Marios running around at once.
  10. Marios move about, but they don't pick up any boxes. The camera zooms and spins around the 64th Mario.
  11. Marios start picking up more boxes. The camera is still zoomed in, and as it moves among the Marios, they throw their recently picked up boxes at the camera. Mr. Miyamoto and the crowd laughs. The "Mario Counter" gets ever larger, passing 100.
  12. The Mario Count reaches 128 and the camera does a zoom-out spin. Mario music begins playing as the crowds applauds.
  13. Mr. Miyamoto continues to talk as the Marios move around. Boxes are pushed or thrown off, but when Marios fall off, they fall back onto the top.
  14. All the boxes left on the stage disappear while 128 more simultaneously fall from the sky. The camera zooms back in among the Marios.
  15. Some Marios start to roll others off while another two wave at the camera. The crowd laughs when a Mario screams as he falls. The Marios continue to mill around and the camera eventually zooms all the way out.
  16. The stage warps into two rough hills. The Marios begin to go into the center after loosing their footing on the uneven landscape. The camera zooms in again.
  17. The rough hills go back down and two smooth ones appear. The stage then goes back to normal.
  18. The stage gets warped violently in a circle and Marios go flying. The camera looks around, Marios push each other off, and they mill around more.
  19. Suddenly the Marios' models switch from normal shading to cell shading. They later do transparency and blur effects to all 128 of them instantly. Pretty impressive. All the while...the Marios are still pushing each other off and, you guessed it, milling around.
  20. All the effects turn off and the Marios mill around and roll down the still sloped surface.
  21. The stage violently warps like a pond ripple. Marios go flying again.
  22. The stage is depressed in the center so that all the Marios fall into the middle. The assistant or Mr. Miyamoto wiggles the stage to assist the pile-up. Then the depression was removed and Mr. Miyamoto starts talking about spaghetti and pizza.
  23. The stage turns into a pizza and a timer goes off. Pizza's done! The stage warps upward, throwing all the Marios off the stage. The green bar, which had never been higher than a third, starts to go back down. The pizza warps back to normal and then falls into the disc drive of a Gamecube. The lid closes as the crowd applauds.

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