Computer analysis ‘solves’ what Mario 64’s infamous plaque says, and it’s not ‘L is Real 2401’

A Super Mario 64 fan carried out an open source computer analysis to try to finally solve the famous mystery of the game “L is Real 2401”.

For about 30 years, gamers have been trying to figure out what the plaque on the fountain in Peach’s Castle says in the 1996 Nintendo 64 launch game (494 items)” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/nintendo-64/”>Nintendo 64 launch game.

One early theory was that the plaque read “L is Real 2401”, a potential clue that Luigi might be playable in the game and that 2401 might be a clue on how to unlock him.

In 1996, IGN.com offered $100 to anyone who could unlock Luigi, while in its April 1998 issue, Nintendo (6,899 articles)” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/”>Nintendo Power magazine mentioned the “L is Real 2401” theory in an April Fool’s article.

Modern re-releases of the game with sharper visuals have not made the answer any clearer, since the original plaque text was only written on a small 32 × 32 pixel tile.

Programmer Mochi64 has now carried out a complex analysis of the plaque to try to finally decode what it says, and has made his results open source for others to verify.

According to Mochi64, since the two lines of text are between 3 and 5 pixels high, they are too small to read. Any attempt to scale the image is therefore useless as it is just guesswork.

Instead, their process used millions of calculations to determine what combination of words, fonts, and resizing techniques that would have been done by an artist in the mid-’90s would have resulted in pixels closest to those on the plate.

Using this process, Mochi64 believes that the message actually says “Eternal Star” on the top line and “We Hope So” on the bottom line, as this provides the closest possible match after millions of comparisons.

Mochi64 has applied a scoring system to its tool, which scores each word and phrase based on how well it matches the original texture. After trying over 1.2 million words, the above received the lowest (and therefore best) mismatch score of 1,129. For comparison, “L is Real 2401” had a mismatch score of 2,031 on the first line alone.

Mochi64 also released a “plaque challenge,” in which people can use the same open source code to test another phrase and see if they can get an even lower score, but after their fairly exhaustive process, they’re sure it’s the definitive answer. As for what that actually means, it seems unlikely that Nintendo will ever confirm it.

Mario 64 fans have been searching for Luigi for decades

Luigi was originally intended as the second playable character in Super Mario 64, according to a 1996 interview with director Shigeru Miyamoto, which sparked fascination with the fuzzy sign of the game.

Speaking via an official strategy guide, Miyamoto described “a room made of simple Lego-like blocks” in which “Mario and Luigi could run, climb slopes, jump, etc.” This appears to match YouTube footage from a 1995 exhibition appearing to show the two figures together.

According to Miyamoto, Luigi remained in Super Mario 64 until the final year of development, after which they removed him due to memory issues.

“We were going to include it in a Mario Bros.-style minigame, but since most users probably only have one controller when they first buy their N64, for that reason (and others) we decided against it,” Miyamoto said at the time.

“I think it would have been great if we could have done it with two players, with Mario and Luigi. But if we had done it wrong, it would have turned into a fighting game or something (laughs), so we’re leaving that challenge for next time.”

In a 2009 Iwata Asks interview, Miyamoto further commented on Mario 64’s multiplayer mode, saying: “The screen was split and they entered the castle separately. When they met in the hallway, I was incredibly happy! (laughs). Then there was also the mode in which the camera is repaired and we see Mario running away, becoming smaller and smaller.”

If authentic, the Space World 1995 footage is the first documented time Luigi has been seen in the classic N64 game, outside of a high-profile 2020 leak of classic Nintendo game files, which included a model for the character.