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Mario 128 Tech Demo
by Julius Bautista
Thursday, December 21 2000
Here's a summary of the tech. demo Mr. Miyamoto tinkered with during GameCube's unveiling.
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Title:
Mario 128 Tech Demo
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Platform:
Gamecube
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Publisher:
Nintendo |
Developer:
EAD |
#
of Players: n/a |
Genre:
Tech. Demo
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Origin:
Japan
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Expected
Release:
n/a |
Grapevine:
It's purely a tech demo, but compared to rubber duckies, it makes sense to think that we'll be getting a lot more than 'just another Mario game.' |
Spaceworld 2000 has come and gone... Not only was the mysterious "Dolphin" system unveiled, but a modest crap-load of some of the most amazing "technical demonstrations" were presented for eyes to feast on (sorry, rubber duckies and butterflies don't cut it). It's time we took a close look at the longest tech demo of the show: Shigeru Miyamoto's Mario 128 Demo.
Of all the demos previewed at Spaceworld, the Mario 128 Demo was arguably the most complete display of GameCube's processing abilities. Narrated by Miyamoto and manipulated in real-time by a fellow Nintendo employee, Mario 128 "played" on a small theater screen with the total attention of the pre-show press crowd. In classic Mario fashion, a dwarfed "8-bit" Mario jogged to the center of the screen with the help of the ol' Super Mario Bros. tune. Immediately, the view becomes three-dimensional as the sprite "lies down" on a circular "Monopoly-style" plate, revealing that our plumber was made of many colored blocks (or "cubes", if you insist). Near the bottom of the screen was a green bar that "measured" a percentage of GameCube resources. Currently, about one-fourth of this meter was green, and the visuals ran at 60 frames-per-second. If the bar was completely green, that indicates Gamecube was being pushed to its limits, and the on-screen graphics would be running at around 30 fps, according to Mr. Miyamoto.
"Yippee!" said the tiny 3D-rendered Mario that appeared from gawd-knows-where under one of the blocks. At this instant, a number "1" is seen at the top of the screen. Mario runs over to another block, picks it up and -- "Yippee!" -- another Mario, and a number "2". Both Marios run off, snatching more blocks -- "Yahoo! Wah-haah!" -- 3, 4 of them now... 8, 16, 20 of them.... 32, 48 -- 64 derranged and independent little-- but it didn't stop there... Eventually, there were 128 of them.
128 rendered, lighted, anti-aliased, 700-polygon Marios, complete with AI and collision detection, painted a "cutesy" picture of chaos. The 3D model for Mario wasn't all that impressive, as it looks like he can easily be rendered on a Dreamcast, but the big difference here was there were so many of them. Marios running around; Marios rolling around; Marios tossing blocks off the plate; Marios shoving Marios off the plate -- neverminding the anarchy, this scene had all the elements of a gameplay environment: polygonal objects & characters, sound, AI, physics -- and the little meter at the bottom was only 1/3 full, with the action still running at 60 fps. Impressive, yes?
Things only got weirder from here on, as the plate began to bend and deform, creating smooth hills, basins, and jagged "mountains". The little Marios and blocks "reacted" accordingly to their changing terrain, falling and rolling down the hillsides. Miyamoto & Co. even went as far as spinning the flimsy surface like pizza dough, tossing Marios up and down as they screamed, "Waaaaa!"... Toss in a handful of visual effects like motion blur, transparencies and cell shading, and we've got a complete demo package. Despite all the activity, the meter maintained its 1/3 standing the entire way... When Miyamoto was through torturing his "children", they disappeared from the plate and, ironically, it morphed into a pizza, and landed in the drive bay of a purple Gamecube.
What did we learn here? Well, at the least, GameCube is nice and powerful. We don't know *how* powerful it is, yet, but we can see it was made well-enough to do its job: play games. Does this tell us anything about the next Mario game? Not at all, really. It's purely a tech demo, but compared to rubber duckies, it makes sense to think that we'll be getting a lot more than "just another Mario game."
--- Julius Bautista, VGLN Nintendo
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