The “every copy of Mario 64 is personalised” is a really old creepypasta / meme that was definitely a thing before most zoomers were active on the internet.
And the PTSD thing is just stupid, sorry.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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When consoles were less powerful, all spaces were liminal, and as nobody expected anything else, none were. Now, the fact that it’s not bustling with photorealistic NPCs feels spooky and unsettling (along with the historical details, which feel creepy in the way that vaporwave makes you feel)
What even is a liminal space? Seriously, I looked up the definition and still don’t know.
In the basic definition, it's a space between spaces. A space that only exists for you to move from one space to another. Like a corridor or stairway. Somewhere you're not meant to stay.
It's definitely been co-opted to mean "a creepy place".
B3313 comes to mind when you want liminal space vibes. It literally feels like dreams a ROM-hacker would have. I've had similar dreams when I was ROM-Hacking Luigi's Mansion.
Anyway, I am as old as Mario 64 and I do agree on the spook vibes. Mainly the graphics at that era have this horrifying vibe to them. Mainly Super Mario RPG comes to mind for horrifying graphics.
Mario64 does have kind of a creepy liminal vibe to it.
Long ass empty hallways, rooms with just a giant mirror, no sound except kind of haunting/enchanting music and the echo of your footsteps.
It is objectively a pretty creepy / empty vibe to it, because in the game bowser has taken over the castle, so its supposed to be a bit spooky/creepy in a bunch of spots.
Til I'm a zoomer lol
They aren't wrong though. Mario 64 (and even Ocarina of Time too) were great because of how much they evolved videogames as a whole, but as pioneers they have a lot of flaws that game devs took a bit longer to figure out.
IIRC the reason Luigi isn't in Mario 64 is that they couldn't afford the extra few kilobytes that would take.
It's not like they wanted parts of the game to be empty, cartridges were tiny. Mario 64 had a one megabyte cartridge. They had to cut things to the bone to manage to fit the game on that.
Small correction - Mario 64 was on an 8MB cartridge.
There were some 4MB games, but a 1MB cartridge never existed.
Mmm. The source I found probably got megabytes and megabits mixed up. Cartridges often seemed to have their capacity listed in megabits for some reason.
Yeah possibly, if they converted in the wrong direction.
There are 8 bits in a byte, so 8MB cartridges like Mario 64 were generally advertised as 64 Megabit. But if someone got mixed up they could’ve assumed the 8MB figure was actually 8Mbit and then divided by 8 to reach the wrong conclusion of 1MB.
As to why they advertised things using megabits back in the day, that’s pretty easy: bigger numbers seem more impressive in marketing!
I don't think OoT is as liminal because they put a lot of effort into adding atmosphere. There's a lot of background animal noises and bugs flying around. It's low tech, but the environments don't feel empty in the same way as the polished and clean Mario 64 environments.
Ok zoomer
Second quote sounds like a huge strawman. Did anyone acutally say anything remotely similar that anon heard or read about?
That said, I can kinda see it. SM64 looks super weird if you're not used to the style, and it adds that "early 3d graphics" weirdness to it that younger people might only know from horror games. And TBH Mario games have always been kinda trippy.
Any Austin is great though.
Kids today will never understand what it's like when dealing with hard limits on computer and console was the default.
I remember when I was a kid, and we got our first two PCs (as opposed to the standard Apple IIe and occasional black& white Macintosh) in the computer room in highschool school and those machines struggled just so hard to run 90s Photoshop at all. Or having to install the memory expansion in that N64 just so it could play most games. Oh, or disk swapping (floppy or CD).
In grade school you played green-on-black Math Muncher and Oregon Trail or you got bullied up by the shithead kids who played sports.
As a gen z-er.. can't say I ever felt like mario64 was liminal or heard it describes that way lol
Some of the bits in the castle feel kinda weird from what I can remember as a kid
I thought this was about gen Z’s obsession with backrooms/horror games at first lmao
Who seriously thinks SM64 is creepy?
It is like that though. A lot of indie horror games imitate early 3d graphics, either because it's cheap and easy, or to have emotional impact by evoking nostalgia. If you haven't actually played 3d games of early 90s, those horror games/videos will be your only exposure to these kind of visuals, so that uneasy liminal feeling will be the first one you'll get. So it's a bit of inversion going on there.
My friends all had SM64, but for some reason I never actually played it until it came out on the Switch. I can get why people like it nostalgically, but it plays awfully. The camera is basically impossible to control so you spend most of the game guessing what's going on around you
That seems to be a theme with 90s 3D games: the camera has a mind of its own and can make navigation really annoying.
I frequently compare Elden ring’s camera to Mario 64. It’s just good enough until you’re in an enclosed space. Plenty of romhacks have solved the issue with fixed camera angles or fully outdoor level design.
Getting old is weird.
This is the same generation that brough the nazis back, no wonder they are stupid.
Nazis were gone?
Don't blame us. Blame the horrendous state of the US education system and indoctrination.
Luckily I am not in the US and zoomers here at least don't seem as right leaning.
Boomer ass post