The plaque's message has haunted the internet for 30 years.
Super Mario 64 fans have been obsessing over a blurry plaque in the castle courtyard for over 30 years. We might finally know what's written on it, according to a report by Video Games Chronicle. This is thanks to a programmer who used open-source computational analysis software to get to the bottom of things.
This isn't graphical upscaling software. The image is simply too blurry for that. Even modern reissues still have that same blurry plaque, so that hasn't been a help to anyone.
Instead, programmer Mochi64 used the analysis engine to pore through millions of combinations of words and fonts, looking for something that matched the pixels in the plaque. The end result? Mochi64 believes the top of the plaque reads "Eternal Star" and the bottom reads "We hope so."
This isn't an absolute answer. Those are simply the two sentences that provided the closest possible match via the analysis software. There's still a chance it could be something else, but the software did make millions of comparisons.
There were several high-profile rumors throughout the 1990s and beyond that the plaque read "L is Real 2401." This was seen as a tease that Luigi was hiding somewhere in the game. IGN actually offered a $100 bounty to anyone who could figure out how to unlock Luigi and Nintendo Power even mentioned the "L is Real 2401" theory in an April Fool's Day issue.
Here's your only official footage of multiplayer Super Mario 64 from a Spaceworld 95 video kiosk as the camera clearly focuses on both charactershttps://t.co/cLCdSIl5B9 pic.twitter.com/RdtTGb8LpJ
— Yakumono (@LuigiBlood) December 15, 2023
This rumor was given new life when the game's director, Shigeru Miyamoto, noted that the team had been experimenting with a two-player mode. He also said that they gave up on the idea to conserve memory, but that didn't stop the rumor mill. An early build showing Mario and Luigi running around a bare room didn't help things.
So there you have it. The phrase "Eternal Star" makes sense, as the plaque sits below a giant star statue. Perhaps the second sentence of "We hope so" indicates that the developers wanted players to collect every star. In any event, it's highly unlikely we'll ever get official confirmation from Nintendo.