Super Mario 64's biggest mystery may finally have been solved after 30 years

One of Super Mario 64's biggest mysteries may finally have been solved, almost 30 years after the Nintendo classic's release in 1996.

For decades, players have attempted to decipher a mysterious inscription on a plaque beneath a Power Star statue in the courtyard of Princess Peach's Castle.

The barely legible writing became the subject of countless theories, particularly the belief that it contained instructions for unlocking Luigi as a secret playable character, with fans believing the message read ‘L is real 2401’.

However, amidst news of the ‘horrific yet impressive’ Super Mario 64 demake, new research by a dedicated fan suggests the inscription says something entirely different.

Super Mario 64's mysterious plaque may finally have been deciphered

Programmer and YouTuber Mochi64 has developed a software tool designed to recreate how Nintendo's artists might have produced the original plaque texture.

Measuring just 32 by 32 pixels, the image contains too little detail for conventional upscaling to reliably identify its lettering.

Instead, the programme examined millions of combinations of fonts, words, letter spacing and resizing techniques to establish which produced the closest match.

According to Mochi64's findings, made available on GitHub — along with uploading a demonstration on their YouTube channel — the programme tested approximately 530 fonts, alongside more than 27,000 words for the first line and over 17,000 for the second, as noted by Dexerto.

After identifying Adobe's 1990 Palatino Bold Italic as the closest font match, the research concluded that the inscription most likely reads: "Eternal Star / We hope so".

The famous ‘L is real’ interpretation reportedly produced a significantly weaker match during testing. Still, Nintendo has yet to officially confirm the proposed inscription, or the game’s connection to Luigi.

(YouTube/mochi64)

Mario’s brother was genuinely intended to appear in Super Mario 64 as part of a planned multiplayer mode, but was ultimately removed due to hardware memory limitations.

Nintendo secretly reused the mysterious message in another legendary game

Interestingly, Super Mario 64's mysterious plaque has another connection to Nintendo's history, having also appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — as Nintendo Life reminded us back in 2019.

The 1998 Nintendo 64 classic (with a remake coming out next month) reused the same texture for a sign inside Dodongo's Cavern, where players receive instructions for solving a puzzle involving a giant Dodongo head.

However, the sign's actual message is presented through readable dialogue, rather than requiring players to decipher its blurry texture.

Reported by the Mario Mysteries Wiki, the plaque reads: “Giant dead Dodongo... when it sees red, a new way to go will be open.”

A reported Nintendo of America letter dated 1998, shared on Reddit, previously claimed the plaque was deliberately meaningless, suggesting its developers included it to encourage speculation among players.