You failed to mention the integral game design behind adding MIPS to the basement: People discovered the fake wall was fake because they tried to corner MIPS. And when they missed, they accidentally discovered the secret level. Imagine discovering it that way, the way the developers intended a blind playthrough to be
MIPS doesn't allow the N64 to "run games faster". MIPS is the actual language that the N64's CPU understands. The entire game was coded in C, and then it was compiled to MIPS so that the N64 could execute it. Every instruction the N64 executes is a MIPS instruction.
@@Pencil._inkThe comment by JohnP55 explains it best, but C and MIPS are the coding language that the N64 reads! The game could not function without MIPS, so in a way he did indeed build it all c:
The fact that Mips is programmed to have air bubbles coming from him while in the water is interesting since he can't legimately go into water without the clip. He even breathes at a slower rate than mario, so the effect doesn't seem to be just copypasted
after a (very quick 'n dirty ) scan through the decomp, i can't find anything mips-related that handles spawning bubbles, so chances are it's just a standard behavior inherited from a parent object. in fact, the code that handles mips's falling state has an interesting bit where when he finds floor collision, he's supposed to spawn a splash effect if the collision's underwater ... though i'm not sure why it doesn't seem like anything happens at 28:47 in that case. best guess is that the effect itself automatically places itself at the water's surface. either way, it's the sorta behavior that implies no special consideration for his interaction with water ( again, outside of stuff inherited from a base object ) outside of the shallow flooding in the basement, since it only really makes sense in a context where mips would hit the ground near-immediately after hitting the water he's supposed to be splashing
@@hi-i-am-atanhe said that MIPS could be thrown in the beta content. So maybe the splashing effect stems from this. So if you throw him into the shallow water, he would splash.
It's worth noting that both of MIPS' two power stars are considered castle secret stars, which Bowser does not know about considering his surprise when you show up with all 120 of them. Granted, Bowser might just not know about some of the secret stars (i.e. from the secret slide, secret aquarium, or the ones the toads kept from him), but the game makes no distinction between any of the 15, so all 15 could be unknown to him. MIPS may have just claimed the stars were gifts from Bowser as an excuse, to seem to Mario for how he got them. Given that he said he didn't intend to hide them from you, and that he's Peach's pet, he's likely an ally. Maybe he's just a bit cheeky, maybe he's trying to appear at least somewhat antagonistic towards the player so Bowser's minions leave him alone. In which case, if his stars were indeed from Bowser, might he even be a double-agent?
About unfaithful translations, the German version of SM64 has the Whomp King complain about back pain that Mario, doing 3 ground-pounds, relieved him of, and as a thanks, he hands him the power star.
8:16 Keep in mind, just because something is quick to be added into the game doesn't mean there's enough time to test it, or that the Devs don't already have a bunch of other more important things on their To Do list. I mean, there's already a glitch involving MIPS in the game, so who knows what else could've gone wrong if you were able to throw him. When you're in the final stages of game development every change you make could potentially mess up 5 other things that you weren't able to predict, which at that point you often don't have time to fix anymore, so it's often best to leave good enough alone.
yeah they not only had deadline, they had strict standards of polish. obviously big N was not happy that they didn't perfectly handle picking him up and putting him down. i can't imagine them throwing more mechanics in with such an essential and already janky part of the game at the end of the dev cycle. at that point, idk which is harder, throwing him or trying to throw him out of the game.
fun fact about mips: the path he runs in the basement makes it very likely you'll bump into the shifting sand land wall on accident, see it ripple, and realize you can jump into it. great little bit of invisible game design!
MIPS path through the area brings you to all meaningful locations in the basement. The hazy maze door, both portraits and the basemont toad that tells you how to heal.
Since the dialogue discussion, I've been drawing comparisons between MIPS and Nabbit. They are both in this very unvideogamely position of ambiguity. They are not one of the heroes. They are not one of the enemies. An ally, maybe, but in which one cannot put much confidence...
It should be noted that MIPS also makes an appearance in Mario Party 3 near the item shop (the multi colored bunny versions), as well as a Japanese-only Mario story and activity book. If anyone was curious, other things that only appear in Mario 64 are Chill Bullies (if you don't count the scorecards in Mario Golf), and Heave-Hos
I find it odd that MIPs has never returned considering his simple design and how easy it would be to plant him in various scenarios, but then again most Mario 64 characters don't return much outside of their own games.
Well you'd think Mips would be important enough to return, being Peach's pet with direct relevance to a main character, and great potential. Then again, they killed Toadsworth...
He would be a cool partner for Paper Mario. I never thought about it that you never see him after SM64. I don't play much Mario and I hoped MIPS were somewhere else.
I'm a bit disappointed that you skipped over that Alice in Wonderland reference so quickly. Especially since, as we all know, Miyamoto based the Super Mushroom and the Mushroom Kingdom on the Mushroom that makes Alice grow in size. And with that, plus MIPS being a reference to the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, we have interesting theming that could be interesting to use for the Mushroom Kingdom as a whole, and if MIPS ever makes a new appearance. Not only that, but this could also be the theme for the Mario World as a whole. Not just Alice in Wonderland but fairy tales. The Beanbean Kingdom is already based on Jack and the Beanstalk, Sarasaland could be the Arabian Nights, and so on and so forth. And I came up with that cool theming idea thanks to MIPS himself. He is very cool.
@@evanseifert8858 I mean yeah obviously. Just like the only Alice thing in the Mushroom Kingdom is the fact that there are Mushrooms that make you grow. It makes sense thematically, it had to be intentional.
What's *exceptionally* crazy about the MIPS Clip is that the basic fundamentals of it were known way, WAY earlier than 2004. The fact that you could get MIPS into rooms he wasn't supposed to be in was a constant in fake "How to Unlock Luigi" guides that flooded the internet in the mid-late 90s; I remember doing it as a kid! That might actually be why the GameFAQs boards reacted to it with some measured skepticism. But I guess nobody had ever thought to try using him to push Mario through the Star Door.
That "Clips" plush is the best idea for a plush I've seen in a long time and I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner. I hope they keep getting made for as long as possible, because all of us need to get one. Maybe there can even be some more variations based on the rabbits in Super Mario 64 DS.
I don't think lil Mips being a pet would be such a good outcome. Little guys hanging out in a watery basement instead of the upstairs with warmth and floors that arent wet poor guy.
THIS is why i come to RU-vid. An obscure subject i had no idea i cared about, in a game i haven't played for years, despite watching endless hours of speedruns. This spouted so much information i didnt 'need' to know, yet i was riveted for the entire 36min runtime. Keep it up good sir
I have always admired extremely in-depth video essay passion projects like this one. This video now hits my list as one of the most well-produced video essays/review videos I've seen for the 10+ years I've been consuming these sort of videos, up there with Tucker's "Katamari Damacy and It's perfect sequel". This video hitting that list comes thanks to the great quality in every bit the video is comprised of, from the sound design not having any relevant audio being hard to understand nor the bgm being invasive, to the content-referrencial visuals being nice to the eye and not overloaded. The scripting is easy to follow aswell. I also think that taking such a niche thing and producing something this high quality with it is admirable and definitely adds points. Needless to say, loved this video and I am excited to see more from you! Good Job, Mipsbuster!
mips is one of my favorite mario characters, so seeing a whole video essay about him in my recommended was a pleasant surprise. you did a great job researching for the video too; i had never really thought about why mips was in the castle and the explanation as to why [no spoilers] was really neat! great work
I'm not sure why, but MIPS doesn't seem to spawn on my cousin's of Super Mario 64. He's got four save files that were each individually gotten to 118 stars and has never gotten MIPS to spawn on any of them on any playthroughs.
Sure he's not forgetting and it's two other stars he's missed? It is theoretically possible he has a faulty cartridge but the odds of such a specific defect are incredibly small.
your effort for looking into the japanese text does not go unappreciated. throughout the whole segment about the text i was constantly "thinking, okay but what about the original JP version? hopefully he doesn't just use google translate or deepL and call it a day" and I was very very glad you actually got real people to translate it. great job and great video 😊
Expected this video to be about MIPs' speedrun history but instead it's more focused on the character themself, very nice surprise. Still watching through the video, I'm 16 minutes in. I like the idea of Bowser hiding the stars strategically but getting more willy-nilly with them over time, giving it to MIPs without little thought. MIPs likes the star and wants to keep it and doesn't have any intentions outside that. They kinda have the vibe of a simple minded brat who'd steal candy or throw rocks at a window without considering the consequences or ramifications, it's interesting that he's aware enough of Bowser to know him by name. Thank you for the upload.
It's always the same, huh? You start with a basket full of easter eggs, and your first thirty spots are fiendishly clever, delightfully devilish. You even hand an egg over to several adults, just to reward those clever clogs who ask. Then you realize you've still got 90 eggs to hide. By the time you're on the last twenty, you're sticking them in any spot where geometry will keep them from rolling away.
_Super Mario 64_ will always have my heart as it’s one of only two games I can confidently say that I 100%ed them, where this could be considered an achievement. The other was _Star Fox Adventures_ together with my younger brother. MIPS’s stars were one of the last ones we got, we just didn’t think it was possible to catch him. The last star we found was Princess Peach’s Slide in under 21”; it’s such a stupid star as there is zero hint the slide has a second star.
everyone thought that white door would lead too unlocking Waluigi and how disappointed all of us were when it was just a damn power star... and it doesn't help that there exist assumingly beta screenshot of a purple rabbit that as mentioned each rabbit in the game was colored for the character they represented.
The editing on this video is phenomenal. The level select transition, music titles, and script structure really show that great deal of effort which our friend MIPS deserves!! Looking forward to your future vids!
Finally some good actual fucking content, I loved this video and how deep down you went into the RABBIT hole, and the fact that there's no misinformation is also great
An in depth look at MIPS, but no talk about he functionally helps you learn the control scheme, fast movement, and probably revealed the location of Shift Sands Land when you accidentally jumped into the wall?
Oh boy, an in-depth video essay on one specific minutiae of a video game I've never played? My favourite kind of content!~ It's great when the algorithm works.
I remember hearing about MIPS with the 16 star MIPS clip, but I was under the impression that he was a stuffed rabbit, not an actual character. Very cool video.
I’m not sure the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia can be trusted for that tidbit about MIPS being Peach’s pet. It looks like a really fun book to flip through and I’m sure most of the information is accurate but it’s well known that the translator copied some stuff off of the Mario Wiki, like unofficial enemy names. It’s possible that there are some other inaccuracies in the English version. Since it’s never been said anywhere else that MIPS is Peach’s pet, it would be good to have a look at the original Japanese version to confirm it.
It's "most speedrun" because it's the past participle you want in this context, not the simple past. Compare I run, I ran, I have run (not "I have ran"), hence it's "the most run race" for example, not "the most ran race". In many dialects of American English the distinction between simple past and present perfect (where the past participle is used) is in a somewhat advanced stage of collapse (hence Americans more likely to say "I already ate" rather than "I've already eaten"), and this potential collapse has just started to spread to British English as well; so don't worry if you don't have a good intuitive sense of when to use one over the other; it's just another step in the long and interesting evolution of the English language. It's worth pointing out that this collapse has already happened in languages like German, where in casual speech the present perfect is much more commonly used for all past tense statements, and the simple past is reserved for more formal writing; the opposite way to how American English is going.
The Mario Wiki claims MIPS appears on the Woody Woods board in Mario Party 3. I think that’s a bit more questionable, though. Despite that, make my words, MIPS will show up as a playable driver in Mario Kart one of these days!
Fantastically fun video on so many levels from the topic to your jokes :) Thank you so much for brightening up my day ^^ I really love videos that are clearly chosen entirely for passion, there's something so special about them
MIPS is actually still taught in some Assembly and Computer Architecture classes. Its a very limited and simplified Assembly Language, which makes it ideal to teach not just how to write assembly in it, but how one would build a full mips CPU out of simple logical components. I have a lot of fondness for MIPS, even if im probably never going to write in it professionally.
It's a little disingenuous to say MIPS is something which is in SM64 but never again in the Mario franchise and not count the "Mip" rabbits in SM64DS because they're not that exact same individual rabbit. By that logic, every Goomba and Koopa in SM64 never appears again in the Mario franchise.
I think that MIPS was given the power stars by bowser solely because bowser believed that, as a failsafe, by locking Mario out of stars that he gave to (what he believed to be) a random rodent (which he would probably never find), perhaps he would evade mario coming to him and rescuing the princess.
I had a different comment planned, nagging about the beginning where you, like you said you wouldn't, still tell us how great the Mario Game is (and that part sounded a bit Chat GPT-ish), but i have laughed so much up until 16:40 and THEN THE BIT WITH THE TRANSLATORS?! You blew my mind! Thank you so much, you are hilarious in a really unique way!
I appreciate this video, thank you for making it. I don't really know why MIPS hasn't been used ever again, even so with the developers having so much love for it, but at least he holds forever the origin of the rabbits in following Mario games. As a 64 DS player, I hold something for the rabbits in that game, and I remember rather fondly the eight shiny white ones. But also I was really confused when I learned about the existence of MIPS in the original, and questioned why there was only one rabbid in there instead of a lot. I specifically remember some gripe that I have about not being to carry around the rabbits in DS, mostly after I saw that using MIPS to clip through the doors was a highly regarded thing in the community. People may feel bad about not being able to throw MIPS as intended, but they don't know the pain of 64 DS players not being able to carry the rabbits around at all in the first place. At least we could play the catching the rabbit games more than two times I guess.
I was so onboard the Bowser X MIPS ship train until you got to the Japanese translation… tragedy… This is a phenomenally well made video essay! Thank you for sharing!
A+ video MIPSbuster! it feels like every other aspect of Mario 64 is fascinating in some way.. and maybe we partially have MIPS to thank for all these rabbit holes!
Dude, if you make a 152:30hs about how yoshi moves i would watch it, MULTIPLE TIMES. You have a welcoming voice and an amazing way of narrating, thanks for the hard work!
Risk microprocessors are more efficient because they have less instructions, which means they need less complex micro code which means they need less transistors to do similar things, which means you can either make them smaller cooler and/or faster...
MIPS is the name of the N64's instruction set. It doesn't "help" to run the game, it just runs the game, just like modern processors for computers use the x86_64 instruction set, phones use the ARM instruction set, and your Wii & Gamecube use the PowerPC instruction set
the "Late for an important date" line is a reference to the White Rabbit from the Alice in Wonderland books, and was probably added as a fun bit of localization.
I'm just saying Mips was hitting the dating scene and mysteriously 10 years later a bunch of new rabbits are wandering the castle grounds. You gotta put 2 and 2 together.
MIPS does not appear in the game SM64 Ds, which is a separate game and features several bunnies. But, if any of the DS guides on the game were to talk about the several bunnies scattered throughout the castle, you could find more info on MIPS by extension.
