The Evolution of Mario’s Incidental Fish 

Each of the year stingers (1996, 2002, 2007, 2013, 2017) are little jingles from their respective games. Can you name them all?

Finally a conclusive answer as to why the Wii U flopped; Lacked incidental fish

Next up, bird watching and identification.

The Odyssey fish are using a particle system. Meaning each entity spawns, and is pushed around by various predetermined physics to follow a path or get repelled/attracted to things, such as Mario. But ultimately they have a lifetime and will despawn once it's reached. This is to ensure the total number is manageable. The benefit of using particles is it's very efficient and can also be entirely art-led. ie particles being so versatile are used thoughout the engine and so probably wouldn't have needed fish-specific code. Plus particle movement is intrinsically random which helps things look naturalistic without hand animating hundreds of objects. The downside of course is that they don't persist, and moreover no fish knows about any of it's friends. (Self colliding particles would be much more costly so I'd imagine you'd see them clip through eachother in places, but I can't quite tell tbf). The schooling behaviour is achieved by them using the same noise functions to follow similar paths. They simply appear, live their brief life, then die. So perhaps are more individualistic than you might have given them credit.

Zelda games also have alot of incidental fish i think so check that out

You have completely changed the way I play games now. I spent an entire cycle in Outer Wilds just admiring the ship. My bf and I discussed the uses for all the parts, the amount of tape holding the outside together. Inside the ship, most things are secured, but somethings aren't for some reason. Every container of food us actually just marshmallows. There are two rope bundles hanging from the ceiling, but instead of being attatched with a hook or something, its looped along the lines of a rope net, making it incredibly inconvenient to use. There is an eject button on the dashboard, something you have to be at a very specific angle to click. You can open the cover, and if you hit eject, you go flying at high speed and the cab detatches. My bf has hundreds of hours in this game and didn't know that. And in the opening to the game, I cooked the perfect marshmallow, but he thought you could only burn them I've found an entirely new way to experience games, and I really appreciate you for that

Ever since that COD fish incident my friends and i have pointed out every time we've encountered interactive fish in a video game.

I didnt have an opinion on the relative lack of incidental fish in delfino plaza before but I do now

"Incidental Fish" is my new band name now. Thanks Austin

Interestingly it looks like the fish in Odyssey are driven by a particle effect system. The lack of individual logic and disappearing after X amount of time are consistent with such systems. It allows them to push a lot of models on the GPU for relatively low performance impact.

in banjo tooie, there's a normal set of incidental fish for most levels, but the prehistoric level Terrydactyland has schools of nautilus instead! always thought that was neat

For the 6th Shine in Noki Bay, you go to a sunken city to collect red coins. If memory serves, that area had tons of fish. But I hadn’t noticed how eerily devoid of fish this tropical island was until you pointed it out.

At least some of these fish are employed

Careful Austin this was once a hot topic at one point during the cod fish announcement and I think you are flying too close to the sun there.

You uploaded just as I was about to eat my bag of Lays Classic chips (170g). Thank you.

Fun fact, most (if not all) of these fishes appear to be Osteichthyes.

Fun fact, in Mario 64, if you stand in the shallow edge of a body of water and hop repeatedly, sometimes a fish will jump out of the water. It's extremely rare and I think has only happened to me once or twice when trying to get it, but it's a thing!

DUDE the foreshadowing from the drowning competitions

1) This video was a MAJOR palate cleanser after a rough weekend 🐟 2) No one makes me want to play Mario 64 more than Any Austin

This is the content I subscribed for. These fish were designed by some random employee on a tuesday evening because he didn't know what to do with the last hour of his shift, and youre showing apreciation for their work.

Hitman 2 (2002) has fish in the villa's pool in the first mission. Never questioned it but now it seems weird. In the video "Floats" from UncommentatedPannen, he says that when Mario64 creates splashes, that spawns bubbles and sometimes fish. They immediately disappear though.

SM3DW absolutely has fish, they're just in the water levels where they belong. Check out 3-5 Pipeline Lagoon. Also worth mentioning that every time Mario jumps in water in SM64, a fish may leap out, even in shallow fishless water like in Whomp's or the BBH basement.

I love how your videos wind up being an exercise in appreciating the little things that the programmers included in our games.

If I recall correctly Galaxy also has creepy fish that appear in the spooky water levels like Deep Dark Galaxy

Had no idea I wanted to learn about this until the video popped up in my subscription feed. Incredible content 10 out of 10

It’s official you have 100% mastered your craft.

What a perfect Any Austin video idea.

"everybody knows that the wii was just two gamecubes duct taped together" so true king. i was so excited for this video when i saw the title i love fish and i especially love fish that dont hit you :)

There's also blue fish in the inlet/docks area of Delfino Plaza. Ricco Harbor episode 7 has three of the four fish species in the area with Piantas in floaties, but they're gone again in episode 8

4:48 This is unbelievably satisfying. I have rewatched you breaking the box 5 times.

Every time you put out a video I see the title and I’m like “yep that sounds like an AnyAustin video” you have such a specific wonderful vibe

This kind of video is a perfect example of why this is my favorite RU-vid channel

Missing out on the secret aquarium room in SM64, so many happy little fish of both types in there.

Rumble Racing (2001) had a mountaintop stream off to the side of the racetrack where you could drive around with some majestic incidental salmon

This is why I love this channel, I thought I was the only one who observed things like this in games. I have literally spent hours checking out environmental details like this. No quests or gameplay or anything, just taking notes

This came across my home page and I thought "this is the absolute least productive way I could spend my time", and I was right. Thanks.

I always appreciate the tangential 'realness' of your subject choices Austin.

I clearly remember Delphino Plaza having fish in the inner pier part!!! I know this because, well... I was, too, fashinated by the school of fish in this game lol

There's also a unique type of incidental fish in the Bigmouth Galaxy (or whatever it's called) in Galaxy 1, I believe they're Angler Fish or whatever but they're a type that looks kinda creepy, fitting for the level.

The sunshine fish have got some MEAT. 3:06 he says while there's fish in the background.

-I had noticed the oxygenator in Super Mario 64, only because I once left Mario standing there to see what he would do if I didn't touch the controller for a while. -I disagree that the Wii U is barely a console. There are a lot of great Nintendo games on it, along with the best social network, ever, the Miiverse. -It seems like both Zelda games on the N64 had incidental fish.

This is the content I'm here for

Honestly the way the described the fish really summed up the games. 64 was the rough beginning, Sunshine and Galaxy focused harder on the details, and Odyssey felt more interested by quantity rather than quality/individuality

the fish in SM64 are just retextured bubbles. There is a small chance that any bubble that appears in-game will appear as a fish. This is why you can occasionally see a fish jump up when mario lands in shallow water.

I love the incidental fish schools in subnautica that also go through walls and sometimes you can see them swimming in your base

The scale technology really took a big jump on the Wii.

You combined fish and 3D mario, my 2 favorite things. I would LOVE to see more incidental fish in games!

I remember Bioshock's incidental fish, because I always felt that it was a missed opportunity to put in some sort of easter egg for using the research camera on them.

God I need more Any Austin in my life

The kist memorable incidental fish I've seen in a game is 8n subnautica, mainly because they make no sense due to being purely decorative but also sharing the models of the fishes you're able to cook and eat. I'll be dying of thirst, and a whole school of bladderfish will pass by, and I can't pick any of them

The perpetual clips in Austin's hair always gets me. 🪮

I just have to say. Your videos are exactly the kind of thing I did as a kid. I’d spend hundreds of hours in the same levels in the LEGO games to study random things. Exactly like this channel, and I’m all for it.

ok the venice being fishless line was a joke, but fishing via dynamite was done so much in the Mediterranean sea that a lot of coasts just don't have any corals. that's why a lot of Europeans that wanna see corals go to Egypt because they still have them near their coast.

I saw the thumbnail, and I thought "Dang it was wild when the xbox one e3 conference was so whack they had someone call out fish AI on call of duty" and lo and behold here you are with the relevant reference. What a great video idea and execution, I'd watch anything covering incidental animals in videogames. I'd always go around trying to look at but not hurt the animals in the half finished mess that was Turok Evolution on gamecube

any austin always has the most interesting gaming videos. ive not ever really thought about these things before, but i see now how compelling they are

now this is the content i subbed for. discussion of completely innocuous details that most people just glance at and move on. great vid👍

When I hear incidental fish I think of Payday 2 because it has achievement referencing incidental fish but does not have incidental fish in that level itself. I'm unsure if there are any incidental fish in Payday 2 at all.

I’d imagine Zelda (Botw and/or Totk) must go to a lot of detail in its incidental fish ai considering you can kill and grab them and such.

This is relevant to my interests

youre so real for making this video dude

1:16 i like to believe that Austin played this Jaws soundbite himself instead of searching for one online

It's an interesting topic in Subnautica. There are schools of incidental fish that your sub can pass right through. But every once in a while, you get a *THUNK* and see a Peeper go belly-up.

When I think of incidental fish, other than Mario, the first game that comes to mind is Ocarina of Time. You could actually catch those fish in bottles. So they had a use other than just a nice detail.

Abzu probably has the most incidental fish of any game ever created

The behaviour of lots of these incidental fish schools in games is often based on some variant of the ideas of Boids from 1986, a program that modeled flocks of "birds" by giving them a few simple rules to follow that resulted in emergent flock behaviour. I thought Half-Life had incidental fish, but I'm pretty sure it only has very not-incidental murder leeches and that scary alien fish. But it does have incidental alien birds that are actually called boids in the model files.

Man the water in Sunshine looks really REALLY good for 2002.

I love these videos. I work in game dev and these videos inspire me to push through the corporate deliverables and make the effort to include small, fun, details in games.

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future had the wildest "incidental" fish I've ever seen in a game - they're all over every single level and you have to eat them to restore health. They clearly take after the ones from mario 64 though so I think they still count even though they serve a gameplay purpose.

I don’t know how you keep making perfect videos, but you’ve done it again

I love the focus on obscure topics such as this, what a great idea!

I immediately thought of Zelda games, that have fish in the water, like ocarina of time. But windwaker, despite taking place in the ocean, has no fish besides the one who expands the map.

hi austin been a fan since 2015 and og eggbusters and ive been loving the content recently, it’s so rare to find a content creator who can be consistently entertaining for 10+ years, keep it up :)

Someone at Nintendo probably worked hundreds of hours to program these fish, and they deserve to be recognized

Man I love this kind of stuff. Not enough people care about the incidental, insignificant real life animals in Nintendo games. One thing I'm curious about is if Super Mario 64 DS has the same fish design, or if they changed them up. I'm also wondering if 3D Land or 3D World have incidental fish in their underwater levels, but I'd assume they don't, since you skimmed over 3D World so fast, and 3D Land is similarly simple in presentation.

You pick the best topics of any video game creator on this platform, no joke.

You managed to explain why Delfino never felt like a real place to me, but more like a bathtub

This video reminds me of how I used to perform a glitch in Mario 64 DS so that I was walking on the ground underneath the moat and every time I did it I would go to the small lake-type area and just stand there while fish swam around me except since I wasn't swimming, it looked like the fish were flying over and around my head. Good times.

You forgot to talk about those creepy fish in Bigmouth and Deep Dark Galaxy.

Babe wake up, a new Any Austin video just got uploaded. Dude I love your videos, they are the epitome of why RU-vid is so special to me. You rock and keep up the good work!

This is the type of zany, wild shit you can only get from Austin.

I'm sad to see that AnyAustin is part of Nintendo's conspiracy to deny the existence of _Super Mario Galaxy 2._

INCIDENTAL FISH?! LIKE THE SPONGEBOB FISH CHARACTERS?!?!

If I recall my pannekoek education correctly, in mario 64 there is a random chance that when mario jumps out of water that a fish jumps out with him

I think the most impressive part about the Mario 64 fish is that they're polygonal despite so much detail in the game being sprite based.

I was always so irked by the lack of incidental fish in Sunshine. Grr.

Halo 2 has a particular section featuring many incidental fish, though they're a bit hard to get a clear look at

There's a series called Endless Ocean for the Wii that's literally nothing but incidental fish.

The prerogative of the fish

It just goes to show that sometimes you didn’t realise your life was incomplete until some guy uploads a RU-vid video

Now to figure out if there are any incidental Marios in the Endless Ocean games.

sea of theives has a number of types of fish you can get from fishing, but all the incidental fish are either the most common saltwater fish (or the only freshwater fish) but smaller

“Incidental Fish” is such a correct fucking name for these. Even if there was another word that described the marine situation better I wouldn’t acknowledge it.

what an incredible video, exactly the kind of stuff I come here for (well also I come here for employment reports but that's a different vibe) video essays on the kinds of stuff that 95+% of the player base of a game doesn't notice in the slightest :D

best content I've seen in a long while on RU-vid, keep it up!

The Wii U barely counts? BLASPHEMY! You're not invited to my Wii f-Uneral anymore.

100% badass case of incidental fish in a game goes to Shadow of the Colossus. Hours and hours of running around a gorgeous open world, slaying gigantic epic beasts of myth while ALSO there are chill ponds you can swim in and look at the beautiful fish and GRAB THEM AND THEY SWIM AROUND AND CARRY YOU ALONG. Legitimately adds to the contemplative themes of ones place in nature and the entitlement of mankind to disrupt and enact one’s will and all. Shoutout to the incidental birds too

The short film Breaking the Ice was the first CG to use algorithms to simulate schools of fish and flocks of birds in 1987 and I feel like both the work on the simulation itself and the impact it had as a film on early CG artists has a lot to do with why these two animals are all over 90s 3d games.

one of my favorite instances of incidental fish is in Rayman Origins, which has a whole room dedicated to them! I think it was made to show off the processing power of the console in the trailer, but you can still go there, and watch as probably hundreds of dopey multicoloured fish swim amicably back and forth, or get startled and swim away if they get near you. I always wanted to catch one as a kid, but they always stay just out of your reach.

The fish swimming away when u get close reminds me of when they demo’d halo 3 to a game developer and when he shot the grass and it moved from the bullets he was blown away by how realistic games had gotten

This is one of my favorite RU-vid channels. Thank you for your work