The Nintendo Character Hidden Inside Mario Maker’s Files 

Nikki refuses to die. She got into Smash Ultimate as an assist trophy, which in if itself is an impressive feat. I feel like Nikki is going to have something special happen one day. Game or otherwise.

I know that this may be quite far-fetched, but, what if the Maker Avatars from SMM2 were going to be included in SMM at first? Hence the Splatoon cosmetics and weapons, perhaps as clothing/accesories for the avatars. Again, quite a stretch of an idea, but, could happen :P

Why can't we have a drawing game with nikki as the main character? It could be sort of a new IP

I say we petition to make Nikki the tutorial teacher of Nintendo games

EAD 2 person 1: * whispers * hey let's prank EAD 4 and put some of our files in their game EAD 2 person 2: * whispers * yeah totally

Well, a theory of mine for why Splatoon's odd weapon files were there in the first place is that they may likely had used Splatoon's online communication code to serve as a base for the level uploading feature, and the files were there because the programming from Splatoon's online probably required these objects to be read before it could run.

Sees thumbnail. Me: goomba with arms and a body Or nikki

Nikki would have been a far better tutorial teacher.

Maybe super Mario maker was going to have some sort of customizable mii like in super Mario maker 2

Regarding the Splatoon files in Mario Maker, could it possibly be one of those strange instances where developers will fill the final build package of a game with additional files in order to use up all of the disc space? I'm not entirely sure why this is a thing, but I've definitely heard of instances of it occurring before in the past. Seeing as though Mario Maker 2 has a tiny file size (under 10GB), it's fair to assume the first game did too. Perhaps, in order to fill the remaining space on a Wii U Blu Ray disc, the developers took larger assets from the also in-development (or recently completed) Splatoon and just bundled them in with the game? Sorry, I know this isn't much help, but that's the only reason I can think of! Seems very unlikely that Mario Maker and Splatoon would share the same code-base,, though, so maybe this explanation makes more sense?

I remember my little sister writing messages to Nikki and mistaking her for a real person. We would also send stupid drawings and edits to each other. It really entertained us, for some reason

Mario Maker Dev: okay the game has been shipped Miyamoto: 良い (good) Splatoon Dev: uh... I uh.... Left some of the items from splatoon in the files.... Miyamoto: *_今言ってやれ_* (say sike right now)

5:23 You said 11 Subtitles said 19 What is going on??

Hey, just wanted to say you’ve been killing it lately with these videos, they’re so so so great! Never stop, I love them!

Are there secret characters or things on Mario maker 2?

I fondly remember swapnote... First time i drew a pp

Maybe they developed it with some of Splatoon's build for the Miiverse functionality. Both games used Miiverse a lot more than other Wii U games. That's a pretty big stretch but it feels slightly plausible.

I miss Swapnote man, the only people I got to send any notes to were my siblings but still :’

My best guess on the splatoon sprites thing is that each item may have been a placeholder for the amiibo costumes. Perhaps just testing the concept with an already long list of items

Nikki is such an underrated character. One of my favorites honestly.

Still wish Swapnote came back. The stationary in Swapdoodle was just shit. Hell, my favorite stationary in Swapnote was the Game Center CX one

Just wanna say that with the splatoon section at 4:20, the sub weapons were never supposed to be a certain color. The graphics were of color before release but the actual game has them in white because its easier to differentiate the bit of the sub weapon that actually changes color

when you said that the splatoon bomb were just purple and grey instead of green i died a little inside, the color changes based on the team's color, it's just no color shading like for example the grass in minecraft is gray by default but the biome changes the shade of green

Me: (sees thumbnail) My brain: t o a d m b a

I like how Thomas didn’t pretend he found it but told us he researched it and who found it

maybe they used the engine for the squidjump mini game while your waiting for a match, for the mario maker engine

I would like to mention the audio when placing blocks in SMM use the same vocoder as the one used in splatoon

These videos are extremely great, never knew half the stuff you talked about existed. I can see a lot of channel growth in the future!

It's also possible they reused old Splatoon Development hardware.

Gotta love when there's hidden secrets in game files. These kinds of secrets are really fun to hear about when someone finds them imo

Mario and Inkling have similar double jump animations. That's why Mario Maker was based on Splatoon.

How did you just bring back swapnote into my head, it completely vanished when i moved on from the 3DS

In my opinion, it's quite possible that the game was originally intended for the Wii. As you said, it started development before the Wii U was even a thing. The splatoon assets may be a remnant of the developers using some code and assets from Splatoon to make the game run on a Wii U console for testing purposes. I can tell you from experience that writing code in one language and then converting it to another can be extremely complex For example, to make something print in Python, it's essentially Sudo-Code. Meaning it essentially is written as follows, except more complicated When Application starts Print "Hello world!" In Java, it's complicated to the point of being this Public static void main (String args[ ]) { System.out.println("Hello world!"); } Now, this is obviously a small example, but compare this to something like Python to C++, or Java to Bethesda's creation engine, which is used for modding their games, they're two exponentially different lanuages. That can sometimes be the equivalent of porting a game to another console. The Wii U may be a prime example of it, due to how much developers complain about it being hard to work with. It's possible that the splatoon code may have been used to jumpstart development on the Wii U, and the assets may have been linked to key startup scripts at the time, hence why they are in their early design stages, and with there only being 11 of them as opposed to the amount in the final game. Of course, they likely rewrote this code later due to compatibility issues with their engine, there by removing the usefulness of the assets. They likely were left on the disk unintentionally.

Miyamoto wanted to add Splatoon items to the game, but the team thought it was far fetched so it went unused

I can see the relation. In Splatoon you can go from solid objects to traversable paths, on the same plane, in real time. Same with Mario Maker's Editor by nature. Those paths are able to be moved, altered or crossed. They also can be customized or altered by color and position.. in Splatoon, that is. Color and position (x,y) are attributes.. which maybe slowly became dimension, position, color, perspective and who knows what else. I used to eat pizza, then I learned how to eat it with ranch and hot sauce. That was an upgrade to me. Honestly it's easy to see how the Mario Maker system could have come from Splatoon's engine or source. Plus, it'd already have network features involved, making it easier to set up map sharing and stuff like that. Edit: and I just say that to say, if it was based on it's engine, it's not hard to believe that a file or two may have lingered. They may have liked certain features and just "copy and pasted," chunks or whatever, unintentionally dragging resources onboard. Maybe something like that Doesn't have to be some Nicholas Cage worthy adventure. Perhaps.. a slip up lol

I went to college for game dev! I dont have experience working on Nintendo hardware, but I have worked with the PS4 dev kit. The explanation that they used a build of splatoon to avoid doing all the small setup code definitely makes sense (most of my ps4 projects involved taking other demo projects and cannibalizing them til it was just the setup code, lol). As for why there was stuff from so late in splatoons development... I have a couple theories. I personally don't think those designs are from particularly late - seems to be from just after they decided on the look of the squid kids, which I'd still pin as early in the overall dev process despite knowing that most of the early gameplay testing was done with primitive objects. As for why they weren't removed, my best guess is that it's a consequence of using that "setup code" (in reality the whole setup process is more complex than just having a few lines of code, giving justification for cannibalizing another project). If you're not already aware of the concept, look up "dependencies" as they apply to coding. While it usually applies to different blocks of code, you can sometimes see similar things happen when working with certain game engines, where removing a file completely breaks some other part of the game. It'd be easier to just leave the files in than spend dev time trying to untangle the spaghetti code causing the game to break when they're removed. A consequence of using Splatoon as a base. This is also something I personally ran into working with the PS4 devkit, so a demo I worked on to create a piano, for example, has a random rubber duck in the game files cause everything broke when i tried to remove it.

I think the Splatoon weapons were used as early placeholders for textures that would appear in the dropdown item hud, and the later ones might’ve been for maker icons.

5:37 this magnifying glass seems not to be working 🤔

So, as a game developer myself, it's often the case that when working in a larger company that there's a central asset database where game assets are stored. As the assets were stored under /Layout/ItemIcon_00.szs, it's most likely a developer copied the assets from the centralized database into the game's engine in order to work on the Item Icon system. Programmers copy assets from other things all the time so they can continue to work until the final assets are delivered, afterwards, they either remove them completely, or just replace the location they're loaded from. (The latter is often easier to do). Seeing as those images are located under the /Layout/ folder (which is used for storing User Interface things) and the amount of them, I'm fairly confident saying they were just copy/pasted by a programmer for testing and weren't deleted properly.

I already know most of this, but it's well edited and a good explanation, Subbed (:

Great video! It really is odd and mysterious that _____ (not spoiling the video) files amongst other things were stuck in Maker's files. It's excellent food for thought. 🤔

While I'm not going to accuse you of a click-baiter, this was somewhat of a poor way of explaining the "hidden character". Really, it should be called "hidden image" as it's basically just that. If it was an original character instead, maybe I wouldn't have been so critical. Plus, this is old news and stuff that most of us already know honestly. EDIT: Holy crap, didn't expect this comment to gain over 100 likes. Thanks, guys!

Im so glad to say that Nikki is still around in Swapdoodle (in german "Kritzelpost"), which is the official Comeback of SwapNote/Nintendo Letter Box. I think Nikki should be shown in some System Applications.

7:35 It's worth noting that 3d engines such as unity are often used for many 2d games, including Cuphead and Streets of Rogue, to name a few. It's possible that those assets were used to test splatoon's engine during development and so they were just mindlessly carried over to the next game since it was for the same engine, just incase they needed it. Theres also some benefits to having 2d games made in a 3d engine. Also they could have at one point wanted to use a real 3d mario instead of a prerendered one, so it would make sense to have placeholder models ready.

The filter that you keep on putting over the mario maker game play makes it look like it's slanted.

2:35 I think you mean the tip of the goal pole!

I love looking about on TCCO and finding out more about game mechanics, programming oddities, etc. I have no knowledge of how to do these things myself so it's cool that others do know how to find these weird hidden things.

7:43 Correction: Bowser and Bowser Jr. are also 3D models. -

5:55 is that a sound effect from Another Code for the Nintendo DS...? I know I heard this jingle somewhere aaaaaa!!!

7:39 Not only Mario, but also Yoshi, Bowser and (If I remember correctly) Bowser Jr.! Still the 3d-ifying of the 2d textures is really impressive and it's hard to tell the difference between what's 2d and what's not :p

I think the splatoon files were used as references for the amibo costume from splatoon

Love the vids just like they are. Professional finish with such a small viewer base your great man!!!

You know how mario maker 2 has miis and outfits for them? Well, what if mario maker 1 was planned to have miis and they used the splattoon outfits/characters models for early testing?

Me: Sees thumbnail Guess 1: Frisk Guess 2: Dora Guess 3: Edna from the incredibles

My bet on the Splatoon file is, they just needet a random picture with a grid-like structure to test the function, thats cutting the sprites out of a picture. And this was probably the first picture with a grid-like structure they found somewhere and forgot to delete it.

The idea of Mario characters in Splatoon was thrown around during Splatoon's development but I don't think they actually seriously tried.

You pristine individual Stop being so lovely gosh darn

“Tip of the iceberg”? I think you mean “Tip of the goal pole”.

1:35 "You Can See It Gone Through a Whole lot of Changes" Ikr.... *YOU CAN PUT 999 SECONDS*

That intro was absolutely.... BEAUTIFUL!!!

Looking at the *types* of items from Splattoon in SMM and how they were used in Splatoon (some kind of in-game store bought with in-game currency)? Could they have imported some of the store game mechanics in to SMM as a test? Maybe they scrapped the idea, but it was already integrated in, so they just left it. Just a thought. I don't own either game.

swapnote did come back as swapdoodle on the 3ds (i have it)

“Tip Of The Iceberg” My Brain: Mario 64 Iceberg Also Me: Wait A Minute... Very Clever.

Well done for doing so well on RU-vid !

Maybe they were using the Splatoon sprites as placeholders for stuff like Mushrooms and blocks? Idk :v

Mario Maker's internal folder structure is almost identical to Splatoon's. The file formats used are also the same between the two games. There's plenty more (fairly blatant) proof than just these leftover files that MM uses Splatoon's engine. Mario Maker using sprites over Splatoon doesn't really mean anything in the case of reusing a game engine either. The Splatoon engine's 3D functionality would still be used, considering that NSMBU has fully 3D elements alongside pre-rendered ones.

My guess about beta Splatoon content in Mario Maker 1 is because Mario Maker 1 uses a heavily modified version of Splatoon's engine (before it got released) (based of my knowledge with Gmod compared to Half-Life 2) but they somehow forgot to remove the leftovers from the game.

We were blessed by the RU-vid algorithm. Your videos are amazing. I wish I'd discovered your channel before.

Maybe they were using the splatoon items to test how the 2D sprite trick in SMBU worked, and were comparing some 2d splatoon gear to the 3d ones that they could easily get. It's just a theory, but it might explain it. Although it doesn't make sense that the 2d versions would be deleted and not the 3d ones.

A lot of code and general resources go into games that you don't necessarily see in the mechanics or general play experience. Take the unreal engine as an example. Snake Pass and Gears of War both run on the same code base. What probably happened is the Mario Maker team "forked" the Splatoon engine for likely something along the lines of a dev tool or some specific tricky bit of code or something. Also don't get too caught up on using a 3D engine for a 2D game. All that you need to do to make a 3D game 2D is use what's called an orthographic camera.

Here's my theory; Maybe Nintendo planned on using those Splatoon images as skins on characters or items to try to promote Splatoon, and then, for some reason, scratched the idea part way through the process. The images look complete because those could be sprites as well. Maybe they scratched the idea because of the changes Splatoon went through, or maybe they didn't think having small 2d items like that in the game would encourage anyone to want to buy Splatoon.

Maybe the fine folks on the Splatoon team needed help designing certain items, so they had their friends on the Mario Maker team help. Then, the artwork could have somehow ended up in Mario Maker by mistake. Or maybe they sent them over so the amiibo character sprite for the inkling could be accurate. Maybe the Splatoon team wasn't clear on what the Mario Maker team needed, so they sent a bunch of stuff.

Swapnote is still available in Germany! There are also all DLCs available like different pens or different papers!

You know, you can use the way back machine, it's an extremely helpful tool for researching.

Guess one: The two teams messed up with their USB drive. Guess two: A person originally want to borrow some functionality from Splatoon, which gets denied, and the files is deleted improperly. Guess three: The codes are actually from a unreleased game/game update somewhere else(high chance from Roblox Arsenal, which always get ripped off) which the game development team got from GitHub alongside with other code they actually wanted.

It was probably for people who didn't have the money for splatoon but wanted to play it with friends

3:05 I DID NOT- oh wait...wrong Nicky

Swapnote was just my favorite app in 3DS, it was there that I found out I enjoy drawing (but denied because ~lacked any talent~ to draw)

I love how you got about 15 seconds of Mario Maker footage and just reused it over and over throughout the video, Resourcefulness 100 in my books 👌

Had to sub just for that brilliant opening sequence!

I am guessing it’s Nikki from Swapnote that is shown in the thumbnail before watching this. EDIT: I was correct.

Wonder if the Mario Maker team was just borrowing tid bits from the Mii Verse functionality from Splatoon 2.

Well, if they shared the same base engine (which is really the core that handles audio, graphics, animation, input, networking, drawing UI, etc, not the gameplay itself) then it could be a totally reasonable idea, even if the games play very differently. I imagine they could have been working on the engine (either one or both teams concurrently, or with a specialized team just for the game engine). Using version control, like GIT, allows merging changes from multiple programmers to a single repository on a server, which then can be used to downloaded it or get updates). So someone working on the engine may have used some of those files to test some functionality in the game engine and just left them in the last revision of the engine repository (I imagine they probably stopped working on the engine way before shipping Splatoon, so it's possible the Splatoon team may have updated some graphics "locally" but never pushed those changes to the engine repository).

It may be possible that the Splatoon artist team simply sent their work to the Super Mario Maker team by mistake, and whoever received it put it in with the other assets, to then go unnoticed until release. Or if they noticed, didn't bother removing it in fear of breaking something.

Maybe the Splatoon costumes were in the code because amiibo shrooms were planned for the U theme as well as the NES mario bros. but scrapped early on, with these left behind.

0:22 I will arrest you for hacking Nintendo

This is the most underrated channel I’ve ever seen

I like that opening you had a clip of some movie and slaped some Nintendo developers pictures on it. I like it

7:39 *and the backgrounds are 3d*

Could it just be that they were made in the same engine and the outfits were just left behind

In the Splatoon part of the video, I saw what looked like an Ink Revolver in the images. That would be SO COOL.

0:55 I hate, when people show this same memory allocation C code everytime it's something related to programming or "hacking". Looking in the game files probably hasn't to do anything with programming, especially not memory allocation in C.

Am i the only one who thought it was a goomba with arms in the thumbnail?

Oh, a face reveal!

Honestly I think you are my new favorite RU-vidr

Your channel is amazing dude

I still have the first game for the 3DS. I made many levels. Still do.

But hey that’s just a theory

The 2 teams were likely developing the engine on a shared repository, and by mistake assets from Splatoon made it into the engine repository at some point. Nobody bothered deleting them, and that's that. 🤷‍♀️