I can't remember exactly when I first played Super Mario 64, but it wasn't long after I first got my Nintendo 64 in the late '90s. In the three decades that followed, I've played the game countless times. I've seen more speedruns than I care to admit. I've watched multi-hour video essays on its inner workings. And yet I never knew that Mario can spontaneously spawn a fish.
"In Super Mario 64, there is a 1/256 chance of a fish spawning when Mario jumps out of water anywhere," as Mario trivia aficionado Supper Mario Broth explains on Bluesky. "However, during development, the fish were instead restricted to a single spot in Whomp's Fortress, which spawned them continuously in the form of a bountiful fountain of fish."
In Super Mario 64, there is a 1/256 chance of a fish spawning when Mario jumps out of water anywhere. However, during development, the fish were instead restricted to a single spot in Whomp's Fortress, which spawned them continuously in the form of a bountiful fountain of fish.
— @mariobrothblog.bsky.social (@mariobrothblog.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-25T21:55:39.595Z
Attached to that post is a clip of Mario encountering what can, indeed, only be described as a beautiful fountain of fish. In the final game, this spot corresponds to an unused object which, before Mario 64 got pulled apart by hackers, modders, and researchers, was apparently only seen in footage at Nintendo's 1995 Space World convention.
The Cutting Room Floor offers a more detailed technical explanation of the object, but in short, it's an old version of the 1/256 fish spawner – which, honestly, is the part that's blowing me away. None of these things are new discoveries, but you're telling me that the entire time I've been playing Super Mario 64, I've quietly been rolling the dice to spawn li'l fishy friends every time I jump out of the water? This game never ceases to amaze, even all these years later.
