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(Pic ripped from Super Mario 64) If you haven't heard of this myth, you can't really call yourself a Nintendo fan. This myth is probably the largest myth to ever hit the gaming world, and is still believed by some today. It all started with a blurry texture in the courtyard of Peach's castle.
Luigi is real 2401? From the blurry, illegible text came the myth. The most popular rendition says that the top text of the plaque is "L is real 2401," and it being a Mario game, the immediate conclusion was that the L stood for "Luigi", Mario's brother. This seemed like evidence that Luigi may be in the game. As for the number, the first theory was that it stood for the number of coins in the game. This combination convinced millions of people that collecting every single coin in the game would unlock Luigi as a playable character. As this myth grew more and more people tried to collect all the coins the game had to offer, but none succeeded. To this day, not even Nintendo Power knows how many coins exist in the game, and although they have released a list, it has been proven wrong many times. The most coins ever collected as a total was 2090 (whereas Nintendo Power stated there was a total of 206 cool and so it seems that 2401 is an impossible goal. And to make matters worse IGN released a $100 bounty on a method of unlocking Luigi in Super Mario 64.
Then in 2005 a video emerged on the internet that indeed showed Luigi running around in Super Mario 64, however the creator of this video is an expert at reverse engineering video games and quickly admitted to it being a hoax. He has made two hacks after that and has finally perfected his Luigi.
You can see his hacks here, here, and here.
As a hilarious twist of fate, this texture actually appeared in another game. None other than the other titan of gaming, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time.
Umm... Link is real?
Yes, that's right. "L is real" also appeared in the Ocarina of Time, however this went unnoticed for quite a while. It can be found on the top floor of Dodongo's Cavern to the right of the giant head. However Link can read it, it says:
"Giant dead Dodongo... when it sees red, a new way to go will be open."
My thoughts: Well in my opinion, it really does look like "L is real." However it looks more like 3401 than 2401. But maybe that's just me. It seems at this point you can't give this myth any credibility. First off, the chances of there being 311 overlooked coins in the game is quite low. Secondly, alternate characters in games are notoriously easy to find while hacking, which has been done to this game many times. And third, if Luigi did exist in the game and had anything to do with the statue in the courtyard, Nintendo wouldn't have reused the texture. All in all it was an interesting myth, but in the end it was disproved like most others.
Nomega · Tue Sep 01, 2009 @ 09:50pm · 0 Comments |
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