Weird 3DS Mario Mod

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[deleted user]
I don't expect anyone reading this post to believe in what I'm about to say. A lot of it is outlandish, but I am able to back up what I'm going to say with evidence. Not within this post due to amount of screenshots I'd need but in private messages, you'll get as much evidence as you need. I know I've already caused some ruckus in here with some fake screenshots about leaked screenshots of Super Mario Odyssey DLC but everything I'm about to say now is nothing but the truth. You have the option of not believing in anything I'm going to say and you are more than welcome to take it, I certainly would have a hard time believing this if I were in your shoes. But I have to say this. People deserve to know about this. The people on this forum deserves to know this anyways.

So I'm pretty sure most of you guys are aware of the history of this board but in the case that you don't, let me bring you up to speed. The three creators of this forum, DanL, Korphobo and Mason are relatively famous rom hack developers. DanL is the artist who prided himself on his work ethic and ability to whip out stuff quickly. Korphobo is the silent but diligent coder who tended to keep to himself. And Mason was the creative leader, who usually took a painstaking amount of time to craft levels that were either on par or above what Nintendo could make. Over the years they've made quality games that are great enough to be praised as legitimate expansions for the original games. They've made them for a large chunk of games within the Mario franchise, even with some of the latest games like Odyssey and 3D World. One noted absence of one of these hacks was for Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS.

Obviously they didn't owe us anything. They did these rom hacks of their own accord and just made whatever they wanted so there was no need for any expectations. Except for that one off schedule they did. Way back when a few years ago, the creators dabbled with a roadmap. On it was the third game for their N64 trilogy, a Sunshine rom hack, a Super Mario Land 2 hack and...an expansion for 3D Land. Everything else came except for that expansion. Questions always popped up whenever the developers came for a visit yet barely any of those questions were ever answered. Only one was answered by Mason in his last appearance on the forum. The question was "Will we ever see the expansion for 3D Land?" and his answer was a simple "That's something I'm glad to say you'll never see."

There was quite a bit of speculation for whatever the hell he meant that day but nowadays it's been more and more forgotten with each new mod they release. Now of course, this is going to be the part where some of you will roll your eyes but I swear on my soul that this is factual. If you don't believe me, retrace my steps and do what I did. It all started just yesterday when I was making a post on one of the threads. Something about Sunshine vs Galaxy or whatever. Anyways after I made the post, I noticed that the logo was glitched out. We all know the logo as it normally is, the words "SUPER MARIO" with some gameplay of the various Mario games released over the years inside the letters. Well for the letter "R", it was completely transparent. Hovered over my cursor over it and I saw that it was linked to something. Gave it a click and then it started downloading something. Was going to cancel the download but then I noticed the filename. It was just simply "SM3DL MOD".

This piqued my interest as I had a passing memory of the time the creators announced they were making a mod for 3D Land. Maybe they released it after all as a mini easter egg. If they weren't releasing it normally, then it was either unfinished or it was some ARG crap. They weren't above doing the latter, that was how they announced a Luigi's Mansion 18+ resprite they did. And for the former...well that hadn't happened before but it made some sense. But anyways, I was going to announce this weird thing but then I came to the conclusion that finding out as much as I could mattered more than just posting a guide to what I did. I mean people wouldn't believe in a single post that just tells you to wait until the site glitches out but they'd believe in a single post that has evidence. And I was going to play as much of the game as possible to see what I could learn and discover.

Once it was fully downloaded I booted up my Citra emulator and unzipped the file to the roms folder. Didn't have much in the unzipped folder, just the .3ds file and a .txt file that just read "Credits". In it was just a couple of lines that went along like:

DanL - Artist. Korphobo - Coder. Mason - Bastard.

Either that was a light-hearted dig at Mason, who'd usually be in charge of the level design for these mods, or that was a not-so light-hearted dig and the other guys didn't like him. The only way to properly find out was to boot up the rom and get to playing. As soon as it loaded in, it played a custom title screen. Just an empty desert set at sunset. Nothing but ambience of the sand being dragged away by the wind played as the logo faded in. Super Mario 3D Land: The Search for Mario. Pressed the A button and a short intro played where a letter was placed over the desert. It read:

Dear Luigi. Please find your brother. He went to the desert with Yoshi 5 days ago and hasn't returned since. Yours Truly - Princess Toadstool.

The letter flicked away to show Luigi on the level select part of the game. It was quite strange to see this mod seemingly act like a weird version of Mario is Missing but I found it relatively interesting. There were only 2 levels that could be selected, about as much as the trio went through I guess. The only level that could be selected was D-1, with the mini 3D square showing of a segment of the level with, once again, an empty desert that had an orange sun hiding behind the square. With a quick deep breath, I was ready to explore what the creators had made. As soon as I entered the level, it was obvious to see that this was based on the level 5-1. As a matter of fact, it looked to be just 5-1 but with some stylistic changes. The first thing of note was that the enemies had disappeared. Still had the boomerang powerups and star coins but all of the enemies had been removed. The next change was that the lighting had changed from clear to a hazy orange. Even had a shimmering filter overlayed on the gameplay to make it look like the heat was unbearable.

But the biggest change that had been made was the "elevator" ride that happens partway through. Normally, you'd be given a challenge where you'd need to dodge a bunch of obstacles like a spiked ball or one of those sand dragon things. Well instead of facing that, all that I got was a slow descent upwards with not much to worry about. That would've been strange enough but there were some sizable changes made to the background. Sand covered posters and billboards were plastered on the walls, heralding the arrival and menace of King Bowser. Some were praising him, others were warning of his presence. The latter ones gave off information about where you could hide. The desert was just one of those places. The other big change was what was inside the holes. Usually those holes were empty, meant to just show that the sand worm things travelled in tunnels. But instead of being empty, there were enemies in there. Koopas, goombas, pokies, thwomps. All of them were just hiding in the holes, staring at Luigi as he travelled upwards. When I got to the top, the level played as normally as it could without enemies. And just a few seconds later, I had completed the level with two out of three star coins.

The next and supposedly final level was D-2. The mini 3D square showed off similar scene to the first level, with it now being set at night as the sun was replaced with a moon. There were also things that looked like cactuses but it was hard to properly say because of how dark the scene was made to be. As soon as I got in, I eventually managed to figure out that it was just 5-4 with some more stylistic changes. It took a while because an immediate change that was made was the complete change in lighting: there was none at all. The silhouette was still there but now the lighting was darkened to an obscene degree. There was a fire pickup right in front of me and after throwing some of them out, I figured out that the gimmick they added to this level was to have me light up some torches to see in the dark. Pretty nifty, Nintendo themselves were known to do similar things with their own games. Other than that though, there didn't seem to be much else in changes as the enemies came back. At least at first.

As I went through the level though, more and more of the enemies started to disappear. Torches were starting to get more scarce which meant I had to rely on my knowledge of what the level route was more often than not. In their place were just unmoving, resprited enemies I could walk through. Their eyes were blacked out, and were coloured to be a darker shade, with a red tinge to them all. Best guess I could give is that those were some placeholder models. Don't think I need to say what they represented. But as I kept moving, the placeholders kept appearing. Started to be more of them then there were coins at one point. When I got to the end of the level out where there were supposed to be a mostly grassy knoll, it was just covered in those models. There were so much of them it got the level to start lagging out. The emulator was taking a heavy hit so I forced Luigi to just grab the flag as fast as possible. Once he'd done so, it was back to the level select after I had gotten three star coins.

Back at the level select screen, that was seemingly it. There wasn't any other level available so that seemed to be all that was made. Yet I was still dissatisfied. That couldn't have been all they made after all this time. There needed to be something else. So in a bid of strange curiosity, I pressed right. And to my surprise, Luigi started walking to the next level. Loading screen came in when he walked off of the D world and once it finished, all that I saw was pitch black. If it wasn't for the second screen I would've assumed the emulator hard crashed. There was only one level to choose from, simply called DS-1. A special level for a curious player I guess. For the last time, I pressed A and entered the level.

Even looking back now, it's hard to say if it was based on any particular level that already existed. The best guess I can give is that it was 3-1 but the entire tower was removed. I say it's hard because all that I could really see was the empty desert plains. Unlit torches were around and thanks to still having a fire flower from the last level, I was able to start lighting them up. There was an invisible box stopping me from going to the centre so I had to walk around the level to light the torches. As soon as I lit them all, a sun started to rise in the background. The light and shimmering heat effect came back as the desert became more visible. The light pouring in revealed what was in the centre of the desert. Mario, standing alone. His clothes were of a dark brown, stained with what seemed to be blood. His eyes were sunken and shrivelled, looking incredibly dry. All he did was look at Luigi as I got closer to him. I noticed that a custom model of Yoshi was by his side, missing parts of his emaciated body. From his eyes, to his tail and to his legs, they had been scavenged. I was able to approach him and press A to speak to him. All that he was able to say was:

Don't bring me back there. I hate all of them.

As soon as I pressed to escape out of the dialogue box, the game crashed as Mario started to walk towards me. When I tried to reboot the ROM, all that I got was a notification that it was corrupted. I was pretty much forced out of playing this game again. After the experience, I decided to test my luck and ask the remaining creators about the game. DanL never got back to me but Korphobo gave me most of the details. While he did tell me that I shouldn't reveal this information publicly...that's something I can't promise. I'm sorry man but we all deserve to know. His response rambled a bit at times and I'm already using up a lot of character space so I'll just jot down the bullet points.

Mason had developed a severe case of paranoid personality disorder before development of the 3D Land mod.
DanL reached out to Mason to talk about getting the mod done since it was promised to be done on the roadmap.
Mason strongly refused, saying that he needed time to himself to get mentally better.
The two got in a bad fight with each other, one so bad that the two swore off their friendship.
Korphobo had to act as the bridge between the two to get them to work together and fulfil the promise they made.
Mason was given complete and total creative freedom.
DanL eventually realised what he was using the creative freedom for and essentially kicked Mason out of the entire friend group.
While Korphobo and DanL went on to continue making ROMS, Mason spiralled.
The last Korphobo heard of him, he was in prison.
5 counts of 2nd degree murder.
When interrogated, he blamed his serial killings on "The people that asked too much of me."

Again, I apologise to Korphobo but this is something that has to be brought up. Not just for the existence of the mod but to what exactly happened to the creators of this entire forum. And for anyone whose interested in playing this mod, please contact me in my private messages. Not too sure how I'll be able to send it over but I'll figure something out. As for any questions you may have, ask as much as you possibly can. I'll be available for as long as I can be awake for tonight. See you guys in a bit.

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