Why is Super Mario 64 so Creepy?

i've always been a pretty big fan of creepy things creepy things have always just caught my interest there's just something about the feeling of the creeps it gives you some kind of mysterious feeling that makes you really think i'm not really as much of a fan of scary things but i really like creepy things there's definitely a difference between scary and creepy as wikiduff describes it creepy is producing an uneasy fearful sensation as of things crawling over one's skin while scary is causing or able to cause fright things that give me an uneasy feeling are creepy pastas over the years i've gravitated towards super mario 64 creepypastas i've run out of good ones but i still like listening to the bad ones anyway there's just something so fascinating about mario 64 that makes me like the creepiness of it the more i played and watched super mario 64 i always thought about what makes it so creepy so then i started dissecting the game in my mind trying to think of what aspects were adding to the creepiness first i wanted to know what causes being creeped out in a smithsonian article i found a professor of psychology named frank mcandrew says creepiness is about the uncertainty of a threat you're feeling uneasy because you think there might be something to worry about here but the signals are not clear enough to warrant you're doing some sort of desperate life-saving kind of thing to summarize his quote he's basically saying being creeped out is when you feel some kind of threat but it's not enough of a threat to act upon it from this idea a few potential causes for the creeps came to mind the dark being alone masks or creepy music i think a good and also common word to summarize the reason for the creeps is ambiguity i tried to keep these main points in mind to try and discover what makes the game creepy [Music] if you have heard of the lore and creepypastas of super mario 64 it immediately affects the experience of the game as soon as you open it up just from hearing that kind of stuff you already get a more creepy feeling from the game at all times one not so creepy but still interesting theory is the l is real theory now if you've ever played super mario 64 you probably know this little courtyard in the castle now do you remember the star statue that had writing below it that you could never read some people believe that says ella's real 2401 some people believe that the 2401 is some kind of code you can use somewhere to unlock luigi now the theory is actually kind of confirmed recently there's one huge nintendo source code leak showing that luigi was supposed to be in the game you may be thinking that's cool already but here's the catch whoever had the source code waited 24 years and one month to release the source code lining up with the 2401 in the rumor no that's dedication that's just one example of lore that contributes to the creepiness of the game this next one is actually quite big because it involves many super mario 64 secrets and theories this one is called the super mario 64 iceberg basically the super mario 64 iceberg is a bunch of super mario 64 secrets and theories represented on this iceberg on the tip of the iceberg you have surface level and more obvious secrets and as you go down you start to see more theories and less game secrets and they usually get more outlandish the further you go down if you want to see an explanation of the full iceberg and all of its secrets watch this explanation video by mish cause he does a really good job explaining it links in the description anyway one of the creepiest super mario 64 theories is that every super mario 64 copy is personalized this theory pretty much states that people believe there is an ai built in the code of super mario 64 that changes your game as you go through the game one piece of proof that people try to use as proof of this theory is the wario apparition some people believe that this floating head of wario showed up in the game because the ai put wario there based on the person's decisions during the game this was proved to be fake because that wario apparition actually came from a promotional video at e3 where wario kind of makes fun of super mario 64. here's the clip like this anyway you think this is [Music] even better [Music] [Music] uh so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now even though the whole theory is fake it's still extremely creepy and look at the photo it just looks off for some reason it also doesn't help that the theory is actually sort of believable even though you know it's fake so when you play the game you can't help but just have the theory in the back of your mind thinking about what if it is true what if it is personalized these are the kinds of things that i'm always thinking about when i'm playing the game and that's just partially why the game is so creepy [Laughter] this one is a very important one just speaking in general music and sound are what makes games interesting and the game creators can make you feel what they want you to feel with music nintendo is especially good with music and sounds in their games and super mario 64 is no exception almost every song in the game is amazing the music is very good at making you feel exactly how they want you to feel especially the haunted house theme and the merry-go-round song these songs are insanely creepy and they fit the level perfectly no other level in any mario game fits the same amount of eerie creepiness in this level and it's probably half thanks to the music so what causes some music to be creepy well for one certain chords can cause you to have an uneasy feeling those chords are usually dissonant chords according to musical you we are biologically trained to feel threatened when we hear dissonant chords an example of a dissonant chord that's used very commonly in scary music is the devil's interval the devil's interval is a tritone or two notes that are three whole steps apart from each other the devil's interval is very known for its appearance in many scary songs because of its dissonance i'm not sure if the devil's interval is used in the super mario 64 soundtrack but i do know that dissonant chords are used in the merry-go-round song i don't know about the haunted house song because i couldn't find any sheet music for it online but i do know it uses various sounds throughout the song that could trigger biological fear in the player while playing through big boo's haunt the creepy feeling is very apparent and that creepy feeling affects the entirety of the playthrough after you finish which helps contribute to the overall feel of the game during my making of this video i was recommended this video called super mario 64 is a disturbing game by german peter in this video he talked about a few really good points on why the game felt disturbing i think a way i can summarize some of the points in his video is just how unsettling some of the visuals are firstly the characters look at these characters tell me that they aren't at least a little bit creepy why do some of them have red eyes they look so empty and scary and they remind me of some messed up creepypastas they're so deprived of emotion which is actually why they're creepy it's not that they're not showing emotion it's just that it's just one emotion all the time lack of emotion is actually scary on a biological level it's related to why masks are creepy with science or is it live science i don't actually know it says humans find masks creepy because we get a ton of information off of people's faces and with people's emotions being hidden by masks we become scared because we don't really know what the person in the mask could do or what their intentions are the same thing could be carried over to super mario 64 when we see such static facial expressions on those characters another thing that german peter mentioned was the wet dry world sky box i never realized the skybox even existed before he mentioned it and it's actually super creepy why is this in a mario game it just doesn't fit at all and why is it in this level it's very odd to be in this game because it doesn't really fit the style at all it's almost like nintendo intentionally tried to make the game creepy also just random stuff throughout the castle is weird like creepy paintings weird textures weird secret areas and ghosts and this sign that says shh please walk quietly in the hallways is also really concerning why is that there there's no explanation that i can think of that explains why you should be quiet in the hallways it's not like bowser is watching you as you go through the hallways or something or is he one last thing that i realized from german peter's video was how lonely everything feels it always feels very lonely and ominous wherever you go making you wish that there were moral toads and other friends throughout the castle even in most levels besides bob on battlefield in my opinion you feel really lonely because it's mostly just you enemies and maybe some ba-bombs it's not a great feeling to be alone at all and again it gives you that evolutionary response that just makes you creeped out as much as i love dire dire docs i barely played it at all because it just feels so lonely and creepy even compared to the other levels that felt empty loneliness is probably one of the if not the biggest reason this game is creepy because loneliness is throughout the whole game and not just parts of the game like some of the points after i did all this research i wanted to get some opinions on what makes the game creepy to other people so i decided to ask my friends to see what they think first i asked my friend gpm1000 to see what his opinion was what makes super mario 64 creepy to me well i actually think that that's a pretty easy question to answer because i just think it's the fact that the release date of the game which is i think 1996 that could be wrong but that kind of coincided with the rise of the internet but not quite what i mean by that is there's not a lot of information online or at least there wasn't at the time about the development of the game and you know the contents of like what's inside the game but it did have message boards like game faqs where people could spread these theories about the game like you know l is real 2401 for example but really anything on that super mario 64 iceberg and i just think that that led to a lot of conspiracy theories and let them turn into urban legends about the game and even some creepypastas that i think really were only possible because of the time that the game came out check out gpm's youtube channel links in the description then i asked my friend saltorb on his opinion okay saltorb what makes super mario 64 creepy to you personally i haven't played the game much but you know just looking at it it's a little static and that makes everything kind of nerve-wracking and some of the levels design is intentionally creepy like some of the scary levels with all the booze and stuff but i don't know there's some pretty normal some pretty normal levels that also give a sense of like unsafeness like you're being watched by something i don't know all right well thank you saltord for coming on you got anything to shout yourself out for no you can just put my link in the description if you want to i don't really care if you do or not okay cool check them out links in the description then i asked my friend plaz there's definitely an aura you feel when playing super mario 64. at first the openness of the world just makes you happy to explore it but eventually it starts to feel a little dark peach's castle begins to feel eerily empty at least it's how you feel early on but eventually you will start to discover more of the castle and it gets creepier this ranges from things like character models such as the womp but what's really disturbing is like the mass dungeon that is under the castle now that doesn't really seem to match what you think of a peach castle but it's there check out plaza's twitch plaz live links in the description [Music] super mario 64 is a very popular charming game that has made many lives happier that being said the game is still really unsettling thanks to a mixture of loneliness lack of facial emotion creepy music lore age and an overall creepy atmosphere super mario 64 will always have that sliver of darkness to it it may have been terrifying to me when i was little but i actually enjoy that creepy feeling to the game and it separates it with other games and makes it pretty special thanks for watching my video bye [Music] you

Channel: Calicore

Views: 141,848

Rating: 4.8314142 out of 5

Keywords: Super Mario 64, mario, mario music, super mario, creepy, super mario 64 iceberg

Id: ou21BwlvtXc

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020