The Shattered Visage of a Turtle
In which I discover and solve a 2-decade old Mario World Mystery, personally thank Barack Obama and Change the World
At the end of Super Mario World, the second to last screen you see is this:
All of the Koopalings and their implicit daddy- one happy family. Maybe you, an astute Mario liker noticed that something is off. It really only concerns Morton and Roy- if you've played the newest Mario kart (soon to turn 10 next year) you'll know they look like this, and have since they were printing magazines promoting Mario 3:
Perhaps we should review further, because if you aren’t familiar with their names, you’re going to hear them come up quite frequently.
This is Morton, Roy, and Ludwig von Koopa. In mario 3, they were all the “chunky” kind of boss, who were bigger and could slam the ground. They all share a general body type, but their styles differ from there. Morton is sort of like a grey shelled, Bowser Junior type (but before that guy was dubiously born). He’s got an onion sprout for hair and funny long eyebrows. Roy is the “cool” one- he’s pink, has some sick shades, and looks constipated all the time. In Mario World, they decided to give him the worlds goofiest eyebrows. We care today about Morton and Roy, but it’s worth knowing that both are very similar to Ludwig Van Koopa, the easiest to remember Koopaling sporting a composers hairmop and a mono-vampiric buck tooth.
This begs the question: what went wrong in the cast roll sprites pictured below?
Many (and maybe nearly all) people tend to answer "they switched Roy and Morton's colors" and call it day- but that can't be it! Morton would be grey, sure, but Roy would be navy. Your brain retorts- "well maybe they couldn't show pink, so they settled with blue" since, you know, old consoles had all sorts of limitations!
I have two more holes to poke:
1. That Navy that Roy is rocking is a different blue from Iggy's Blue. Why use a different one?
2. Wendy is red. Use red for Roy! That’s closer than pink!
Perhaps the craftier of you came up with yet another reason: "Maybe Roy and Morton's boss fights made them look that way for weirder technical reasons outside of the credits, and the cast roll wanted to reflect that!"
Pictured below, How the Koopalings in question appear in game:
The above words may have frustrated you. If that's the case, there's a good chance a more honest answer to the question of "what the hell happened to Roy and Morton's Sprites" is "I don't care." That's fine! I'm not going to high-road- that's a valid way to feel, and chances are you won't get much out of the remaining article. Feel free to share this article with someone who IS into weird technical answers to small curiosities!
At the age of 10 was intrigued by what seemed like contradictory problems- why are Roy and Morton so wildly different from not only their in-game depictions, but also frustratingly flipped from their key-art?
I do not have obsessive tendencies, but I do know that if I am handed a tangled ball of yarn I will spend the next immediate 2 hours successfully untangling the knot. That isn't literature by the way, I'm being literally descriptive- I advise people not to hand me puzzles that are methodically solvable because I *will* try to solve them.
Mario World was the first video game I ever played. I was 2 at the time, but it wasn't until I was 7 that I thought the credits looked funny, and was 9 when I started putting the pieces together. I only solved the riddle at 27 with the help of Vidyasaur (plug) who gave me a missing piece that unraveled the whole puzzle. If you stay with me, we can unravel this ball of yarn together.
God, Mario World is Ugly
I need to get this out right now: I love Mario World. It is an ugly looking game to me. It is okay, great even, to love ugly things. Please re-orient yourself if you can't accept that final sentiment- it's merely a personal one anyways.
There is a good chance you might have seen a screenshot of Super Mario World and thought "wow, they sure do love their pure Crayola colors." Why is that? It's the large use of Red, Blue (kind of plum-ish), Yellow, and Green tones literally everywhere- they dominate aside from purple, orange, and pink for tertiary splashes of color. Other SNES games use a wider variety of colors, so did Mario World limit their colors on purpose?
Kind of. In the way someone breaks their knees to claim insurance money as a sort of "financial strategy," yes, Mario World chose to do this.
Let's Learn about how Color Palettes work on the SNES!
For simplicity, understand that every object that moves (and doesn't) in the game is made up of these little squares that are 8x8 pixels. Most things are bigger than a single 8x8 Tile, so enemies (like good old Roy, pictured below) are made up of multiple tiles. If a programmer wanted to draw a tile manually on the screen from memory, he'd call a tile, give it a spot, and the tile would draw itself using the following information: which direction is each tile facing? What color is each pixel? Is it in the foreground or background?
What we care about is the color. Good ol' Roy here is drawn using these 8 colors: 3 Shades of Green, 2 Shades of Orange, 1 Black, 1 white, and 1 transparent (represented by a dreamy ocean blue). All 8x8 tiles can only have, at most 8 colors in Mario world. If you're going to group multiple tiles together you (generally) want to make sure they're picking the *same* 8 colors.
Understand? Good. Those are the basics of coloring- now we need to see how the Super Nintendo is limited.
There are LOTS of tiles being repeatedly drawn over the course of a second, so the console is essentially memorizing a pre-set group of colors to call from a grid battleship style whenever it draws each of the tiles. But what colors is Mario World keeping track of? How does it determine which colors to use for what and when? Let me spoil the answer; below is an image that shows the basic color palettes available in a Mario World level:
So, how does it work? WHY are so many of them repeats?
Color? I 'ardly Know 'er!
Okay, so good news: you only have to understand how half of this stupid chart works. When Nintendo developed the actual SNES, they made it so the top half of the chart could ONLY be used by things like static objects in the foreground and background- pipes, coins, ground tiles, those sort of things! I literally do not care about those today, so we only have to concern ourselves with the bottom half of this chart, now pictured below:
So how does this chart work? In Super Mario World, every sprite tile can only use colors from *one* row. That way, when a programmer wants to draw a tile, it only needs to keep track of a number (9-16 more or less, 8-F on the chart) for a row, and then a number (1-16 more or less, 0-F on the chart) to pick a color for each pixel on the tile. Let's forget about Roy and Morton for a bit to break down generally what each group of rows are for.
Some of you who were paying attention may have caught the first contradiction- didn't I say a tile could only use 8 colors? There are 16 in a row! Mario World chooses to only use 8 for reasons we'll guess at later; I mention this now because we need to talk about the exception to the rule: The Plumber.
Row 1
Look at him. Count the colors: 3 maroon, 3 blue, 4 skin tones, 1 black, 1 white, 1 transparent. That's 12! 12 is bigger than 8, so you need to use a whole row, which is what they did- The Player's Sprite is always drawn from Row 0.
The other colors are for Mario's fireballs and the pink and his occasionally rosy cheeks. (Peach also uses this palette, so the pink does some heavy lifting)
To be clear- Mario isn't "claiming Row 0"- it's not his, and he didn't make it. Row 0 is ALSO used by the moles, the catctus-kin Pookeys, those weird toothpicks that move up and down- anything skin colored.
Because of Mario (or green “mario”)’s Omnipresence, Row 0 is always locked in. It *does* change if you switch to green “mario”, or grab a fire flower as either brother- but don't expect the game to try and change Row 8 to squeeze in some new colors to a level or something frivolous.
From here on out, every tile is only going to use 8 colors of each row- IE Half. Let's figure out each row's use.
ROW 1:
The FIRST half is therefore used for common stage elements such as bullet bills, bobombs, and the bone guys and never gets switched out. I ORIGINALLY thought fire flowers use the back half, but those are actually used by the red berries Yoshi can eat. Thanks to twitter user @ Spacesandwhich_ who was kind enough to correct me in this post!
ROWS 2-5:
Okay, for now let's only look at the first half. Why is there 2 tones of orange for every row? I get why they need black, white, and transparent, but why do these rows really only differ by THREE colors? Consider the following enemies:
Now, space is tight on a cartridge. Do you want to save 4 images of a turtle, or do you want to save 1 and change a SINGLE number (the row number) to change whether you get a red or a blue turtle? These are the exciting choices a career in game dev presents you. This explains why the shades of Orange or the same- they don't change between any of the different color turtles! I also have news about Rows 2-5: they aren't going anywhere either. Why? Consider:
You can take this lovable tired boy into every stage. Knowing this, basically every enemy tries to take colors from Row 2-5, Oh- that's why those crayola colors are everywhere! To be honest, I also think this is why they opted for 8 colors per tile, rather than the full 16- it's easier to be consistent about smart palette use when you only have 8 (really 5) colors to be concerned about. But don't worry. They're going to also put useful colors on the back half of Row 2-5 so other sprites can use some cooler colors, right?
Hey remember the berries Yoshi can eat? Not the Red one, that one is colored using row 1- I'm talking about the pink ones that also show up for added flavor, and the green ones that appear in literally ONE Stage. Those are the only objects that use the back half of Rows A and B. The remaining back half rows are blank. I guess they didn't want to think about what they would most commonly need, and lock themselves into a corner later? That's not too bad of a thought.
Hey, how many rows do we have left?
Just two?
We Ate All the Pizza so You Can Eat Dirt
Rows E and F are the only 2 "free" rows that can be changed out for unique sprite colors. A friendly data miner found that these are the only options that end up getting used in these rows:
I thumbed through every level to confirm that yes, for some reason Rows E and F DO come in pairs, always. They are mostly all used- Numbering them left to right, the first one is the default choice. It's used for those cute dinos that breathe fire! The second is for buzzy beetles and wait a goddamn minute
THERE IT IS! That first row is also used for buzzy beetles, but the "grey Koopa" row is used only for ROY in the credits and would look really good on MORTON instead! So maybe they just were off by one when calling the right row to color Roy AND Morton. Wait- why use that palette at all? We want ONE of them to be pink, right? Why not make a new palette? If we look back at the possible "wildcard" Palettes, number 6 isn't even used anywhere in the game! Literally ever! They could have just made a grey and pink Koopa palette?
Okay wait, look up at the list of palettes again: they DID make a pink Koopa palette! Twice! Number 2 is mostly used for castles (the first row is for bone fish. trust me) while number 8 is used for bowser. BINGO! So Pink Koopa WAS loaded into memory, ready for its correct recipient, Roy! So why did they mess up so bad still? How did *BLUE* even get in there?
In 2018 there was giant leak of Nintendo's internal servers which contained data for many beta elements of games, including Mario World. Here are the earliest known sprites of the Koopalings, dated 1989 and 1990 respectively:
This muddies the waters even further. Why were Roy and Morton the wrong colors, but not the ones in the credits? And also wait what's up with Ludwig? Why is he grey now? Wait
Oh you're kidding me
You mean this entire time HE WAS PINK INSTEAD OF YELLOW?????
Putting it all together
So you might have put it all together- the reason that pink, navy, and grey Koopa palettes are loaded on this credits screen (they do write over Rows 8 and 9 for the Koopa kids cast roll, I think) is because their beta sprites were colored that way- BECAUSE the Koopalings were those colors in Mario 3 (mostly). The mistake of switching Roy and Morton's colors must have been made by confused artists/programmers and was preserved through nearly every step of development until the final release.
In case you’re wondering who: we can’t know for sure, but here are the suspects:
Shigefumi Hino: the God of Pikmin, and Yoshi’s Dad, he was the teams credited Character Graphic Designer.
Eiji Noto or Satoru Takahata. They’re both credited as “Area Data Programmers.” This is to say they were level designers, but this required technical know how, and it’s clear from their continued to careers they were have specialize in VERY heavy lifting programming (Noto was the lead programmer for NSMB) or UI Programming (what Takahata sticks to generally). I rule out Yoshihiro Nomoto because they exited the games industry after Yoshi’s Story and were nearly consistently a heavy lifter on level design. I might be wrong, but I have to take some guesses.
Kazuaki Morita, the object programmer. This meant he programmed and dictated the behaviors of all objects (tiles, enemies, bosses- Mario excepted as he’s given a separate credit) and therefore *could* have been responsible for their animations and therefore color palettes. It would make sense to make these sort of mistakes- its clear from his future pedigree (he was the programming supervisor for Breath of the Wild!) that he feels the most comfortable strictly programming enemy behaviors.
Toshihiko Nakago, the Program Director. Technically, he’s in charge so everything would be his fault. Sure wish I could call these people up and ask who is responsible for me getting lost down this well!
I'm going to have to speculate a bit about the order of events, but these are informed guesses: It has been documented that Mario World began as a Mario 3 port, so the Koopalings’ colors were probably carried over from there. Here is where the first mistake happened: They got Roy and Morton's colors swapped. This went unnoticed. Originally, all the Koopa children had more similar boss fights. This keeps true until some point in late 1990.
At some later point, they changed the boss fights. Wendy and Lemmy get new sprites for their final version battles, while Iggy and Larry get new sprites (throwing a ball from their shell) for their boss stages. Morton and Roy don't need any new sprites for their simple boss fight, (they run up a wall and then try and jump on you while making a goofy face, pictured below), and perhaps Ludwig could have been the original template for the fight.
It is at this stage that 2 things happen:
1. Art is given a final pass. BY THIS POINT, the credits sequence MUST have been hardcoded already, and on that screen the 3 Koopalings in question (Morton, Roy, and Ludwig) had their (albeit incorrect) BETA Colors.
2. Soon after, they decided to get fancy and use mode 7 (a fancy rendering technique that makes sprites squash and stretch). Mode 7 messes with color palettes in strange ways, as colors are stored entirely differently. We have seen that the Mario World team struggle to efficiently use color palettes already, so it’s safe to assume this is when they decided to switch Roy, Morton and Ludwig from weird, unique colors to standard Koopa colors (Green, Red, Yellow, or Blue).
Either nobody told the Credits programmer to change the Koopalings to match, or they wanted the credits to reflect what the Koopalings *should* have looked like. Either notion is respectable.
We're going to fast forward to weeks before they print the game. Miyamoto, brain perhaps momentarily reprieved from the divine inspiration delivered from his wife, walks into the room to watch the credits of Super Mario World.
"What the hell is that!" Shigeru Cries. A dazed programmer asks him what he means. He tersely responds:
"ROY IS SUPPOSED TO BE PINK, MORTON IS SUPPOSED TO BE GREY, AND LUDWIG IS SUPPOSED TO BE NAVY. SWAP THEIR PALETTES AND FIX THIS."
Worried about their bonus, the programmer realizes the two things they need to do in order to save their skin:
1. Switch Roy and Ludwig’s colors.
2. Switch Roy and Morton’s colors.
Now I have a question for you, my loyal reader: Does the order of these steps matter? Unfortunately for me, you, and this mystery programmer, it does. They needed to do it in the order outlined above, but it seems like they did it in reverse. Here is what happens in each case:
And here is, of course, what the final credits scene looks like, as well as a mockup:
We have our answer.
The above mockup was meticulously picked over to make sure such a thing could exist. I used Barack Obama's excellently detailed rip of the Koopaling sprites and using gathered palette info I meticulously recolored both the ending screen sprites. I Then compared my hypothetical mockup to the color values of the edited ending screen and...
Wait. Ew. What's going on with Ludwig. What?
Veneer, singular
So what's going on? This some kind of beta sprite for Ludwig maybe? No! But I'll save you the work of playing all the way through Doughnut Plains to see Morton's front facing sprite in action:
So, how did Morton’s Maw end up on Ludwig? And only his Teeth??? And why doesn't Morton or Roy have Ludwig’s missing, singular tooth?
Currently, the date is November of 2023, which means those of you only familiar with modern game development are wondering how such a mistake could happen. You might see Ludwig and think of him as one, SINGULAR Hunky turtle. The reality is that Ludwig is in Shambles:
Even more metaphysically, Ludwig’s body shares a plane with his confused twins, Morton and Roy. At least now we know why specifically these triplets had their palettes swapped! So, what even *is* going on here? Like what are all the parts here?
Let us refer back to the classic game dev dilemma of turtle pictures: If you have 3 images of a turtle, and the only difference was that each one sported a different silly hat, would you, dear reader, opt to store 3, full bodied portraits of haberdashed reptiles? Or would you store 1 turtley image and 3 sporting caps?
Knowing your answer, I'm going to compare the standing sprites of Ludwig, Morton, and Roy:
If you think about it, a torso is a funny kind of hat. Their bottom halves are otherwise identical to each other! We can follow that, but in order for them to have drawn the wrong teeth they'd have to be essentially playing Battleship on a big sprite sheet literally every time they need to draw a sprite. Is that really how the Super Nintendo draws things, by listening for a bunch of numbers to be shouted battleship style?
You Sunk my Tooth In Hexadecimal
When you're looking at my 3rd-favorite-child Ludwig's forward-facing sprite, you are actually looking at a 4x4 collection of 16 different sprites, each of which are 8x8 pixel tiles, which select from 8 different color values in Mario World. You don't need to understand that, I'm saying it so nobody says I'm attempting to simplify. Now let me attempt to simplify.
Basically, there are both memory and storage reasons to only store sprites in tiles made up of 8x8 pixel sprites. You don't need to know these reasons. *I* don't need to know those reasons. What it does mean, is that we are able to break chunks up, and build sprites smart so that way we can re-use entire body parts for some of the 7 Koopa children. In the deepest pocket of your cynical heart, you already knew this to be true: If you're going to re-use boss fights, you might as well use similar sprites!
But Okay, HOW are they drawing these sprites on the screen?
No. I'm not going to explain how Mario World draws everything on the screen because then I would have to explain where code actually lives in Mario World, how it draws tiles every frame and updates them based on code processes going on. I only need you to understand how a programmer would want to draw *this* screen:
For context, none of these guys are moving. They're all Police Squad Style Freeze Frames that are drawn, and then undrawn as the screen transitions. Let's start with drawing one turtle kin on this screen and focus on that, since drawing one turtle is basically the same as drawing 7. Let's refer back to the 4th worst turtle child, Ludwig!
As we said already, we got 16 tiles we need to draw. What do we need to tell the computer in order to draw Ludwig exactly right? The way I (and also Mario World) Figures, you need to know:
It's X position on the screen
It's Y position on the screen
Which Battleship coordinate for Which Tile to draw
HOW to draw it, facing which way, Which Color?
You can represent this data as 4 different numbers. That seems really weird, but I'll explain how they work that magic in a bit. Let's go in depth for these categories:
1. The X Position number
The X Position on screen is stored by a single bit. As a refresher, a bit is 8 digits of binary (1's and 0's only) which is an idiotic (but technically simple) method of counting.
It's worth going into Binary, to be honest, and it won’t take too long. You know how you count "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9," and then you stop making up numbers and go "10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19," before continuing to "20,21,22," and so on? What if we had.... less numbers? Like what if we went only up to 5 before getting to 10, and then 11? It would look like this:
"0,1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,20"
Don't ask why. That's not a helpful question, nor will it be for binary. Just use that example to kind of figure out *how* we count in our regular number system, which is called decimal (you get ten, deci, digits including the 0). Okay, so what if we wanted to use literally, only 2 digits? What would counting look like in this binary system? Well,
"0,1,10,11,100,101,110,111,1000,1001,"
And so on. It's tough to read because the lengths keep changing. Lets fix that.
"0000 0000, 0000 0001, 0000 0010, 0000 0011"
And so on. Yes, that's only slightly better, and it takes longer to write out, but it is a bit easier to see how many numbers there are! Why did I Choose 8 places to display? It's what the computers choose to store. Just trust me on that. Why did I break each number in half with a space? Why do you put commas whenever you write 1,000,000? Makes it easier to read, right?
And like, what does that translate to real numbers? Well to satiate your curiosity:
0000 0001 = 1
0000 0010 = 2
0000 0100 = 4
0000 1000 = 8
0001 0000 = 16
0010 0000 = 32
0100 0000 = 64
1000 0000 = 128
1111 1111 = 255
So if you count 0, you have 256 different values that can be represented with 8 digits of binary. If you have been around computers, that number should sound pretty familiar!
We'll come back to binary later, when we actually need it. Just know that Mario World Takes some 8 digit binary value, and uses some value from 0-255 to determine where on the X axis to place a tile.
2. The Y Position Number
The Y axis is stored in the same way. Yet another 8 digit binary number to use in some magical way. Wait- are you telling me that a programmer in 1990 had to just... write out a big binary number? Well, no, that would be nonsense. I feel idiotic having to write as much binary as I just did. Hell, you already know how to write binary in a much shorter way: Using actual, real people numbers. Why write 1111 1111 when you could write 255 instead?
What? You're saying a programmer would write it as FF? Excuse me????
Let's go back to counting, for fun, again. Remember how we count using TEN digits before we loop around again, like "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9"?
What if we wanted *more* digits? Wouldn't we have to literally invent a new number?
Want to learn about this subject in the most confounding way possible? School House Rock has you covered. (click)
I'm serious. They covered this topic accidentally while attempting to teach children how to multiply by twelve. Why? Why do this? Ms. Quintero fast forwarded thru this song when the VHS arrived at this number- a certified educator determined this lesson to be harmful to children!
Regardless of your own viewership: rather than invent some weird numbers like deck or el or some other fanciful invention, why not just use letters? Basically, if we wanted just ONE more digit, we could count "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A" before reaching "10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,1A" and so on.
What if we had... 16 digits? As in, we had a magical system where 10 (in regular, decimal) = 16 (in our new system, called maybe, Hexadecimal)?
"0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F"
So what are some useful values to know then? Well, let me satiate your curiosity: (numbers with $ in front of them are in Hexadecimal, for clarity)
$01 = 1
$0A = 10
$0F = 15
$10 = 16
$A0 = 160
$F0 = 240
$FF = 255 wait a sec
So… that means $FF (hexadecimal) = 1111 1111 (binary)? Yep! It means Computer Programmers only need to write 2 digits in HEXADECIMAL to write 8 digits of binary. Do you need to be fluent in it? Nope! Just thought you should know that programmers are NOT having to type in 8 digits of binary whenever they are coding!
3. The WHAT to Draw Number
The Third Number Mario World needs is the ID of the tile, and what page to find that tile on. Wait, isn't that two numbers? Yes they are! But if we're drawing a lot of tiles from the list (and a single turtle kin can be SIXTEEN Tiles) then it makes sense to declare the page number ONCE at the top of the list, and then list the other, actually changing numbers immediately after. Just trust me on that. Don’t think about it!
Picture the Super Nintendo as a room full of different tables where everyone at the tables are doing different tasks. When they finish, they shout a number, and their manager takes their number and delivers it to a NEW table that uses that number to do something else. In our example, we have one table who figures out which tile to draw from a grid (pictured below), shouts out a number 0-255, and that number gets passed to an artist at the artist table who knows how to draw any tile from any number they're given, as long as someone remembered to tell them what page to draw from earlier.
At most, we have 256 different numbers you can get in binary using 8 digits. But what the hell does that actually mean? A computer program at this level of complexity is a bunch of people doing weird little math tasks and screaming at the top of their lungs, "157!!!!" and their middle manager knowing that somehow their subordinate is telling them a page number and tile number to tell the artists table to draw???? How does that work?
And seriously, WHY are we even bothering with binary? Isn't that extremely cumbersome?
Please imagine computers functioning like the picture below:
Yes, in a sense, computers did and currently function like this. The way they "store" "numbers" is nothing more than illusion- we often explain these things backwards because they're faster to explain that way. I am sorry for taking so long to connect all the dots, but you truly should now know the bigger picture of why we use binary numbers in computing AND have already understood why a programmer would want to shorten it to Hexadecimal when writing it out.
What you really need to know: Mario World, when drawing the 7 Koopa kids in the credits, is essentially shouting out a list of numbers for a digital artist to interpret as instructions. It first shouts out a bunch of numbers that give more or less what pages artists should draw off of, and then it tells them, tile by tile, a set of 4 different numbers. The first two numbers are the x and y position (like battleship) of WHERE to draw, and then a single number that tells the artist WHAT to draw, IE, which tile on the page (pictured below) to draw.
And this, as you may have caught on, is where the mistake would have been made. The wrong number was pointed out- It was clearly a mistake that was made in earnest, and not a typo! If you look at the credits sprite of Ludwig once again, you can see they DID successfully yell out numbers that point to teeth! They just picked the wrong ones!
Of course, we still have the 4th number. It tells the artist HOW to draw it (as far as rotation, priority, color, etc.) but we don't need to know that for now, so will move on.
tartaruga vitruviano
So now we know the bug and can explain it properly. I will remind you that Ludwig and Morton, actually look like this:
And that if we arrange it into rows (as pictured above), we may see a possible pattern emerge: It looks like the lower halves of Ludwig and Morton Jumping (and of course, Roy as well) are all Identical drawings! They get colored differently sure, but that's beside the point! They must have thought that the bottom THREE rows were the same, and that the TOP row (the eyes and hair) was the only thing different between the 3 reptilian brethren. It is, once again, understandable looking at a jumbled image that they yelled out the numbers for Morton’s hands and mouth rather than Ludwig’s. Look at the chart below and YOU tell me how quickly you find the right teeth and hands for each of the 3 turtles!
And now you know for sure exactly how they did it. Below is another set of mockups.
Before we conclude, I'd like to clarify 2, unlikely but possible lingering thoughts of yours.
First, you might disagree and say “BUB, the beta colors for the Koopalings were NEVER meant to be loaded in to the actual boss battles themselves! The Koopalings should have been the actual colors they were in the game!” OR, you might be like a 12 year old me, who asked "well if ROY is supposed to be pink, why on earth didn't they just let him be RED and make Morton Blue since that's sort of like gray, moreso than Green is?" These are specific thoughts, but I made mockups for you:
Seeing it now, I don’t think Red works for Roy- It looks muddy when given a 3 tone rich shading style! The first mockup, while equally valid in approach, is perhaps the most untruthful of all of them: It was always possible for the beta colors to show up in Mario World during the boss fights. In fact, the only previous hacking and research regarding the Koopaling sprites was done to restore Morton, Roy, and Ludwig battles to their beta colors, as well as their (incorrect) original cast roll colors.
Perhaps your final lingering thought: Why hasn’t anyone discovered these exact oddities in the code? Am I literally the first and only person to have cared? I know this is a lingering thought because Vidyasaur asked me literally 4 different times during my quest this exact question. I can say after a thorough research that yes, I am literally the first person to pose this exact question and get an exact answer. That means nobody has made a patch fixing this sort of thing, nor has anyone successfully edited the cast roll of Mario World.
I'm going to stop you right there, because yes, a total Hack would end this article right here by saying "until now," Drop the patch, and sign off with donation basket in hand. Like comment subscribe BYEEEEE but I am not that kind of (albeit talented) hack. I don't know anything about 16-bit assembly (what Mario world is programmed in) and until now I did not understand the relationship between hexadecimal and binary. So no, I do not have the skills, time, or dedication to absorb the necessary know-how for a simple task that nobody cares about.
That's why nobody has done it by the way: Nobody cares. Mario World hackers have found a smarter and cooler way to roll custom credits- create a custom level that displays the credits text automatically! So why go to the effort of documenting and coding (in assembly!) a whole new set of enemy cast list credits just to show off a new enemy that was in your hack? The OG Cast roll is already full of errors and omissions (fuzzies don't even make the cut). Who cares?
Evidently, someone in the early 2010's did. The only documented attempt on SMW Central (as the name implies, the center for Mario World hacking) to edit the Koopalings (and a couple of other beta related color palette mistakes such as Chargin Chucks being blue and the dry bones being icy fish colored) as a sort of "Mario World Remastered." This inquiry was met with comments of "maybe you should try making levels first, that will get people to actually play your hack", which the OP responded with "no I want to do this. and only this." In turn, more users and some then prominent members of the forum dogpiled the OP for being an obtrusive idiot who should instead spend some time learning the basics and making simple hacks following tutorials before asking questions. Eventually, an owner of the forum called the dog-pilers children after the damage had been done, and the OP had failed to bump their own thread.
In other words, nobody has Fixed the Koopalings in the credits because the people who COULD don't care- they bypass the cast roll altogether. So while I would be able to put on my discord profile that I was the "first person to fix the Koopalings in the credits of Mario World" (which would go nicely with me being the actual world record holder for the most illustrations of the Floigan Brothers), I would have to know enough 16 bit SNES assembly to lightly read a decompilation of Mario World's Code, find the table that contains the instructions on WHERE, WHAT, and HOW to draw the Koopalings in the credits, and then change their binary values in such a way where Morton was drawn Grey, Roy was Drawn Pink, and Ludwig was drawn Navy AND with different sprites for his arms and Tooth- which to be fair, I DO know how to write binary that is understood by the SNES now, and I DO know how to write those values as hexadecimal, and if I knew WHERE those values lived I COULD simply rewrite those numbers and
Click here to download the patch.
To apply it, please use a program like FLIPS and apply this patch to a clean ROM of Mario World. No, I am not providing it for you.
As of the publishing of this patch, I have spent 4 days straight learning 16 bit assembly and pouring over the Mario World Codebase. I have done it. I'm going to tell you my story, and if you stick with me, you’ll understand how I did it. This may be more technical information than you're willing to learn. Maybe you need to take a break and come back later- That's okay! Here's the subscribe button and thank you for reading this far. I promise when I wrote out that bit about how a Hack would end their article this way, I did not intend on actually doing it, but I made the mistake of handing myself a ball of yarn.
Now, let us continue. It's down the technical hole form here.
I Will Admit, I Have a (non-turtle) Problem
I mentioned this earlier, but you shouldn't give me a ball of yarn- I will not stop until it is untangled and re-spooled. I don't think this is a good or charming or even useful attribute to have. I hesitate to call myself obsessive, but I spent 4 days straight learning 16 bit assembly from zip until I could identify 37 numbers from a crowd of 1800 at a glance. I struggle to walk away from a subject until I have an earned and thorough understanding (or an exact scope of what I don't). This is bad for learning- you do in fact need to walk away from things to acquire any sort of nuanced and multi-faceted understanding of literally anything. I am fortunate my obsessive tendencies push me in the direction of a thorough understanding, which is more a result of other personality aspects: I will always ask for others help, and I will NEVER expect myself to be good at literally anything.
The first thing I did was to look for help- while I wanted to try and solve the problem myself (because I was doing this for fun), it would be idiotic to ignore a robust hacking community which has existed for several decades. I made a Mario World Central forum account and joined the discord. Before I asked a question, I noticed another newer user asking a question, so I waited for their question to be answered- they wanted to make some custom powerups. This inquiry was met with comments of "maybe you should try making levels first, you may learn something, and others will want to actually play your hack” which the OP responded with "no I want to do this. and only this." In turn, more users and some then prominent members of the discord dogpiled the OP for being an obtrusive idiot who should instead spend some time learning the basics and making simple hacks following tutorials before asking questions. Eventually, an owner of the discord a day later indirectly called the dog-pilers children after the damage had been done.
The only real help I received from the SMWCentral discord was finding a program used to apply edits to hex values in Mario World's code, and a helpful explanation about what command to use followed by a mansplanation about the different terms for length assignments. To be fair, even though I tried to be clear about exactly what I was asking, maybe they just were trying to predict further questions and had traded in politeness for their newfound clairvoyance.
Who did help me was Fantastic Fox (some of her cool stuff is here, or play her Mario World ROM Hack!). She is a lifesaver. I happened to be catching up on an actual GOOD discord I hang in (the only one I hang around in, do not find me whoever you people are) in the dedicated Mario channel. I happen to catch an infrequent poster posting progress pics of her Mario world hack- this was my chance to ask questions with HELPFUL answers! She is the one who provided me with the excellent PDF tutorial on SNES 16 bit assembly, as well as the decompilation of Mario world's code (written by Ersanio).
The final thing Fantastic Fox would point me towards is the SMW central ROM and RAM Maps- these are databases on every individual address Mario World calls in its code, with varying levels of documentation. While the Koopalings sprite data is not identified by each individual turtle sibling and the credits enemy-rendering code is not commented, the general location of the relevant code was documented and without this information I would have spent hours searching in the dark for the right table.
Before I show you what a turtle *really* looks like to a Super Nintendo, we have some unfinished business:
Spinnin' the Turtle till it Looks Pretty
Let’s remember how the Super Nintendo draws tiles on a screen: you have workers at a table who shout out numbers for an artist to interpret as instructions- first the worker shouts the page number and some general info, and then they shout out a list of numbers, 4 per tile, that tell the artist:
1. The X Position
2. And the Y Position, IE WHERE to draw,
3. The Tile Number, IE WHAT To draw,
And finally,
4. The Orientation, Layer (whether it goes in front or behind other things), Colors to Use, and a Light Reminder of the Page Number, IE, HOW to draw.
Perhaps you've noticed that the 4th number is somehow, 4 different numbers. What on earth is going on?
And no really, why on earth do I write EIGHT digits of binary for a single "number?"
I know in this analogy I have been referring to workers at tables shouting numbers at each other, but this would be problematic if we were to do this in real life. People would be shouting numbers all over the building all the time, and nobody would know who is shouting at who. Fortunately, computers are built smarter at that, and you don't hear hundreds of worker bees shouting in your SNES controller when you turn the game on. Instead, when I say “an artist is at their table waiting to receive 4 different numbers for their instructions”, what I mean is that they have 4 different sets of 8 lightbulbs which turn on to tell them EXACTLY what to do in nice, readable binary numbers (which the artist is very good at reading, up to 8 bulbs at a time).
In fact, here is their desk:
So... how does the HOW number (represented by 8 light bulbs) represent 4 different numbers in one? Simple! Here's how that number looks on the artist’s desk:
Basically, you have a 1 one digit binary, another 1 digit binary, a 2 digit binary number, a 3 digit binary, and a final 1 digit binary. Add that up, and you get 8 digits (bulbs).
Lets break that down in detail.
1. The "Y Flip"- 1 digit, number 0-1. If its on, it means mirror the tile upside-down.
2. The "X Flip"- 1 digit, number 0-1. If its on, it means mirror the tile left to right.
3. the "PP" number- 2 digit, number 0-3. Tells you what Layer number it's on, whether that’s foreground, background, main, or SUPER, in front of everything all the time.
4. the "CCC" Number- 3 digit, number 0-7. Tells you what color palette of 8 to use to color the tile.
5. the "N" Number- 1 digit, number 0-1. I have no earthly idea, but it has something to do with the page number. I don't need to know this so neither do you. Please explain it to me if you know!
In case it wasn't clear, I did not figure this part out by myself. A guide written by MarioFanGamer, while extremely dense, intimidating, and purposefully made NOT for beginners (although informative), gave me this information.
This is why we ALWAYS write out binary numbers (even ones as silly as 00000001) as 8 digits- The game tries to use as much of those lightbulbs as it can!)
You've been such a trooper so far. We're almost done digging into the details of binary- the next time will be the last, I swear. To review: the code is shouting some numbers which declare some sort of numbers to give out general info, followed by a list of numbers, 4 per tile. These 4 describe: The X position, the Y position, WHAT to draw, and HOW to draw it. If you remember the screen with all the Koopalings (and PaPA Bowser) on it, you may notice that there are a lot of tiles to draw, so the game keeps all of the numbers it needs to shout in a big table.
And Now, an Atomic Glimpse at the Mario World
Normally, small tables act as banks of numbers that represent drawing instructions for the SNES- I wouldn’t know this personally, as I can tell you that all the freeze-frame enemies in the cast roll are stored in one GIANT table, pictured below.
In addition, you have an entirely separate table that acts as a sort of "table of contents" for this giant table- how it works (and this is why I needed to learn a decent chunk change of SNES assembly) is that when a slide of the cast roll is done displaying, a number is shouted which increases a "slide number" value. Once this number is high enough, the code loops back to the top of itself, picking up where it left off by using its new table of contents number (called an index). The Koopalings are the final slide of the cast roll (the page with the Brothers and Peach are handled by a whole other code), so they're at the bottom of their table. Here is approximately where they live:
Okay that’s a lot of numbers. I need to remind you, these numbers (with dollar signs in front of them, like so $0A) are hexadecimal numbers, which are a MUCH shorter way to write binary numbers. We COULD write out those numbers as binary numbers instead for the whole table, but I would ask you kindly to do it if you want to so bad.
Confession time. I did not learn enough 16 bit assembly to perfectly understand the code that parses the big table. Nor do I have a broader understanding of Mario World's Architecture to know what each number in that table even *is*. Sure, I know the 4 numbers are in there and I know they definitely are fed into the magic tile drawing machine one after the other, but it’s clear that other unknown numbers are shouted before AND after each group of sprites. I cracked my head at the code for 3 days only to come up close.
So like nearly every math problem on a test I have ever faced, I am going to have accept that I got 80% of the work done and figure out a way to *smartly* brute force it. It would help to remember what it is I'm looking for.
A Tooth and Some Skin in a Haystack
So here is the haystack:
And here is what I'm looking for:
The "HOW to draw numbers" for Ludwig, Morton, and Roy So I can swap their colors around. There are:
-16 for Ludwig's Color
-9 For Morton's Color
-8 For Roy's Color
and the "WHAT to draw" For Ludwig, specifically:
-the 4 tiles for ONLY his arms and teeth
That’s a total of 33 numbers we're looking for. Keep In mind there are 4 other Koopa kids and 1 HUGE Bowser whom I do not care about in this haystack, and I can't at a glance figure out what numbers belong to who without manually changing random ones and seeing what happens. That's honestly a fine but terrible (and boring) way to approach the task, so let’s try and outsmart it instead.
Let's focus on finding the "HOW to draw” numbers first, as editing them is going to be a lot easier. Why? Because I mostly understand them. Let's look at the format for those again:
We can look at Ludwig's Sprite and try and guess what his "HOW to draw" number will be, since the format is so easy to plug in values to. I'm going to attempt to find Ludwig’s sprite as (and I swear I'm not lying) I felt like it might be easiest to find him, although I wasn't sure why.
Y: Always 0. This is true for everything on the Koopalings credit screen- none of them are upside down.
X: Either 0 or 1. Ludwig's sprite is mirrored when split in half down the middle, and as we all know, it’s good habit to minimize the quantity of turtle pictures on your cartridge. At the time, I don't know if they draw sprites either top to bottom or left to right (or if they're grouped by character at all) so I can't yet make any broader assumptions until I notice a pattern.
PP: Hell if I know. could be anything from 00, 01, 10, or 11. I'm at least pretty sure all the Koopa kids are on the same layer, whatever they are.
CCC: This determines the palette, so let’s look at a sample chart and the credits screen in question again to figure out what palette Ludwig is using.
We're looking for a... Pink? Koopa Palette (always has 2 orange tones)? Oh dear. Mario World usually only swaps out the FINAL two palette rows, and only from these options:
We know that Morton and Roy are rockin’ Koopa grey and Koopa navy palettes... but hopefully you notice a palette that not only maps to Bowser's weird garish colors, but ALSO to an unused Koopa pink? But where would they load it? Let me ask you a better question:
Is Mario in the room with you? Right now?
I'm going to guess that since Mario isn't here, they kicked out his color palette (rows 00 and 01) and put (I hope) Bowser and Koopa Pink in those rows instead. There's no guarantees though, so to continue:
CCC: the possible numbers are 000, 001, 110 (binary for 6), 111 (binary for 7).
N: God if I know. I have absolutely no clue.
To recap, Using X's as complete unknowns, Ludwigs "how to draw" numbers are one of the following:
0XXX 000X
0XXX 001X
0XXX 110X
0XXX 111X
You might see that as unhelpful, since we need to translate these to hexadecimal, and we are short many numbers to do so. You might also see a pattern:
That first number is always zero. This is true for all the Koopa kids, as that first number is only 1 if anything is flipped upside down. Can we use this fact to rule out certain numbers’ Hexadecimal numbers?
Why We Actually Use Hexadecimal to Represent Binary
If you've made it this far, you're invested. I'm not going to waste your time, nor am I going to be cheeky, even with the subtitle. Please look at the following numbers, one side in binary, another side in Hexadecimal (written like $1A with a $ in front of it, for clarity):
0000 0001 = $01
0000 0111 = $07
0000 1000 = $08
0000 1111 = $0F (F is the *F*inal digit of hexadecimal, if you need to remember)
0001 0000 = $10
0111 0000 = $70
1000 0000 = $80
1111 0000 = $F0
I hope you see it. Yes, that always works. In other words, only using the table above, you can correctly guess that $F7 = 1111 0111 in binary. Each digit of Hexadecimal corresponds with a HALF of an 8 digit binary number. Why is this useful? Let's consider our list of possible Ludwig "how to draw" tiles:
0XXX 000X
0XXX 001X
0XXX 110X
0XXX 111X
Since the First digit is always less than 1, we can say that 0XXX < 1000, which is to say that 0XXX < $8. Therefore, (and just trust me on this) a weird unknown binary digit like 0XXX 111X < $80. ANY "how to draw" tile is going to be some $XX that starts with a NUMBER, LESS than 8. That's really useful to know!
I actually started working from the bottom of the haystack and wrote down ANY numbers that followed this rule until I could hopefully see a pattern. You may have noticed we could also make our lives easier using our new hexadecimal trick using the last 4 digits of binary we suspect for Ludwig. If we guess for that last X, The number we’re looking for could be ANY of the possible values:
0XXX 0000 = $_0
0XXX 0010 = $_2
0XXX 1100 = $_C
0XXX 1110 = $_E
OR
0XXX 0001 = $_1
0XXX 0011 = $_3
0XXX 1101 = $_D
0XXX 1111 = $_F
To summarize:
-I'm looking for 16 "how to draw" numbers, probably spaced apart by 4 (the X, Y, and "WHAT to draw" numbers probably spacing them out in some order)
-Those hexadecimal numbers MUST be less than $80, IE the first digit must be anything from 0-7. NO LETTERS ALLOWED for that first digit.
-Those Hexadecimal numbers’ final digits can be either 0,2,C,E OR 1/3/D/F, and all 16 numbers HAVE to match (since they are all the same color, most of the digits are the CCC numbers if you recall).
Starting from the bottom I find...
You've got to be kidding. I swear to god I'm not making this up. Is this seriously Ludwig? Am I gazing at the reptilian composer’s image? I have a cluster of 17 hits right at the start, but if we eliminate the one that Isn't 4 numbers away from another match, we have EXACTLY 16 hits. Specifically, we have the numbers (going from bottom to top) $42, $42, $02, $02 in a repeating value. Let’s write those numbers out in binary, and see if we can plug them back into the stupid YXPP CCCN format:
$42 = 0100 0010
$02 = 0000 0010
YXPP CCCN
Look at the only thing that changed: Whether the sprite is the left side (0) or right side (1) of Ludwig.
Gotcha' you inadequately toothed bastard.
The Koopa Kodex
Since we know that the following values are true and EXTREMELY Likely to be Ludwig (we won’t be for sure until we try and change them) we know the following new facts:
-pp = 00. They're drawing these sprites on layer 0, the furthest back layer of the screen that isn't the background. Makes sense!
-CCC: the Pink palette is indeed 001, and is therefore 1. loaded into Mario's slot like I suspected and 2. IS reliably found below Bowsers palette. It’s safe to assume that palettes 110 (06 in real numbers) is Koopa Navy and palette 111 (07 in real numbers) is Koopa Gray. IE Mortons current (incorrect) palette would be 110 currently, while Roy's is 111.
-N = 0. Mystery Solved. This might not be true, but if it isn't then I only have to change one number! And that would be super weird! But it’s easy to guess around this number so I don't care. I'll spoil the surprise: it’s always 0.
Therefore, the “HOW to draw" numbers for Roy are eight of 0000 1110, as Hex: $0E. See if you can work out what Morton's address is based on all the info. Here's a hint: he's facing right in the image, which means the X flip number should be 1! You’re looking for 9 of those numbers!
To test that I was right about finding Ludwig (and because if I was right, changing Morton and Roy would be so much easier to find) I decided to make a quick test patch. I assumed that the 3rd of the 4 numbers, the "What to draw" numbers were right behind the "HOW to draw" numbers. Thus...
Confession Time: I have dyscalculia. It means I struggle to permanently remember the digits of any number (more or less) greater than 15. This makes counting (say, from the bottom of a list of 1800) a difficult task. In the above screenshot, I had miscounted and instead changed the “X Position” Numbers of Ludwig’s Tiles. I decided all I needed to do was subtract 1 from all of those numbers, and I’d be good to go!
I was not good to go. I’m struggling to even understand what happened here, but it’s clear that I somehow had reached into and sculpted Iggy’s face from existed. I suspected that I had edited some of those core values declared AFTER Iggy’s sprite gets drawn that does stuff I don’t understand. So I adjust the addresses accordingly and…
Bingo.
Looks Are Finally No Longer Deceiving When Koopas Are Involved
The following image is not a mockup, but is instead a screenshot of an actual, functioning copy of Mario World:
I realized something about myself finishing this project: I don’t like when people dismiss me or my line of questioning. I’m not a particularly fast learner, and I’m aware my questions are often odd when it comes to technical matters. I feel a sort of emotional pain when others respond to an honest inquiry with a reddit-style “best guess confidently posed as truth.”
When I started writing this article, I had no intention of learning any amount of romhacking- I’m glad I did, but I realize now there was a less mature reason for it. I had learned enough and was confident enough in my knowledge to type the sentence “they could have easily fixed this in any release of Mario World” and be truthful. What I feared was that someone would hit me with a comment of “you can’t know that! There might be some technical reason that makes the problem much more complex than your basic, unearned, rudimentary understanding of it!” A part of my brain since age 7 has reliably screamed, “you can’t know that! There might be some technical reason that makes the problem much more complex than your basic, unearned, rudimentary understanding of it!” The arrogance of believing you don’t understand something until you understand all of it is simply that: arrogance. I still don’t know everything there is to know about this one screen, the credits, or Mario World’s graphics. Even if I did, I don’t know what tools the staff at Nintendo were working with to program the game.
But no. It must be true. I could fly if I wanted to.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m the first person to fix the Koopalings in the cast roll of Super Mario World. I have answers now. I think if I dare ask the question “why” I did, I would stop. I like having answers.
**********************************************************************
From an early age, I have asked about the sky. I have asked about the houses, and the pipes, and the trees and the road. I know now nobody had answers, and never will I either.
We remember the sun and know it to be so. The clouds bring the rain and soar above. “But how does it float?” It’s light. “But Isn’t it water?” Yes. Age was the act of acceptance.
From an early age, I have asked about the turtles. “Do they ever leave their shell?” No answer satisfied me. Age was accepting their spine is on the outside so their heart remains hidden.
I’d like to think I finally understand.
Thank you for reading.
I want to once again, in one place, thank everyone who helped me:
Vidyasaur, for pointing me in the direction of Ludwig looking funny as the unraveling point for the initial mystery.
Fantastic Fox for giving me the best direction to work in to learn the basics of Mario World Rom Hacking. She also edited a draft of this article. If you have ever seen me type in real time, you can imagine how horrid that is to read.
Keroboros, Amity, and Bunp for cheering me on in the Mario thread as I was attempting to modify the code itself. It feels good to have an audience!
Ersanio for writing an extremely good guide on SNES machine code. I would have been lost without this sort of direct documentation.
And finally, you dear reader, who made it this far. I don’t write for success or a living, and i’m thankful for that- I will continue to write as long as somebody reads. Right now that somebody is you, and I cannot begin to thank you enough.
Reach out to me at Griminpink@gmail.com for any omissions or inquiries (I will draw u something if u ask nicely).
