Super Mario 64 Battle Royale Mod Combines all Worlds Into one Huge Area

A mad genius of a rom hacker disassembled Super Mario 64 and stitched all its levels back together as one huge battlefield. Why? Why, in God's name? Potential, my dear. When laid out flat, Super Mario 64 has the makings of a serviceable battle royale arena.

The hacker, Kaze Emanuar, uploaded a tour of his grand battlefield yesterday. Kaze is one of the minds behind the Net64 Super Mario 64 online multiplayer experience, which received a 2.0 release earlier this month. Kaze's new battle royale arena hasn't been populated by other players yet, but everything's in place for a rumble someday. Even Mario 64's core mechanics are altered as necessary: Coins, for example, let you use Mario's Wing Cap, and cannons act as shortcuts to different parts of the battlefield.

When it first became apparent the battle royale genre is more than a passing fad, we started cooking up our own hopes for what kind of battle royale games we want to see in the future. Number one on our wish list is still "Something by Nintendo." If Nintendo can excel at making games where its cheery mascots beat the hell out of each other, just imagine what the company can do with a game about the same mascots (and some third-party guests, of course) stalking and assassinating their compatriots—or "making them faint" or some other child-friendly alternative to actually spilling blood.

Here's hoping Nintendo has something to say for itself when every other developer in the world lines up at E3 2018 to show off the battle royale games they have in the works. Or, at the very least, maybe Fortnite for Switch will turn out to be more than a myth.