Super Mario 64 Version Differences: N64, DS and 3D All-Stars

If you fought Bowser in Super Mario 3D All-Stars and something felt off about the tail throw, you were not imagining it. Mario does not say "So long-a Bowser!" in that version. He says "Buh-bye!"

That is not a memory glitch. Nintendo did not build 3D All-Stars on the 1996 cartridge — it built it on a 1997 Japanese revision, and that revision quietly rewrote a voice line and patched the single most important glitch in the game's history.

Super Mario 64 has been rereleased often enough that "Super Mario 64" is no longer one game. It is at least six builds with meaningfully different physics, star counts, and glitch tables. Here is what actually separates them.

There is no single Super Mario 64

The lineage, in order:

That "BLJ works?" column is doing more work than it looks. The backwards long jump is the speed exploit that lets you build negative momentum on a staircase and clip through the castle's star doors — it is the reason a 0-star run of Super Mario 64 exists at all. Whether a given build has it is the cleanest single test of which lineage you are holding.

The 1996 cartridges: Japan, North America, Europe

Japan got Super Mario 64 on June 23, 1996 as an N64 launch title. North America followed on September 29, 1996, Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997.

Mechanically these three are the same game. The differences are localization and hardware timing: the Japanese launch cartridge shipped without some of the English voice clips that the North American release added, and the text was adapted per region.

All three keep the headline physics quirks intact. Backwards long jumps, the parallel universe geometry that lets a well-aimed Mario walk off the map, the pause-buffered speed retention — it is all live. This is the build the entire speedrunning and glitch-hunting culture was built on top of.

Why PAL is the one nobody speedruns

The European release runs at 50Hz instead of the 60Hz NTSC standard, and Super Mario 64 was not re-timed to compensate. The result is a game that runs at five sixths of NTSC speed, roughly 17% slower. It is not a different game so much as the same game in slow motion.

For anything timed, that is a straight handicap. If you learned the game on a PAL console in the 90s and later felt like the American version was "twitchy," that was not nostalgia — the movement genuinely arrives faster.

Shindou Pak Taiou: the 1997 revision that changed everything

On July 18, 1997, Nintendo released Super Mario 64 Shindou Pak Taiou Version in Japan. On the box it was a Rumble Pak compatibility update. Under the hood it was a patch.

This version never left Japan on cartridge. Its BLJ fix carried into the 2003 iQue Player conversion, and in 2020 Nintendo used it as the base for Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which is how a Japan-only 1997 revision became the Super Mario 64 that collection shipped worldwide.

What the Shindou build actually changes

• Rumble Pak support. The reason it exists. Bowser slams and ground pounds get force feedback.
• The backwards long jump is gone. Mario's backward speed is capped, so the staircase speed build never happens. Endless Stairs skips, door clips, and the 0-star route all die here.
• English voice clips added to the Japanese release, including the ones the original JP cartridge shipped without.
• "So long-a Bowser!" becomes "Buh-bye!" Bowser's Japanese name is Koopa, which the Super Mario Wiki gives as the likely reason a line naming him "Bowser" was swapped out. The new line stuck — and shipped worldwide in 3D All-Stars 23 years later.

If you only take one fact out of this post: the Shindou build is the no-BLJ build, and everything Nintendo has released on Switch disc or cartridge descends from it.

iQue Player and the Virtual Console years

The iQue Player, the licensed Chinese N64-derived console, got a Super Mario 64 conversion in 2003 with Simplified Chinese text. It inherits the Shindou fixes, so no BLJ there either.

The Wii Virtual Console release in 2006 and the Wii U Virtual Console release in 2015 were emulated versions of the regional originals rather than new builds. They are the closest thing to a straight cartridge experience Nintendo offered between 1997 and 2021, input lag aside.

Super Mario 64 DS is a remake, not a port

Super Mario 64 DS launched alongside the Nintendo DS in North America on November 21, 2004, and it is the one version that genuinely deserves to be treated as a separate game. Calling it a port is how you end up confused about star counts for a decade.

The 150 stars, broken down

The DS remake has 150 Power Stars, not 120, and the extra 30 are not sprinkled evenly. The math:

• 15 courses × 8 stars each = 120. Each course has seven mission stars and adds a separate 100 Coin Star as an eighth. On N64 the 100-coin star is one of only seven stars per course — on DS it is bonus.
• 30 castle secret stars. Double the N64's 15, spread across new secret areas, character-specific challenges, and the expanded castle.

That first bullet is the one that trips people up: the DS courses alone hold 120 stars — the same number as the entire N64 game.

The gate moved too. On N64, exactly 70 stars is enough to climb the Endless Stairs — the decompiled game code skips the endless loop once your total reaches 70 or more. On DS you need at least 80, and you have to be playing as Mario. Show up at the top floor as Wario with 100 stars and you will climb forever.

New content includes Sunshine Isles, a DS-exclusive course entered through a painting in the Rec Room that costs a single Power Star to unlock, and where the star comes from collecting five Silver Stars — a mechanic that does not exist on N64 at all.

Four characters, four movesets

You start as Yoshi, not Mario. Mario, Luigi and Wario are locked behind boss fights against Goomboss, King Boo and Chief Chilly respectively, in new boss-only stages.

Each has a distinct kit, and Power Flowers give each a different temporary ability:

• Yoshi — flutter jump, tongue grab and egg spitting. Power Flower gives fire breath.
• Mario — the balanced one, fastest runner, keeps the triple jump and wall kick. Power Flower inflates him into a floating balloon.
• Luigi — best air control and swimming, and his backflip ends in a slow spinning descent. Power Flower turns him invisible so he can pass through certain walls.
• Wario — slowest, strongest, moves heavy objects nobody else can. Power Flower gives him Metal form.

You can also swap mid-level by finding another character's cap in the course, often worn by an enemy, which is how several stars are gated behind a character you did not bring.

What the DS version gives up

MIPS the rabbit is not a star source anymore. The DS replaces him with 28 collectible rabbits, seven per character, whose keys unlock 28 of the Rec Room's 36 minigames; the other eight, two per character, are open from the start. One extra rabbit at the very beginning holds the key to the castle's front door instead.

The bigger loss is the stick. The DS had no analog stick in 2004, so movement runs on the D-pad or the touchscreen, and neither reproduces the analog nuance that Super Mario 64's speed thresholds were designed around. If you care about the movement tech — precise tiptoeing, held-angle slope control, dive-slide chains — the DS version is the wrong place to practice it. The 3DS-era Circle Pad Pro does not help; this is a DS cart.

It also loses the N64 glitch table. There is no BLJ, and the speedrun routes that make the N64 version famous simply do not transfer. The DS has glitches of its own — the Super Mario Wiki documents one that drops you through the endless stairs into Bowser in the Sky with fewer than 80 stars or as someone other than Mario — but they are not the N64's.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars: Shindou in 720p

Released September 18, 2020, delisted March 31, 2021. That six-month window was the whole point of the controversy, and it means the collection is now a secondhand-only proposition.

What you get for the money:

• 960 × 720 output, docked and handheld both. That is 720p vertical resolution in the original 4:3 frame, not a widescreen conversion. Pillarboxed on any modern TV, and the game is still capped at 30 fps — Nintendo raised the resolution, not the frame rate.
• Rumble, inherited from the Shindou base and mapped to the Switch's HD Rumble.
• A cleaned-up HUD rendered at the higher resolution instead of upscaled.
• D-pad presses read as full analog stick input, the same concession Super Mario 64 DS made.
• No BLJ, because Shindou.

Nobody widescreened it or rebuilt the camera, and beyond the HUD it got only a small set of higher-definition textures (Mario, some characters and objects, the paintings). It is a competent emulation of a version most Western players had never touched, sold in a limited window, and the "Buh-bye!" line is the tell.

Nintendo Switch Online: the one with the glitches intact

The N64 app arrived on Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on October 25, 2021 in the Americas and October 26 in most other regions, and Super Mario 64 was in the launch lineup. The app has since been renamed Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Classics.

Here is the part that matters: outside Japan, the Switch Online version is not the Shindou build, and BLJs work on it. Speedrunners were documenting it within a day of launch. The Japanese app is the exception: it runs the Shindou-based build, so no BLJ there. Speed builds on stairs, door clips, and the sequence breaks that 3D All-Stars removed are all back, on any controller — the official N64 pad is nice for it, but Joy-Cons work, they are just harder.

Outside Japan, that makes NSO the only officially sold way to play the glitch-intact Super Mario 64 in 2026, since 3D All-Stars is delisted and cartridges are cartridges. It is also, unlike the collection, not a purchase — it evaporates the day your subscription lapses.

Which version should you actually play?

• You want the real thing, or you might ever try a trick run: N64 cartridge (NTSC) or Nintendo Switch Online outside Japan. Both keep the full glitch table.
• You want the most convenient clean playthrough: Switch Online. Save states, no cartridge hunting, correct 60Hz timing.
• You already own 3D All-Stars: play it, it is fine. Just know the physics are the patched ones and stop trying to BLJ the Endless Stairs.
• You want more Super Mario 64 after 120 stars: the DS remake, treated as a sequel. 150 stars, four movesets, and enough new content to justify the awkward controls.
• You want to learn movement tech: N64 or NSO, with an analog stick, full stop.

New to the game entirely? Start with the beginner guide and the secret stars breakdown — but check which version you are holding first, because the DS star counts in those guides will not line up.

Quick Action Checklist

• Test which lineage you have: try a backwards long jump on a staircase. If Mario builds speed, you are on a 1996 cartridge or Switch Online outside Japan. If he caps out, you are on Shindou, iQue, DS, 3D All-Stars or the Japanese Switch Online app.
• Listen to the Bowser tail throw. "So long-a Bowser!" means original build; "Buh-bye!" means Shindou lineage, which includes every 3D All-Stars copy.
• Avoid PAL cartridges for anything timed — 50Hz runs the game roughly 17% slower than NTSC.
• On Super Mario 64 DS, budget for 150 stars: 8 per course across 15 courses plus 30 castle secret stars.
• On DS, do not bother approaching the Endless Stairs under 80 stars, and switch to Mario before you try — no other character can climb them normally.
• Unlock DS characters in order: Goomboss for Mario, King Boo for Luigi, Chief Chilly for Wario. Yoshi is your starter.
• If you only want one modern option in 2026, Switch Online is the glitch-intact version outside Japan; 3D All-Stars was delisted on March 31, 2021.
• Practising movement tech? Use an analog stick. The DS D-pad and the 3D All-Stars D-pad-as-analog mapping both flatten the speed thresholds the game is built on.