Super Mario 64 Castle Gets Made in Halo 5

Halo 5 saw multiple improvements to the Forge map creation system and a variety of new possibilities. That players would recreate scenes and environments from other games should be a no-brainer. It’s been happening since time immemorial, after all. But one creative individual, Bearskopff as he is known on Imgur, recreated the castle grounds from Mario 64’s Princess Peach’s castle, the starting area of the game.

Bearskopff used baked lighting to flatten Halo 5’s more realistic textures for the cartoonish work, a nice touch that looks almost exactly like the original game’s graphics. Furthermore, that castle was built brick by brick with 750-850 objects used in its construction. Because of this, and the effort spent on the trees, a portion of the castle grounds had to be left out, and the waterfall feeding the castle moat was also omitted.

The geometry was also constructed from basic shapes to replicate as close as possible the actual grounds’ layout.

Forge allows players the use of up to 1,024 objects. Peach’s castle took 1,023. The most notable absence is the beach-like area with the cannon. Bearskopff says that “if 343 ever do increase the count, I’ll revisit and build the remainder.” You heard the man, 343. Make it happen!

Wow, Mario, you look… uh… different, somehow. You’ve groomed your mustache, yeah, I think that’s it. Must be.

With all the lighting, time and effort spent building the level, and a flood of memories the stage evokes, the best thing about it may be that anyone can download the level for themselves. The GT is simply “bearskopff,” (without the comma), and the creator himself says “feel free to download, amend, and whatnot.” Now that this has proven to be a thing, who wants to remake the second courtyard area where all the Boos are hanging around? Or the Road to Bowser? Oh, you know what, something, uh, just came up. Yeah. Gotta go. Bye.

Matt Eschbach

Matt Eschbach is a PC, Mac and Android indie game developer and fiction writer. His works have won multiple monetary awards from various contests. Graduating college in 2012 with a major in Game Design, Matt spends his time making stuff up and then building it. His favorite hobby… is sleeping.