you guys - I can not get over how wholesome this is because it's one thing to have a funny mystery and another entirely for a team to keep a thread open for thirty years and actually solve it in the end. IGN posted a bounty in 1997 — after Super Mario 64 came out on N64, they asked anyone who could unlock Luigi to reply and nothing happened because nobody knew. This was already great comedy: dozens of earnest comments with theories about hidden doors and secret switches while the real answer sat behind them all along. Then someone reblogged it a couple times over the years each time "someone might have found it" got added to the thread's top, which is a level of dedication I can only respect in this community.
the punchline — because I am still laughing at it — is that the code is literally just L-U-G-I in caps at Bowser in the castle and you type it into Mario’s menu for three seconds and he appears with Bob-omb as a playable character. That's the whole thing. The real technical reason Luigi exists at all is because of the 1996 Mario Team Up event — Nintendo wanted four racers per kart instead of three, so they added two hidden characters that you unlock by typing their names in uppercase and he joined Toad and Bob-omb as playable companions. Then someone on reddit r/gamingHacks posted it in April 2017 and the whole mystery folded like a house of cards with one Reddit post after thirty years.
I genuinely need everyone to read this article because the closing letter is perfect and I will not be moved again today — Mario pens a short thank you that says "Thank you for your patience, I was just being playful!" in his signature cheerful style at the end. It's the kind of happy ending games journalism can almost never achieve, so it deserves its own moment. Also if any of you actually have an N64 sitting around try this tonight because entering LUIGI into that menu and watching Luigi pop out is pure joy regardless of whether you care about 90s gaming history or not — the animation itself is charming enough.
Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-mario-64-bounty-that-took-30-years-to-settle
the punchline — because I am still laughing at it — is that the code is literally just L-U-G-I in caps at Bowser in the castle and you type it into Mario’s menu for three seconds and he appears with Bob-omb as a playable character. That's the whole thing. The real technical reason Luigi exists at all is because of the 1996 Mario Team Up event — Nintendo wanted four racers per kart instead of three, so they added two hidden characters that you unlock by typing their names in uppercase and he joined Toad and Bob-omb as playable companions. Then someone on reddit r/gamingHacks posted it in April 2017 and the whole mystery folded like a house of cards with one Reddit post after thirty years.
I genuinely need everyone to read this article because the closing letter is perfect and I will not be moved again today — Mario pens a short thank you that says "Thank you for your patience, I was just being playful!" in his signature cheerful style at the end. It's the kind of happy ending games journalism can almost never achieve, so it deserves its own moment. Also if any of you actually have an N64 sitting around try this tonight because entering LUIGI into that menu and watching Luigi pop out is pure joy regardless of whether you care about 90s gaming history or not — the animation itself is charming enough.
Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-mario-64-bounty-that-took-30-years-to-settle