Mario Artist Polygon Studio

Mario Artist Polygon Studio
Developer: Nintendo EAD Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo 64DD Released in JP: August 29, 2000 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics.

Mario Artist Polygon Studio is the fourth title of the Mario Artist suite, featuring a 3D model editor, a full open-world mode, and a minigame consisting of a number of "microgames" that increase in difficulty and speed over time.

While the 64DD was a flop, taking a number of planned games with it (Mario Artist Sound Maker had been announced, but was cancelled when Randnet announced a new "Maker Series" with Sound Maker, Game Maker, Graphical Message Maker, and Video Jockey Maker) and resulting in Polygon Studio being the last release for the ill-fated add-on, a certain person would later steal the aforementioned minigame wholesale and make bank.

To do: Cut content, hidden graphics, unused stage background import info...

Unused Graphics

Found at 0xAB5120 alongside roads, the 64DD logo, and the Nintendo logo.

Found at 0xAB6D20 is a tiny version of the old Polygon Studio logo. Mario Artist Paint Studio once used a similar logo.

Prerelease Assets From Mario 64

The models sampled from Super Mario 64 strangely all seem to be based on earlier versions of the character models from that game.

Mario

SM64 Mario	SM64 Medium-Poly Mario	Polygon Studio Mario

The Mario model interestingly appears to be based on Mario's medium-poly model from SM64, which features less polygons in the body than the main model.

Early SM64 Medium-Poly Luigi From Leak	Polygon Studio Mario

Additionally, the head suggests that it may be based on an earlier version of Mario's medium-poly model. It has less polygons around the hair and the back of the cap, similar to the early version of Mario found in the July 2020 Gigaleak. The head has even more similarities with the head of an early version of Luigi's medium-poly model (also found in the leak), having similar topology around the ears, nose, eyes, cap, and cheeks.

Yoshi

SM64 Yoshi	Early SM64 Yoshi From Leak	Polygon Studio Yoshi

The Yoshi model is almost identical to the early version of Yoshi found in the July 2020 Gigaleak. The most notable difference compared to the final SM64 model are the fully modeled soles on the shoes. For the Polygon Studio version, it appears they added a few more polygons to better define the spikes on the back of his head.

Koopa

SM64 Koopa	Early SM64 Koopa	Polygon Studio Koopa

The Koopa model appears to be using the early model parts of the SM64 Koopa, which can be found in the final data of that game. The most notable difference to the final SM64 model is the slightly taller shell.