Why Super Mario 64 Wastes So Much Memory

The Two Kinds of “Memory” Super Mario 64 Cares About

When people say “Super Mario 64 wastes memory,” they usually mean one of two things:
cartridge ROM (where game data is stored) and system RAM (where the game runs).
These are not the same, and mixing them up is how you end up yelling at an innocent Goomba.

Cartridge ROM: Where the game lives

ROM is the cartridge storagetextures, level geometry, music sequences, sound samples, scripts, and code.
On N64, cartridges were blazing-fast compared to CD-ROMs, but storage was relatively pricey, and capacities
varied widely. Think “sports car glove box,” not “moving truck.”

System RAM: Where the game breathes

RAM is the workbench: framebuffers, audio buffers, decompressed assets, object lists, camera data, Mario’s
current state (including the exact angle of his left mustache hair), and all the runtime bookkeeping needed to
keep the illusion alive.

The Nintendo 64 used a unified memory setupmeaning CPU, graphics, and audio all share the same RAM pool.
That’s convenient in theory and stressful in practice, like sharing one bathroom among eight roommates and a
pet alligator.

Nintendo 64 Memory Reality Check

4 MB of RDRAM: shared by basically everything

The base Nintendo 64 shipped with 4 MB of Rambus RDRAM. With the Expansion Pak, you could
reach 8 MB total. That single pool had to cover gameplay logic, graphics workloads,
audio, buffers, and any decompression scratch spaceall at once.

RDRAM offered strong bandwidth for its era, but the larger point is: if you “waste” memory on N64, you don’t
just lose a little efficiency. You lose the ability to keep your game stable, fast, and glitch-resistant.
And a 1996 launch title really doesn’t want to ship as “Super Mario 64: Slide Show Edition.”

Cartridges were fast… and storage-per-dollar was not generous

N64 Game Paks ranged broadly in capacity (often discussed in megabits), and early on it was common for games
to land in the single-digit megabytes. Bigger ROM chips cost more, and that cost flowed downstream: higher
retail prices and higher financial risk for ambitious projects.

Translation: you didn’t casually toss extra assets into a cartridge the way we casually toss 4K skyboxes into
a PC build today. Unless you were Nintendo, in which case you could occasionally get away with a little extra
“we’ll clean it up later,” because you were busy inventing the future.

Why Super Mario 64 Feels Like It Wastes Memory

A lot of “waste” in SM64 is actually intentional redundancy or conservative budgetingboth totally normal when you’re shipping one of the first mainstream 3D platformers ever.
Here are the biggest culprits.

1) Framebuffers and depth buffers: your TV demands tribute

Unlike many older systems with separate video memory, the N64’s unified memory means your display buffers
live in the same RAM pool as gameplay. Even at common low resolutions of the era (often around 320×240),
a single 16-bit framebuffer is roughly 150 KB. Add a Z-buffer (depth buffer) and double-buffering, and you’ve
burned a noticeable chunk of 4 MB before Mario even says “Let’s-a go!”

This is one reason SM64 can look “memory-hungry” even when levels feel relatively small: 3D rendering has a
fixed overhead that 2D games largely avoided.

2) Collision vs. visuals: duplicate geometry on purpose

In Super Mario 64, what you see and what you stand on are related but not identical. Visual
meshes can be detailed, split into display lists, and tweaked for lighting and performance. Collision meshes
often need to be simpler, more stable, and structured for fast queries (“Is Mario on the floor?” “Is this
slope too steep?” “Is this triangle secretly lava?”).

That separation can feel like duplicationand it isbut it’s also how you avoid weird physics and keep
controls tight. If you’ve ever bonked Mario’s head on an invisible ceiling, congratulations: you’ve met the
collision system, and it has opinions.

3) Animation data: Mario’s moves aren’t free

Mario has a surprising number of animation states and transitions. The game needs animation tables, skeleton
data, and timing logic for everything from tiptoe turns to ledge grabs. That’s not “waste,” but it’s a real
RAM and ROM footprintespecially when you multiply it across enemies, objects, and cutscene-like moments.

It’s the invisible cost of making Mario feel like a character instead of a forklift.

4) Textures: tiny images, chunky bills

N64 texture formats are clever, but textures still add up fastespecially when you need multiple variants:
different palettes, different sizes, different mip levels or hand-tuned alternatives, UI icons, fonts, skyboxes,
and those little detail textures that make stone look like stone and not like a gray suggestion.

Early 3D games also leaned on repetitiontiling the same textures in different contextsyet the supporting
data (palettes, display lists, geometry splits, and so on) can inflate memory usage in ways that aren’t obvious
from a casual playthrough.

5) Audio: samples, banks, and the cost of vibes

SM64’s music feels light and playful, but under the hood it still needs instrument samples, sound banks,
sequences, and runtime mixing buffers. On a unified-memory system, audio doesn’t get its own private cornerit
competes with everything else.

And because cartridges had limited storage, the audio system typically favors smaller samples and clever reuse,
which can mean more CPU/RAM work at runtime to assemble the final soundscape.

6) Conservative memory pools: fewer crashes, more “unused” bytes

One of the most misunderstood “wastes” is deliberate slack space. Super Mario 64 uses structured organization
for assets and runtime systems (you can see the project’s decomposition and structure in public decompilation
efforts, including dedicated folders for buffers/heaps and audio systems). That kind of design often allocates
memory in pools with headroom.

Why? Because fragmentation and unpredictable spikes are deadly on 4 MB. You’d rather reserve a chunk you might
not fully use than discoverlate in developmentthat Big Boo’s Haunt occasionally turns into Big Crash’s Haunt.

Compression Isn’t a Magic SpellIt’s a Trade

If cartridges are expensive and RAM is tiny, the obvious solution is compression. And yesN64 games (including
Super Mario 64) use compression formats like MIO0, which is related to LZ-style schemes.
But compression doesn’t erase memory costs; it moves them.

MIO0 and the “paying twice” moment

A typical pattern is: data is stored compressed in ROM, then decompressed into RAM at runtime. For a brief
window, you may need:

• the compressed data in ROM (always present),
• a destination buffer in RAM (must exist),
• sometimes scratch space or alignment padding (depends on implementation).

That decompression moment can make a game look “wasteful” in RAM profilingbecause you’re watching the sausage
get made.

Why some assets stay uncompressed

Compression costs CPU time and complexity. Some data is left uncompressed for speed, simplicity, or because it
doesn’t compress well. Other data might be compressed but aligned/padded for DMA convenience. In other words:
sometimes you trade a little ROM space to make streaming and loading reliable.

ROM-hacking tools even explicitly target this issuepacking compressed blocks together and reducing unused
spacebecause the original layouts can include alignment rules and “good enough” gaps that were acceptable for
a shipping product.

The Elephant in the Cartridge: Unused and Prototype Content

Now we reach the part everyone loves: the leftovers. Super Mario 64 has a long development history, and like
many big games, it contains traces of ideas that didn’t make it to the final cut. This can look like “wasted”
ROM spacebecause, frankly, it is ROM space that isn’t strictly required to finish the game.

Planned content that didn’t survive the final build

Documentation of pre-release materials and development notes suggests the game once aimed for far more courses
than shipped. When plans shrink, not every asset gets neatly vacuumed outespecially if you’re racing a launch
window and your priority is stability.

Stray objects, alternate behaviors, and “how is this still here?”

Over the years, fans and researchers have identified unused objects and behavior remnants that hint at older
mechanics. A great example is how an early “fish fountain” behavior appears in development history, while the
retail game keeps a much rarer version of fish spawningan echo of an earlier idea, reduced but not entirely
erased.

Regional builds and “delete it later” habits

Different versions of SM64 (Japan, US, Europe, later revisions) aren’t always identical. Some assets shift,
some are removed, and some oddities remain. This is normal when teams are iterating under pressure: removing
content can ripple into memory maps, pointers, scripts, and build tooling. Sometimes the safest approach is:
don’t rip it outjust stop referencing it.

The result? ROM space that exists, but isn’t actively used. That’s “waste” in the same way your garage is
“waste”: technically, yes, but also it’s where the spare tires live.

So… Is Super Mario 64 Actually Wasteful?

If “wasteful” means “not perfectly minimal,” then sureSuper Mario 64 is not a zen garden of byte-level
minimalism. It’s a pioneering 3D game built on new hardware, new tools, and new design patterns. Some padding,
some redundancy, and some leftovers were practically inevitable.

But if “wasteful” means “bad engineering,” the story flips. A lot of the apparent memory bloat is actually
smart risk management:

• Unified RAM makes buffers expensive, but necessary.
• Collision duplication prevents physics chaos.
• Compression saves ROM space but shifts costs to CPU/RAM at load time.
• Reserved headroom prevents late-stage instability.

In other words, Super Mario 64 doesn’t waste memory so much as it
spends memory on reliability and feel. The real magic isn’t that it’s “small.”
It’s that it’s playable, responsive, and consistent within such tight constraints.

Practical Takeaways (Especially If You Care About SM64 Modding)

If you’re studying Super Mario 64’s memory usageor building a ROM hackhere are some useful, real-world
lessons:

1. Know what you’re measuring. ROM size and RAM usage are different battles with different
   weapons.
2. Buffers are non-negotiable. Framebuffers, Z-buffers, and audio buffers will eat RAM whether
   your level is huge or tiny.
3. Compression helps, but changes workflow. You’ll juggle compressed blocks, decompression
   destinations, and alignment rules.
4. “Unused” can be safer than “deleted.” Removing assets may break pointers and scripts. Many
   projects prefer to disable references instead.
5. Tools exist because the original layouts were pragmatic. Modern tooling can pack data more
   tightly than a 1996 production pipeline needed to.

Experiences: What It Feels Like to Fight SM64’s Memory Limits Today (About )

Spend any time around the Super Mario 64 modding and reverse-engineering community and you’ll notice a pattern:
people don’t talk about “memory” like it’s one thing. They talk about it like it’s a zoo enclosure, and every
new feature is an animal that needs a habitat, a fence, and a liability waiver.

The first “experience” many newcomers have is discovering that ROM data isn’t just a neat folder of filesit’s
a carefully arranged layout of blocks, tables, and segments. When you add a texture, you’re not just adding an
image. You’re potentially changing alignment, shifting offsets, and forcing the game’s loading routines to
find your data without tripping over something that used to live there.

That’s why tools in the ecosystem put so much emphasis on compression blocks and placement. Some workflows
focus on packing MIO0 blocks together to reduce gaps, recalculating references, and keeping alignment
consistent. From the outside, this looks like obsessive tidying. From the inside, it’s survival: those “wasted”
gaps you ignored can be the difference between a stable build and a bug where Whomp’s Fortress loads and your
camera decides to become a modern art statement.

Another common experience is the “decompression reality check.” Yes, compression saves ROM spacebut the moment
you need an asset in RAM, you must allocate a destination buffer. If you’re adding larger textures, new models,
or extra geometry, you can hit RAM ceilings fastespecially because N64 RAM is shared with rendering buffers
and audio. Modders often learn, the hard way, that the game’s existing headroom wasn’t a gift; it was a plan.
Consume it thoughtlessly, and the game starts failing in the least polite way possible: random crashes, missing
objects, or levels that load with half the skybox and all the dread.

Then there’s the “duplicate data” surprise. People expect that a level is “the level.” In practice, you may
have separate representations for visuals and collision, plus object placements and scripts, plus camera and
area data, plus warped connections. Add one big fancy set piece and you’re not just paying onceyou’re paying
across multiple systems. This is where the phrase “memory waste” gets repeated a lot, usually right before
someone refactors a collision mesh down to a simpler shape and celebrates like they just found a hidden star.

Finally, there’s the most relatable experience of all: discovering unused or leftover content and having a
small existential crisis. You see the traces of earlier ideasobjects, behaviors, odd data blocksand you
realize this is what real development looks like. It’s not a perfect sculpture; it’s a ship that made it to
sea. And once you internalize that, “wasted memory” stops being an insult and starts being a time capsule:
evidence of trade-offs, deadlines, and the fact that someone, somewhere, once said, “We’ll clean this up later,”
and then shipped one of the most influential games ever made.

Conclusion

Super Mario 64 “wastes memory” mostly in the way a professional kitchen “wastes counter space”: it keeps room
for the chaos that happens during real work. The N64’s unified RAM means graphics and audio buffers are
unavoidable overhead. Collision and visuals split on purpose. Compression saves ROM but introduces runtime
costs. And yes, some unused content lingeredbecause deleting things in a tightly mapped cartridge build can be
riskier than leaving them dormant.

In the end, the bigger story isn’t that SM64 is bloated. It’s that Nintendo pulled off smooth, readable 3D
platforming with a memory budget that modern web pages can exceed by accident. If that’s “waste,” it’s the most
historically productive waste imaginable.