One of the biggest data breaches just happened at Nintendo. Named Gigaleak, the latter reveals incredible archives, totally unsuspected, such as the source codes of some of the greatest games released on Nintendo 64 and Super NES, including The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Kart or Star Fox 2.
Never released or unveiled prototypes of games, such as a certain Ultra Mario Bros 64, another The Donkey, a Super Castlevania 4 and even what would appear to be a Pokémon MMO, have appeared. To date, nothing indicates whether this mega leak is linked to the previous ones that have taken place in recent weeks.
What does Nintendo’s Gigaleak data contain?
Some data contains alternate artwork for Super Mario World, where Bowser appears with visible paws. We can see an extremely early test engine, strangely named ” Zelda 3 “, which would have served as the basis for the game Mario Kart 64. The source code of the game Star Fox 2 has also been unveiled, where we learn for example that a human pilot should have been playable. Very early prototypes of Yoshi and some enemies present in Super Mario World have also appeared.
Released in 1995 on SNES, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is probably the game that has so far “suffered the most” from these leaks, with, for example, the appearance of a completely different interface, never before. used or even mini-games totally different from those we had known. Valuable data Super Mario Kart, of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to Wave Race 64, of Starfox 64 and many more were revealed, the list is already long.
Data that should have been kept confidential
These leaks would have appeared at the end of July on the 4Chan forum. If Nintendo has yet to confirm the veracity of this data, many players in the industry have already done so and are already convinced of it, such as Dylan Cuthbert, the chief developer of multiple games in the Star Fox franchise. The latter is particularly surprised to find a tool for Star Fox 2 within these leaks, a tool he himself created more than 30 years ago. “ I wrote it in C ++ at the time, to learn this language! But how did the hackers get it? He wondered on his Twitter account.
If the exploration and exploitation of this incredible data delights the fans, it will inevitably pose a problem for Nintendo, because let us remember it: this data, kept under seal for years, is an integral part of its intellectual property. And it goes even further than a story of rights since sometimes very private exchanges between certain employees of the company have also surfaced, including certain sensitive data, such as an email where an employee was discussing at the time of childhood trauma.