[leidenfrost]

One line change, from a developer that consistently analyzed the decompiled data over the course of years, and with 2020's tooling.

The original devs were in a time crunch in the 90s with the limited experience they had for 3d games. It's possible that they were aware of the bug but said "eh, it's playable" and launched it.

[als0]

I think you raise the right point. I remember reading about how the team was burned out.

> What was the atmosphere like during the final days of coding? I think there was a lot of panicking going on. But it was still very organised, there was lots of people working very hard. I think it was quite laid back at the very end, not many bugs, gameplay was sorted out on time. One of the programmers had quite a hard time of it – two of them decided not to make games anymore because of Mario 64. Not because they didn’t enjoy it, but because they’d burnt themselves out.

https://pixelatron.com/blog/the-making-of-super-mario-64-ful...

[justinator]

> but said "eh, it's playable" and launched it.

That does not sound culturally Japanese to me.