There is a Super Mario Brothers fan who explores the limits of creation.
In the Tall, Tall Mountain area of Super Mario 64, Mario must climb an enormous mountain. In his path is a log that twists from left to right, and the player must navigate the plumber across the log while it rolls back and forth. It’s possible to manipulate the log’s movement, just so, and force it to clip into the architecture of the level.
“It takes 36 days of nonstop manipulation to reach the limit of how far it can go. This has no currently known purpose,” Super Mario Brothers superfan Supper Mario Broth said on X and Bluesky.
Due to floating point imprecision, the rolling log in Tall, Tall Mountain in Super Mario 64 can be very slowly manipulated to go sideways through the cliff. It takes 36 days of nonstop manipulation to reach the limit of how far it can go. This has no currently known purpose. pic.twitter.com/HtXzssVxxr
— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) January 13, 2025
Sometimes you come across a phrase on the internet that stops you in your tracks. “It takes 36 days of nonstop manipulation to reach the limit of how far it can go. This has no currently known purpose,” has haunted me since I read it.
According to the YouTube video that is the source of the arcane Mario knowledge, manipulating the log is possible thanks to a rounding error in the game’s code. “This is because the float spacing of the log’s speed is finer than the spacing of its position, so by manipulating its speed it can slowly drift to the side, at about 2μm/s,” the description said.
The YouTuber manipulated Mario until they found a 34-frame loop that moves one float each cycle. “The sequence was: ↑,↑,↑,↑,↓,↑,↑,↓,↑,↓,↑,↓,↑,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↓,↑,↑,↑,↑,↑,↑,↑,↑ repeated 2.8 million times over 36 days.” Lest you worry that the YouTuber did this on their own, don’t worry, the project was tool-assisted. 36 days were not spent moving a log into place.
I know about this bizarre feat thanks to Supper Mario Broth. Their post about the log has been viewed 170,000 times. The YouTube video only has 3,432. Supper Mario Broth is a big deal. They’ve been posting Mario-esoterica since 2013, silently plugging away at their strange little craft for more than a decade.
Supper Mario Broth is a constant delight on an increasingly grotesque and horrifying internet. In a world where Meta has gone full MAGA and X feels more like 4chan every day, Supper Mario Broth is a pleasant distraction.
Did you know that, in Super Mario Galaxy, Mario’s head shrinks to almost nothing so it doesn’t interfere with a drowning animation? Are you aware that Princess Peach has the same number of eyelashes as the curves in Mario’s mustache? Did you know that someone could write sentences as haunting as “It takes 36 days of nonstop manipulation to reach the limit of how far it can go. This has no currently known purpose.”?
In October of last year, Broth was in trouble. In a now-unlisted video on YouTube, the person behind the account pleaded for help from his fans. To hear Broth tell it, they had been the primary caregiver for their mother for the last six years. The government assistance he received to do this work supplemented his Patreon and allowed him to live.
His mother died and Broth didn’t make enough cash from the Patreon to sustain himself. He begged people who enjoyed his work to help him. They did. The next day, Broth posted across his socials to say that he’d be able to continue his work unearthing Mario factoids.
Broth’s community rallied to support him and we have all benefited. Three months out from the YouTube video and here I am, reveling in the mystery of a log from Super Mario 64’s Tall, Tall Mountain.
Why does Broth post? Why, after 36 days of nonstop manipulation, does the log slide into place just so? “This has no currently known purpose.” All the great mysteries of human existence exist in that sentence, written by a Mario scholar and posted on the internet about a glitch in Super Mario 64.