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SOJ Super Mario 64 · The Shindou Edition
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What is different about the Shindou version of Super Mario 64?

It rumbles, it speaks English, and it will not let Mario fly backwards.

On July 18, 1997, a year after launch, Japan got Super Mario 64 a second time: the Shindou Pak Taiou version, named for the Rumble Pak it was built to support. It is not the Japanese original with a peripheral added. It is the American version of the game, translated back into Japanese, carrying bug fixes, the English voice acting, and one quiet mechanical change that decided its fate with speedrunners.

THE COVER IT REPLACED

The 1996 Japanese box
Super Mario 64 Japanese Nintendo 64 box art, 1996
Japan · 1996
The original Japanese edition: Mario ringed by the English words of the new 3D grammar. The Shindou re-release followed thirteen months later.
Super Mario 64 American Nintendo 64 box art, 1996
America · 1996
The Shindou version is built on this edition, not on the Japanese original: its code, its voices, and its fixes are the American game's.

WHAT CHANGED

Four differences that matter
The Rumble
The headline feature: the controller now shakes. A ground pound lands with a thud, diving kicks, and picking up red coins and extra lives gives a small kick of feedback. Press Z on the title screen and a cascade of Mario faces appears, an easter egg built for the new edition.
The Voices
Because the Shindou build descends from the American release, it carries the English voice acting, Charles Martinet's Mario, where the 1996 Japanese original did not. Japanese players heard the American Mario a year before the rest of the re-release wave.
The Fixes
Bugs found in the first Japanese pressing were corrected, one reason Nintendo treated the Shindou edition as the definitive build. Decades later it became the basis for the version in Super Mario 3D All-Stars on Switch: the tells are Mario saying "Buh-Bye!" and the blue trademark logo.
The Speed Cap
The consequential one: the Shindou build caps Mario's movement speed. The Backwards Long Jump, which works by stacking uncapped backwards speed until Mario clips through doors and stairs, simply does not work. Speedrunners run the earlier versions; the Shindou edition is the one they avoid.

WHY IT EXISTS

A peripheral needed a flagship

The Rumble Pak was a new accessory in 1997, and accessories sell when the biggest game on the system uses them. Nintendo's answer was to rebuild its best-selling title around the device and sell it again to the same audience, a manoeuvre the industry now treats as routine. Counting the original Japanese, American, and European builds, the Shindou edition makes four distinct Nintendo 64 versions of Super Mario 64, before the iQue, Virtual Console, and DS versions are counted at all.

For collectors the distinction is the point. Two Japanese boxes look near identical on a shelf, but they hold different code, different voices, and a different relationship to the game's competitive afterlife. The Shindou version is the polished one. The 1996 original is the fast one. The Library documents them as what they are: two editions, not one game with a sticker changed.

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