Nowadays, if you get tripped up by something in a game, or even downright stuck, then you can hop online and find a guide. Hell, maybe even a YouTube video showing you exactly how to maneuver your way through a tricky area or take down a troublesome boss. 25 years ago, finding the help you needed wasn't so easy. You needed physical guides, and there are perhaps none better than the Super Mario 64 one printed for Japanese players when the game launched.
The beautiful guide is 152 pages long and includes hand-made dioramas of pretty much the entire game. Copies of it are naturally pretty hard to come by 26 years later, which is why Mario fans rejoiced earlier this month when someone scanned its pages and made them available online. However, Nintendo doing what Nintendo does has swooped in and demanded it be taken down, as first highlighted by Kotaku.
The Internet Archive, where the scanned guide could previously be found, was issued with a copyright notice by Nintendo of America. That was passed on to Comfort Food Video Games which was responsible for the upload. “While I fully understand protecting one’s IP and copyrights I didn’t think I was hurting anyone by scanning and uploading a 27-year-old guide that is extremely out of print,” the original uploader from CFVG said to Kotaku.
“All I wanted to do was spread my love of this incredible guide and to a larger extent my love for the company.” Nintendo is pretty renowned for issuing copyright notices to anyone using any of its IP without permission at the drop of a hat. Somewhat annoying, but as the uploader of the guide highlights, it's up to Nintendo how its IP is used. In this instance, however, it seems a little unnecessary, and perhaps even a little petty.
Considering how long it has been since the guide was originally printed, and how many times Super Mario 64 has launched on different platforms since then without so much as a mention of it from Nintendo, it seems incredibly unlikely it will ever be reprinted and sold. Nintendo is making no money from it whatsoever, and almost definitely never will, which means it wasn't losing any money by allowing it to exist outside of its own universe online. Hopefully, Nintendo will upload the scans and make them available under its own umbrella, but that seems unlikely.