This 64DD software is quite fascinating in that it’s actually an important step in Nintendo’s history. Miyamoto has always wanted to let players create avatars and do silly things with them, even since the Famicom Disk System, and this could have been something special, if done right. Not that it wasn’t done right in the software – it’s just that it was on the 64DD, too late into the N64’s life. There are three distinct parts of Talent Studio.

The first part of Talent Studio is creating avatars. There are two different editing suites here: one for the face, one for the body. The interface is nice and simple, but the options are quite mind-boggling, with a ton of stuff you can edit, and that’s on top of being able to paint the face yourself. You can import elements from Mario Artist Paint Studio, connect a camera via a special capture device cartridge, or use a Game Boy Camera. Then you can add all sorts of hair and accessories.

The body portion of the software has a lot of options to adjust the style of the body, as well as clothes which can contain patterns and designs (which can be imported). There’s a few Nintendo-related items in here, as well. You can also record your own voice for the Talent, although via a standard microphone plugged into the capture cart, and not the N64’s VMU microphone.

In Show Time you can watch a load of animations showing off your Talent. They’re quite amusing, with your Talent being rather useless and pathetic, although there’s only one animation for a set routine. There’s a vibe of the weirdness of Tomodachi Life in this mode.

Elsewhere in the package is a movie maker. While you can only have three “actors” (only one can appear at a time) and four backgrounds, you can apply a ton of animations, camera movements, effects, text, and sounds, to create simple little animated shorts. It’s quite complex software with a lot of elements to figure out, including a tool for making your own animations.

For the Mario Artist’s dream of being a game creation suite, this was likely the character creation and cut-scene parts. Parts of Talent Studio were reused for a cancelled GameCube game called Stage Debut, where your character would share a world with Nintendo characters, then Miyamoto’s plans for an avatar system finally took off with the much simpler Miis on the Wii.

Fun

The second delivery, in February, contains Sim City 64, Talent Studio and a capture cartridge which will allow you to connect a digital video camera to the N64.

N64 Magazine #36

Remake or remaster?

It would be interesting to see all parts of the Mario Artist Game Studio.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Mario Artist Talent Studio