Extracted from Wikipedia.
Because of the game's popularity, rumors about glitches and secrets spread rapidly after its release.[30] The most infamous rumor is that Mario's brother Luigi is an unlockable character in the game. This rumor was fueled by some blurry text in the castle courtyard that supposedly read "L is real 2041". This caused rampant fan speculation that L(uigi) was real. IGN received so many questions and supposed methods to unlock Luigi that the staff offered a $100 bounty to anyone who could prove that Luigi was in the game.[31] The number of false codes submitted to IGN dropped dramatically; no successful method emerged.[32]
Nintendo has consistently denied Luigi's playability, and never commented on the meaning of "L is real 2041" except for the April Fool's Day 1998 issue of Nintendo Power. In this issue, the "April News Briefs" section said that the cryptic phrase would be discussed on page 128, but the magazine had only 106 pages.[33] The section also featured a facetious article entitled "Luigi 64", commenting humorously on the rumor.[33] The then-infamous texture made a cameo appearance in Dodongo's Cavern, a dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Luigi did eventually make his presence real, as one of the four playable characters in the Nintendo DS remake, but it is confirmed that Luigi is absent from Super Mario 64.
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[Posted by ShaddowK]
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