In its heyday, Super Mario 64 was one of several games that were the subject of numerous rumors, urban legends, and hoaxes, along with Pokémon (catching MissingNo, "Pikablu" etc), Final Fantasy 7 (reviving Aerith), and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (obtaining the triforce, beating the running man, etc). The most persistent rumor was that the unreadably downsampled text on the star plaque in the courtyard says "L Is real 2401 / [bottom text]" and that this was the key to unlocking Luigi somehow. It's also often thought to say "Eternal star / [bottom text]".
Anyway, I was surprised to come across this article explaining how someone tried just scaling down characters rendered in the font used throughout the game for most text (including menus and dialogue) and comparing the results to the plaque texture. Now, this article really doesn't make a very good impression of their methodology – the thing that stands out the most are all of the comparison photos taken by holding up the blurry downsampled text displayed on a phone next to a TV displaying the texture in-game. I don't know why they didn't just compare the isolated plaque texture and downsampled text directly in an image editor, but in any case, if you look through the photos in the article carefully, it's clear that they actually do match: downsampling the regular dialogue font does indeed reproduce the features and proportions of the writing in the plaque texture. Someone should replicate the results with a more rigorous comparison…but you probably just want to know what it was determined to say. Well, this:
A Secret star
lie here ~
This actually gives context to a few minor but odd details split across Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and even Super Mario Odyssey! Some of this was pointed out by commenters on the article or had been noted on TCRF.net, but most of it is my own thoughts.
In Super Mario 64, the courtyard area where the plaque is found contains the entrance to the haunted house level Big Boo's Haunt and serves no other purpose. The courtyard is inhabited by boos, but despite this it's really not a spooky location – just a quiet, tranquil one. But if the fountain is a monument commemorating a star in the manner of a dead person, both aspects make sense. The entrance to Big Boo's Haunt in the courtyard is also odd: a model of the mansion from the level contained within a birdcage held by one of the boos. As a kid I always remembered wondering what the heck it was even supposed to be. However, unlike other levels in the game, its entrance is not its exit – the fountain is! After losing a life or retrieving a star in Big Boo’s Haunt, Mario jumps out of the fountain. This is thought to be evidence of the fountain or plaque itself having once been the level entrance during development, but for whatever reason it was changed to the mansion model in the cage and the exit animation was not updated to match.
In Super Mario Odyssey, this "secret star" seems to be the one you collect (OK, technically a moon rendered as a star) by throwing Cappy onto the same statue, which is featured in a SM64 throwback stage. (The implication being that it had continued to "lie here ~" the whole time.)
Finally, in OOT, the same plaque asset from SM64 is reused in Dodongo’s Cavern, where it gives the player a hint about how to open the mouth of the giant fossilized dodongo skull that grants access to the boss. Within the setting of OOT, however, it’s apparently a memorial commemorating the giant dead dodongo in addition to giving the hint (omitted from display to the player due to irrelevance), explaining why the developers would choose to repurpose this specific plaque asset here, out of all places.
Here's a bit of speculation on my part to cap things off. Were the rumors of this plaque and the boos having something to do with playing as Luigi an influence on Nintendo's decision to give him a starring role a few years later, in a game about exploring a haunted mansion, no less? From the perspective of someone who'd have already known about the plaque's connection to Big Boo's Haunt, I wonder if the rumors would've just screamed "The fans want Luigi, and they want him in something spoopy!" I don't know, just strikes me as interesting to consider.
by CommercialPop128