The Evolution of Mario’s Incidental Fish

[@any_austin]

Each of the year stingers (1996, 2002, 2007, 2013, 2017) are little jingles from their respective games. Can you name them all?

[@timotheatae]

Peach's Castle, Delfino Plaza(and all over the game), Enter the Galaxy, Super Bell Hill/Ground Theme, Let's Do the Odyssey.

[@emmafr1edman]

You put your whole soul in this vid Austin, slay queen

[@Cosmoandtherobins]

Uh Mario the video game soundtrack, main title theme

[@Giga-lemesh]

No!

[@Paul-lt8le]

1996: Mario 64 2002: Mario sunshine 2007: Mario galaxy 2013: Mario 3d world 2017: Mario odyssey 😊😊😊

[@rhysgerbiltron4041]

Finally a conclusive answer as to why the Wii U flopped; Lacked incidental fish

[@tadness121]

It had amazing water though, according to Miiverse user MARIO WiiU.

[@Chineseisntalanguageapparently]

Lack of 3d Mario more like

[@tumultuousv]

3D WORLD is a 3d Mario

[@Chineseisntalanguageapparently]

@@tumultuousv yea so is 3d land obviously, even more-so than Mario 64ds

[@ChocolateMilkMage]

Sounds more like a lack of flopping.

[@steviebrown64]

The Odyssey fish are using a particle system. Meaning each entity spawns, and is pushed around by various predetermined physics to follow a path or get repelled/attracted to things, such as Mario. But ultimately they have a lifetime and will despawn once it's reached. This is to ensure the total number is manageable. The benefit of using particles is it's very efficient and can also be entirely art-led. ie particles being so versatile are used thoughout the engine and so probably wouldn't have needed fish-specific code. Plus particle movement is intrinsically random which helps things look naturalistic without hand animating hundreds of objects. The downside of course is that they don't persist, and moreover no fish knows about any of it's friends. (Self colliding particles would be much more costly so I'd imagine you'd see them clip through eachother in places, but I can't quite tell tbf). The schooling behaviour is achieved by them using the same noise functions to follow similar paths. They simply appear, live their brief life, then die. So perhaps are more individualistic than you might have given them credit.

[@any_austin]

Quality comment

[@worthless_opinion]

Source?

[@hatti...]

That's deep man

[@sas.tronaut5055]

@@worthless_opinionwhy? i assume if youre well versed in game making its not that difficult to discern theyre particles. particles are extremely common in game making, and ive seen at least two other comments suggest particles as the explanation for the fish

[@DrSpaceman42]

@@worthless_opinion your name is accurate

[@infinitesimalperinfinitum]

Next up, bird watching and identification.

[@ninjachicken8939]

Perfect!

[@viihnaNeverShutsUp]

I'd LOVE to see this

[@orangesorbet3073]

you can do sound ID in skyrim! there is significant enough variation based on area.

[@thedualitysystem]

Skyrim bird watching video??

[@ghostypheus]

i would love to see low poly birds from Skyrim as said before and dark souls

[@drake_diangelo]

You have completely changed the way I play games now. I spent an entire cycle in Outer Wilds just admiring the ship. My bf and I discussed the uses for all the parts, the amount of tape holding the outside together. Inside the ship, most things are secured, but somethings aren't for some reason. Every container of food us actually just marshmallows. There are two rope bundles hanging from the ceiling, but instead of being attatched with a hook or something, its looped along the lines of a rope net, making it incredibly inconvenient to use. There is an eject button on the dashboard, something you have to be at a very specific angle to click. You can open the cover, and if you hit eject, you go flying at high speed and the cab detatches. My bf has hundreds of hours in this game and didn't know that. And in the opening to the game, I cooked the perfect marshmallow, but he thought you could only burn them I've found an entirely new way to experience games, and I really appreciate you for that

[@clockworkkirlia7475]

That's really nice. Thank you!

[@zibberebbiz]

Same, I spend so much time in games now just vibing.

[@Hexagonal_Goblin]

Hundreds of hours in OW? That's phenomenal lol. I beat the game long ago but I regularly boot it up just to experience the world.

[@cikame]

Ever since that COD fish incident my friends and i have pointed out every time we've encountered interactive fish in a video game.

[@falebite150]

What is the COD fish incident? I've seen a few comments mention it

[@1pikman]

@@falebite150 It's just the fact that the fish were even brought up in marketing materials, being such a small detail. It also probably doesn't help that Ghosts is considered one of the more unremarkable CODs.

[@falebite150]

@@1pikman Ah, I see. Thank you :)

[@cikame]

@@falebite150 The game is best remembered for its dog and its fish.

[@nemohimself2580]

Switch Zelda games

[@Oxfordcolour]

Zelda games also have alot of incidental fish i think so check that out

[@bingbong9076]

Also lot of non incidental fish, like all of the fish you see in Twilight Princess are for the purpose of fishing with the rod

[@jmariekay]

Agreed

[@ashtonb561]

yeah the zora are my favorite

[@cato3277]

My favorite incidental fish are the ones in Metroid Prime that spiral down that pool you drain in the chozo ruins.

[@Irisverse]

An interesting thing Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom do is they will "pad out" schools of fish or swarms of insects with "fake" animals. Like you will see some fish below the water, and it looks like there's maybe a dozen, but in reality there's only like five you can actually catch. The rest are just un-interactable animations that are there to make the group look bigger.

[@Lumpfriend]

I didnt have an opinion on the relative lack of incidental fish in delfino plaza before but I do now

[@WaddleDee105]

Personally, I'm furious

[@TheBreadPirate]

4:48 This is unbelievably satisfying. I have rewatched you breaking the box 5 times.

[@legoboy7107]

Fun fact, in Mario 64, if you stand in the shallow edge of a body of water and hop repeatedly, sometimes a fish will jump out of the water. It's extremely rare and I think has only happened to me once or twice when trying to get it, but it's a thing!

[@goldentapes]

when i read the video title i thought these random fish were the ones this video would be about haha

[@ryanl3500]

Interestingly it looks like the fish in Odyssey are driven by a particle effect system. The lack of individual logic and disappearing after X amount of time are consistent with such systems. It allows them to push a lot of models on the GPU for relatively low performance impact.

[@VictorSilva-lj4wy]

Exactly what I was thinking of

[@thejonbrownshow8470]

Makes a lot of sense

[@BynineStudio]

in banjo tooie, there's a normal set of incidental fish for most levels, but the prehistoric level Terrydactyland has schools of nautilus instead! always thought that was neat

[@LevanEvan]

"Incidental Fish" is my new band name now. Thanks Austin

[@simplyixia3683]

For the 6th Shine in Noki Bay, you go to a sunken city to collect red coins. If memory serves, that area had tons of fish. But I hadn’t noticed how eerily devoid of fish this tropical island was until you pointed it out.

[@canariawing]

yep, there's tons of incidental fish there. the red coin shine in gelato beach has a bunch of incidental fish swimming in the coral reefs too

[@drowzypollinator640]

You don't get more fish with more shines right?

[@simplyixia3683]

@@drowzypollinator640 I don’t think so. But the area mentioned is only accessible on the 6th Shine level.

[@Doom_Slug]

The bottle level too I think

[@kitsovereign4127]

SM3DW absolutely has fish, they're just in the water levels where they belong. Check out 3-5 Pipeline Lagoon. Also worth mentioning that every time Mario jumps in water in SM64, a fish may leap out, even in shallow fishless water like in Whomp's or the BBH basement.

[@nukirisame5298]

Yeah I was shocked he didn't mention the latter fact. I thought that'd be the answer to the question.

[@qrcode6777]

And there’s more levels like 2-4 3-toad 7-5 and flower-6

[@waarschijn]

Hitman 2 (2002) has fish in the villa's pool in the first mission. Never questioned it but now it seems weird. In the video "Floats" from UncommentatedPannen, he says that when Mario64 creates splashes, that spawns bubbles and sometimes fish. They immediately disappear though.

[@chasethecolors]

Austin should cover the Hitman games, especially the old ones, I bet they have a bunch of unremarkable and odd things like that.

[@toewoe]

This is the content I subscribed for. These fish were designed by some random employee on a tuesday evening because he didn't know what to do with the last hour of his shift, and youre showing apreciation for their work.

[@awesomeness1122]

Careful Austin this was once a hot topic at one point during the cod fish announcement and I think you are flying too close to the sun there.

[@sweetdangerzack]

Big Tuna gonna be keeping a close eye on this channel from now on. Charlie's got powerful friends. 👁👁

[@daveloomis]

Unpopular opinion: CoD doesn't stand for cod.

[@HannahandCailinLoesch]

1) This video was a MAJOR palate cleanser after a rough weekend 🐟 2) No one makes me want to play Mario 64 more than Any Austin

[@ILBOI_X]

You uploaded just as I was about to eat my bag of Lays Classic chips (170g). Thank you.

[@dimitrikemitsky]

Interestingly I also watched this as I ate chips, but they were Hal's New York Kettle Chips - Sea Salt and Black Pepper (28).

[@nerdypizza23468]

Checking in with my 1 oz. (28.3g) bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos.

[@Individuo80]

Incidental weights?

[@Ajbolt89]

I was just getting ready to crunch through a bowl of Grape Nuts (7g of fiber per serving).

[@Codricmon]

This video served as perfect entertainment while I enjoyed my strawberry yoghurt (65g).

[@yosefu5009]

DUDE the foreshadowing from the drowning competitions

[@Levacque]

Oh I forgot about those videos! I recommended Austin to my friends but I couldn't quite articulate the anarchic nature of his content, and the drowning competitions would really have helped explain 😅

[@Atomhaz]

At least some of these fish are employed

[@j-skullz]

They are a "school" of fish, so they'd be Non-applicable

[@TheCosmicCloud]

If I recall correctly Galaxy also has creepy fish that appear in the spooky water levels like Deep Dark Galaxy

[@williamgalley1481]

Yes, I thought I was the only one who remembered those! I remember being really scared of them when I was 12, haha

[@Shenorai]

I love how your videos wind up being an exercise in appreciating the little things that the programmers included in our games.

[@Plumbell6754]

Fun fact, most (if not all) of these fishes appear to be Osteichthyes.

[@McCheesy22]

The majority of fish in the real oceans are bony fish, so it would stand to reason that video game fish would also be the most common type. Also I’m not aware of any schooling fish that doesn’t have bones, which all of these examples were in.

[@cheesecake1255]

What is a osteichthyes and why there appear to be to marine biologist here, I mean its a video about fish i guess nvm

[@riveriuskenadia3860]

Sorry but the band of Osteichthyes is so broad it includes most living mammals including humans, perhaps we should dumb it down the the colloquial “bony fish”?

[@BookWyrmOnAString]

What other fish were you expecting? Hagfish? Manta ray? Great white shark? Haikouichthyes?

[@catherinedufresne3543]

​@@BookWyrmOnAString Yes.

[@liamwaddleton]

Had no idea I wanted to learn about this until the video popped up in my subscription feed. Incredible content 10 out of 10

[@charliemelton885]

Every time you put out a video I see the title and I’m like “yep that sounds like an AnyAustin video” you have such a specific wonderful vibe

[@runningchief]

What a perfect Any Austin video idea.

[@TJ-ep6jl]

This is why I love this channel, I thought I was the only one who observed things like this in games. I have literally spent hours checking out environmental details like this. No quests or gameplay or anything, just taking notes

[@ChargingPirates]

"everybody knows that the wii was just two gamecubes duct taped together" so true king. i was so excited for this video when i saw the title i love fish and i especially love fish that dont hit you :)

[@GentleBaller]

Rumble Racing (2001) had a mountaintop stream off to the side of the racetrack where you could drive around with some majestic incidental salmon

[@DragonTypeTrainer]

Props to you for mentioning the bubbler in the tank, fish hobbyists are more misunderstood than the Voynich Manuscript.

[@joshuakirkham9593]

I always appreciate the tangential 'realness' of your subject choices Austin.

[@Lizuma]

Thanks so much for this!! I’ve been making artwork of a underwater scene from Mario’s world partly inspired by my favorite games of all time, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and really wanted to add the pretty little fish from there. I couldn’t find good references though and was worried I’d have to get them myself, but then found this video! When I was little I always loved swimming and playing around with the fish in Mario Galaxy. I also grew up with real aquariums and fish, it’s something I’m fond of

[@damarziman]

This kind of video is a perfect example of why this is my favorite KZbin channel

[@harry4596]

I clearly remember Delphino Plaza having fish in the inner pier part!!! I know this because, well... I was, too, fashinated by the school of fish in this game lol

[@The_Shadow_Emperor]

There's also blue fish in the inlet/docks area of Delfino Plaza. Ricco Harbor episode 7 has three of the four fish species in the area with Piantas in floaties, but they're gone again in episode 8

[@lornde7710]

This came across my home page and I thought "this is the absolute least productive way I could spend my time", and I was right. Thanks.

[@lazarusrat6159]

Man the water in Sunshine looks really REALLY good for 2002.

[@Furufoo]

The kist memorable incidental fish I've seen in a game is 8n subnautica, mainly because they make no sense due to being purely decorative but also sharing the models of the fishes you're able to cook and eat. I'll be dying of thirst, and a whole school of bladderfish will pass by, and I can't pick any of them

[@saffral]

Missing out on the secret aquarium room in SM64, so many happy little fish of both types in there.

[@ElectricJelly03]

One has to imagine the fish happy

[@RyanHaney55]

-I had noticed the oxygenator in Super Mario 64, only because I once left Mario standing there to see what he would do if I didn't touch the controller for a while. -I disagree that the Wii U is barely a console. There are a lot of great Nintendo games on it, along with the best social network, ever, the Miiverse. -It seems like both Zelda games on the N64 had incidental fish.

[@5MadMovieMakers]

Mario Trash Island is looking good for the Switch 2

[@legoboy7107]

There's also a unique type of incidental fish in the Bigmouth Galaxy (or whatever it's called) in Galaxy 1, I believe they're Angler Fish or whatever but they're a type that looks kinda creepy, fitting for the level.

[@vancodling4223]

"Obviously they're programmed to act this way, but so are real fish arent they?" Is the kind of philosophical lucidity that made me thwomp the subscribe button

[@gannonsmith5807]

Need more incidental fish investigation videos about other series! Or just games in general!

[@gavynvillarial]

I immediately thought of Zelda games, that have fish in the water, like ocarina of time. But windwaker, despite taking place in the ocean, has no fish besides the one who expands the map.

[@JefffMocha]

the fish in SM64 are just retextured bubbles. There is a small chance that any bubble that appears in-game will appear as a fish. This is why you can occasionally see a fish jump up when mario lands in shallow water.

[@specsowl]

You combined fish and 3D mario, my 2 favorite things. I would LOVE to see more incidental fish in games!

[@hexateron]

youre so real for making this video dude

[@agreeable_anger]

now this is the content i subbed for. discussion of completely innocuous details that most people just glance at and move on. great vid👍

[@noseycrane]

any austin always has the most interesting gaming videos. ive not ever really thought about these things before, but i see now how compelling they are

[@PastaMaster115]

When I think of incidental fish, other than Mario, the first game that comes to mind is Ocarina of Time. You could actually catch those fish in bottles. So they had a use other than just a nice detail.

[@ChristmasPterodactyl]

I remember Bioshock's incidental fish, because I always felt that it was a missed opportunity to put in some sort of easter egg for using the research camera on them.

[@herb_rolls]

I love these videos. I work in game dev and these videos inspire me to push through the corporate deliverables and make the effort to include small, fun, details in games.

[@storewideboss6910]

I just have to say. Your videos are exactly the kind of thing I did as a kid. I’d spend hundreds of hours in the same levels in the LEGO games to study random things. Exactly like this channel, and I’m all for it.

[@WilfredCthulu]

The sunshine fish have got some MEAT. 3:06 he says while there's fish in the background.

[@PopodumMan]

This video reminds me of how I used to perform a glitch in Mario 64 DS so that I was walking on the ground underneath the moat and every time I did it I would go to the small lake-type area and just stand there while fish swam around me except since I wasn't swimming, it looked like the fish were flying over and around my head. Good times.

[@joepines3278]

Honestly the way the described the fish really summed up the games. 64 was the rough beginning, Sunshine and Galaxy focused harder on the details, and Odyssey felt more interested by quantity rather than quality/individuality

[@devonfarrar6313]

Wow finally someone covered this important subject

[@StormyTalks]

5:12 Our Earth beaches are also located in outer space. That's where our planet is located.

[@kMegalonyx]

We call that “inner space” ackshully

[@thetoddthefox]

I spent SO much time in M64 just hangin out with those blue fish in the pond. They fascinated me and I hold a special place in my heart for them.

[@jamieyakimets839]

I love the focus on obscure topics such as this, what a great idea!

[@khiralshimmer]

1:16 i like to believe that Austin played this Jaws soundbite himself instead of searching for one online

[@ashlynkelly6248]

He actually does do exactly that- every single musical stinger

[@OfficialJoeyC]

God I need more Any Austin in my life

[@mysticat]

this is exactly the video i needed at 2am tysm!

[@kenshokram]

I saw the thumbnail, and I thought "Dang it was wild when the xbox one e3 conference was so whack they had someone call out fish AI on call of duty" and lo and behold here you are with the relevant reference. What a great video idea and execution, I'd watch anything covering incidental animals in videogames. I'd always go around trying to look at but not hurt the animals in the half finished mess that was Turok Evolution on gamecube

[@daanthedoctor]

I love the incidental fish schools in subnautica that also go through walls and sometimes you can see them swimming in your base

[@LockandKeyHyena]

your videos are so relaxing and really make me appreciate different small things in video games, thank you.

[@hungryhedgehog4201]

I remember making little swarms as an exercise in CG class back in university. You can achieve a simple swarm effect by having each fish swim towards a way point but then limit the fish's ability to change direction and break. That way they will miss and overshoot it and end up as satellites around that point. Now add a little bit of randomness and you got a fish swarm.

[@tylerprock6981]

It’s official you have 100% mastered your craft.

[@CZsWorld]

Quintessential any_austin series idea

[@gertdehond4721]

This is the content I'm here for

[@rainbowdemon5033]

ok the venice being fishless line was a joke, but fishing via dynamite was done so much in the Mediterranean sea that a lot of coasts just don't have any corals. that's why a lot of Europeans that wanna see corals go to Egypt because they still have them near their coast.

[@dmetrihayes5713]

The perpetual clips in Austin's hair always gets me. 🪮

[@Atomhaz]

The scale technology really took a big jump on the Wii.

[@adrianarnold4552]

Austin with the Mr Morale and the Big Steppers fit 💯

[@sasquatch8854]

what an incredible video, exactly the kind of stuff I come here for (well also I come here for employment reports but that's a different vibe) video essays on the kinds of stuff that 95+% of the player base of a game doesn't notice in the slightest :D

[@dutchletters]

You forgot the fish in SM64 that appear when you splash in the water.

[@harrison.kaiser]

Abzu probably has the most incidental fish of any game ever created

[@greenberrygk]

The koi in bowsers kingdom in odyssey are easily the best but of course you only explored the 2 water themed kingdoms 😔

[@evilamy5]

I think the most interesting fish rendering I've seen is in Sky: Children of the Light. Not only is it used for the fish-fish, but it's used for birds, jellyfish, etc. It's robust enough they even used it as the basis for handling up 10k people in the same instance of the game (which includes a section where a huge school of fish is actually all individual players moving together). Frankly, it's a neat way to overcome hardware limitations.

[@Giga_7K]

The behaviour of lots of these incidental fish schools in games is often based on some variant of the ideas of Boids from 1986, a program that modeled flocks of "birds" by giving them a few simple rules to follow that resulted in emergent flock behaviour. I thought Half-Life had incidental fish, but I'm pretty sure it only has very not-incidental murder leeches and that scary alien fish. But it does have incidental alien birds that are actually called boids in the model files.

[@SomeoneYouDontKnowOfficial]

When I hear incidental fish I think of Payday 2 because it has achievement referencing incidental fish but does not have incidental fish in that level itself. I'm unsure if there are any incidental fish in Payday 2 at all.

[@Hi_Just_Fred]

Incidental Incidental Fish Achievement

[@emmysnakes]

"serena beach" *close up on where it definitely does not say serena* 3:47

[@CyberpunkPizza]

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future had the wildest "incidental" fish I've ever seen in a game - they're all over every single level and you have to eat them to restore health. They clearly take after the ones from mario 64 though so I think they still count even though they serve a gameplay purpose.

[@Populon993]

I recently (re-)played Subnautica. Even this game that is all about swimming with, eating and getting eaten by fish of various types and sizes has incidental fish. You frequently see swarms of small fish. As far as I bothered to check, these swarms consist of a few regular "interactable" fish, followed around by a bunch of "non-interactable" ones. Basically like when a town is filled with random generic NPCs to make it seem more alive. Just more fishy.

[@morksisnthererightnow8738]

I’d imagine Zelda (Botw and/or Totk) must go to a lot of detail in its incidental fish ai considering you can kill and grab them and such.

[@TriforceWisdom64]

I think by Austin's logic that makes them not incidental.

[@DaNintendude]

Man I love this kind of stuff. Not enough people care about the incidental, insignificant real life animals in Nintendo games. One thing I'm curious about is if Super Mario 64 DS has the same fish design, or if they changed them up. I'm also wondering if 3D Land or 3D World have incidental fish in their underwater levels, but I'd assume they don't, since you skimmed over 3D World so fast, and 3D Land is similarly simple in presentation.

[@dfjt]

hi austin been a fan since 2015 and og eggbusters and ive been loving the content recently, it’s so rare to find a content creator who can be consistently entertaining for 10+ years, keep it up :)

[@alexlee4154]

If I recall my pannekoek education correctly, in mario 64 there is a random chance that when mario jumps out of water that a fish jumps out with him

[@ClaireDeLoon]

sea of theives has a number of types of fish you can get from fishing, but all the incidental fish are either the most common saltwater fish (or the only freshwater fish) but smaller

[@PredictableEnigma]

Abzu be all about lookin at fish

[@zero.the.prototype]

The Wii U barely counts? BLASPHEMY! You're not invited to my Wii f-Uneral anymore.

[@shades4dogs]

amazing video, i always enjoyed looking for incidental fish in World of Warcraft myself, especially in zones like vashj'ir there's some excellent incidental fish. This is exactly the kind of stuff i come on youtube for

[@lazeddonut]

This is relevant to my interests

[@Shruction42]

I'm not a native English speaker and, in addition to bringing a wonderful video, you teached me a new interesting word : "incidental" 😁

[@trunkit8749]

The 3D World DEFINITELY had fish. Check out some of the water levels.

[@johnsmith2875]

I’ve always taken note of random background animals, I enjoy how they fill out the world

[@AverageDrafter]

The short film Breaking the Ice was the first CG to use algorithms to simulate schools of fish and flocks of birds in 1987 and I feel like both the work on the simulation itself and the impact it had as a film on early CG artists has a lot to do with why these two animals are all over 90s 3d games.