The Super Mario RPG remake has added a cheat code easter egg that was previously exclusive to the Japanese release of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.
Without a doubt, Super Mario RPG is one of the weirdest games in the Mario universe, and is packed full of easter eggs, references, and strange bits of dialogue. For the most part, all of that strangeness is intact in the remake (well, except for that cheeky little reference to Bruce Lee), and there’s even one special easter egg that some players are going to be experiencing for the very first time.
In the original Japanese release of Super Mario RPG, there was a secret cheat code that could be entered in the pause menu by pressing “Down, Up, Right, Left, L, R, L, R, B”. If the code was inputted correctly, Toad would show up on the pause menu and say “you found a secret code”, before questioning what it could have done.
Toad would then walk you through some of the menus, stopping at your experience points and stats to see if the cheat code had done anything at all. As Toad walked around the menu and inspected some of its contents to try and find any sign of the cheat doing anything, he’d warn the player that there aren’t any more cheat codes in the game and that the one you just put in will do the exact same thing every time which, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is absolutely nothing.
As it turns out, the cheat code is just a little jokey easter egg, as it actually doesn’t do anything at all to the player’s stats and only really causes Toad to pop up and start talking. Even if it was completely useless, it was yet another example of Super Mario RPG being stuffed full of secrets, except it was one that was strangely completely cut from the Worldwide release of the game. No reason was ever given or discovered for the strange cut to the game
Dedicated Super Mario RPG fans have known about this Japan-exclusive cheat code for quite some time now, but they probably didn’t expect such a small bit of the game’s history to be added back into the remake. That’s exactly what happened, however, as entering the code while the game is paused in any version of the game will now cause the easter egg to begin.