Talent Studio Prototype Release

Published on 20 Sep 2025

Sometimes life is weird and these moments happen.

mo_the_pro had a pretty complete 64DD development kit with a development disk for more than a decade without knowing what was in it, and thanks to the recent surgence of SummerCart64 flashcart, it makes it easier to dump without spending a lot of money.

Not only his 64DD development drive is seemingly one of the earliest ones (the internal firmware is dated 26 September 1996), around the time of the Nintendo 64 release, but the disk contains a build of Mario Artist Talent Studio dating 6 months before release.

This is insane. I thought finding Paint Studio prototype was already pretty insane on its own, but easily explained by how it was developed by UK based Software Creations, but Talent Studio is full on internal Nintendo EAD studio, and despite it just being 6 months before release, the changes are pretty visually striking.

The Talent Studio mode while pretty functional, is still kind of rough around the edges but with some different clothing options, with some different music, the Movie Studio mode however is extremely different from final, with a very early placeholder UI that’s pretty hard to understand if you are not familiar with the movie maker in the final version. It is functional, with weirder limitations here and there (such as how holding an item is tied to the actor rather than being a choice based on the scene).

Here’s a video showing off the prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyE5LP7wRX8

Please also take a look at the music rips, because we also have unused music and I gotta say… please listen to them. They’re absolutely Totaka-esque.

And of course, the dump can be found in the Games page at the bottom or the Database page in the Development tab.
I have also made a full on music rip of this prototype, which has quite a few highlights in how the music can range from nearly identical to completely new.

You can also find a dump of the 64DD dev kit’s internal controller ROM called GS01Y04 at the Database page in the Development tab.