Hello! I’m excited to bring you the first interview conducted by Source Gaming. We have a couple more coming out in the near future, so expect. “Straight from the Source” to become a regular series from Source Gaming.

Please note: Grammar and spelling was slightly altered in some places. Nibroc answered the following questions on Google Docs, while gameonion and PushDustIn discussed the renders on a Skype chat. The answers were compiled to make a flow, and were approved by both gameonion and Nibroc before posting. English is not Nibroc’s native language.

PushDustIn: bold

gameonion: blue

Nibroc: green

Alright, this is PushDustIn from SourceGaming.Info. Today, I’ll be interviewing gameonion, and Nibroc. They created the fake Dr. Mario stage render that had many people fooled. gameonion, why don’t you introduce yourself real quick.

Hey everyone, I’m Joscha (mostly known as gameonion) and I helped create the Dr. Mario-leak. I don’t know if this is important, but I also own a YouTube-channel, on which I’m uploading Smash-related videos on a regular basis. I’m also pretty active on the /r/smashbros-subreddit.

Nibroc: would you be so kind as to introduce yourself as well?

I’m a 3D modeler, who mostly does video game characters and video game related projects. Right now, this is mostly a hobby, but I hope to one day do graphic designing and 3D model work as a job.

gameonion: would you consider yourself more of a content creator, or an artist?

Honestly, I consider myself more of a content creator. Mostly because that’s the thing I like doing more.

What kind of artistic experience do you have, Nibroc?

I’ve done at least over 2 Years with way more then over 800 renders… I’d say I’m pretty experience, I like to make most of my renders around 2000x200x (pretty HD stuff).

Nibroc: what kind of renders have you made? Do you focus on character design, scenery, etc?

Mostly just Character design–despite doing a stage model for this render, my scenery and landscape skills are not the greatest. I’ve done classic gaming icons characters like Sonic, Crash, Megaman, Frogger and lots more.

Nibroc: what made you get into creating renders in the first place?

That’s a pretty long story, but I’ll give a short version: I used to do poor animations for a Ask Series. The project was pretty ambitious and wanted to do a lot of stuff with character models we didn’t have, after not being able to find anyone to do the models for us, I decide to learn how to try do it myself, and I started off pretty badly…but somehow quickly caught on to everything and got really good in the flash of the single month ( I used to sculpt with clay so I’m pretty good in 3-D shape already)

gameonion: You also do some streaming on Twitch, is that correct?

I planned on doing it, I did it for a while, but I thought the quality was not that good. So I dropped streaming all together. I’d love to continue it, but my internet just isn’t the best.

gameonion: Streaming can be pretty difficult without the proper equipment. There’s a huge cost just to get in. Speaking of games, what’s your favorite Nintendo game?

Oh, that’s a good one. I’d have to decide between Pokemon Mystery Dungeons: Explorers of Sky, Pokemon Emerald or Mother 3. There just are too many good games.

gameonion: Oh, you are a big Pokemon fan?

I am a Pokemon fan, yes. But not as extreme as many others. I made a competitive team some days ago, but I play rarely.

Do you guys play Smash competitively?

I don’t visit tournaments, but I play on Anther’s Ladder a lot. I’m trying to play competitive, but I’m not that good.

gameonion: Yeah, I’m the same way. We should play sometime!

XD heck no, I’m as casual as they get… I main Mii Sword Fighter

How familiar are you guys with the Dr. Mario series?

Well, I only played Dr. Luigi and the NES-one on Virtual Console. Does the Dr. Wario-minigame from Wario Ware Inc. count?

Very familiar I play quite a lot of games from the sub-franchise, and I did extra research on the games before making the fake rumor

I’ll count it gameonion. It sticks to the general formula, but it’s not an official release though. Was there a particular Dr. Mario game that served as inspiration for creating the fake leak?

When Nibroc first showed me his idea, the first picture he showed me was a screenshot from the N64-one. The checkerboard-style platforms were inspired by that game.

It was actually Dr. Mario Online RX that inspired the stage, as the earliest screenshot had a blue background.

What was your primary motivation for making these renders?

When we started this there was really nothing going on Smash-wise so we figured we would spice it up with a fake rumor….however all of a sudden Smash news dropped with no word, I knew if we wanted to do it we had to do it at that point, so I waited for gameonion to get online so we could finish it and upload it that night (the whole thing was gonna be a lot bigger but we had to shorter in to complete in time).

Were the Megavitamin designs pulled from the N64 version too?

I’m not sure, since I never played that game. You’d need to ask Nibroc for that.

I was really just trying to copy the Pills based on how they looked for Dr. Mario on the NES, with the line though it. I didn’t know smash never used this design…

gameonion: what made you settle on a Dr. Mario stage then?

We thought it was pretty convincing. It’s a stage on practically nobody’s wishlist, there were files hinting at a Dr. Mario stage and we liked the concept of a Puzzle Game-stage.

What parts of the renders were you responsible for?

As you may remember, menus were visible in some of the leaked pictures. I created those mock-ups (stage-select, music-select, etc.)

I also helped with the “in-game”-screenshots. If you remember, so people thought it looked real because of the characters that were standing on the stage. That was also my part.

Ah, what did you do to ensure that Link, and Mario looked like they were really standing on the stage, since they were cut out from screenshots? Also, did you use files from the various data dumps for the menus, or did you only use screenshots?

Well, we took the screenshots on the Pac-Land stage. As you may remember, Pac-Land has a bright, blue background. It’s really a giant greenscreen, in blue. As for the menus: I also took various screenshots and modified them.That’s all I did. Imagine it like a giant puzzle.

Nibroc: did you create the Virus models yourself?

They came from the Smash 4 trophy, in order to make it more convincing.

Were you aware of the Virus character data that was found in Smash for Wii U?

Well of course, that was really the main reason I made the stage, as people already knew that it might have existed at one point, people would easily believe that the stage could be finished and added to the game (as free DLC hopefully…)

Did you use any other files from the data dumps when making the renders?

Not really, outside the virus trophies. There wasn’t much of the Dr.Mario Stage besides that one boss picture of the viruses. so a lot of it was really free to interpretation. ( which was lots of fun to work with).

What role did you envision for the Virus characters?

I had a hard time figuring how they would work, I just imagined that the players could kill the viruses by attacking them and get the stock for defeating them.. making time matches a whole different fight.

What steps did you take to ensure that these renders looked as credible as possible?

I wanted to make sure the pictures looked as real as they could before I took photos of them with a camera. I also tried to make the camera photos look as clean as I could (it’s 2015 camera’s on phones don’t suck anymore, so I used my mobile phone.)

I noticed there were a couple of unused screenshots. Did you work together to pick the most convincing ones?

Yes. We shared the screenshots on Skype, and if there was something that didn’t look legit, we pointed it out.

A lot of those where test images. In fact the Link and Mario picture was a photo made really early into development and not as finished as other pictures (Luckily most people passed it off as a FD version).

One of my favorite little details is the text on the clipboard. It corresponds to what’s on the screen. The omega version has “00” “Virus” for example. Did you work on fleshing out those details?

No, that actually was Nibroc’s idea.

I changed some of the numbers in stage every time. I actually played Dr.Mario to base the scores and numbers

So, how long did you guys spend on making these renders?

We started making the leaks on July the 22nd. We actually started making a fake character-leak, but it ended up looking pretty unconvincing, so we dropped it. We wanted to leak even more than just the Dr. Mario-stage. I thought about New Pork City for example. We dropped it too.

At least from July 26th to the 29th, I thought I had a lot more time to work on it but had to rush it at the end.

Are you inspired by the Smashified series?

I’d say yes. I was around when Omni revealed that Rayman was fake. At first, I was a bit salty, but he was such a likeable person, I quickly began to enjoy his videos. Maybe some other people would feel the same about us? I don’t know.

I have been inspired by their stuff before, but this particular project wasn’t really inspired by him. A lot of people were comparing to “Rayman rumor” he made, but I personally thought it was nothing like it (DLC character,Third Party,Video Character Select, = DLC stage,Chracter without a stage,Data Already Relating To Stage,Fake-In game Screenshots). Of course they are similar in the fact that their both fake XD

Have you guys tried contacting Artsy Omni?

No, we don’t want to bother him (at least that’s how I feel). He recently acknowledged Nibroc in a tweet though.

What made you guys wait until the update was released to reveal that it was a fake?

We didn’t wait for the update at all actually. We were mid-process when the update was revealed. We needed to hurry it out because of that. That’s why we only did one stage.It was a coincidence.

I was talking about coming forward.

Well, we wanted to keep the discussions about it going. We enjoyed seeing all the reactions and opinions about it. It wouldn’t have made such an impact if we revealed it too early.

The plan was set for after the DLC to come out, so people learn it’s fake without us having to say anything, not really sure why we would have came out sooner…

Were you surprised with the reactions, pre-coming forward?

Yes, I was surprised. I don’t know about Nibroc, but I thought it would get debunked pretty fast. I must have missed some small details or something. But I didn’t. Nibroc missed the details with the moving viruses, but it was so minor that it didn’t harm the leak at all.

XD I wasn’t really surprised as I knew it was very believable looking so I was actually very happy when everyone started believing it. I stayed up all night looking at tweets and threads talking about it. it’s always such a high when I do a fake rumor. Did I mention this isn’t my first time?

Nibroc: what other ones are you responsible for?

Mario and Fludd In Splatoon Amiibo Compatibility

Original Classic Mode 64

and uh a few other not so huge ones ( that I don’t feel like admitted too atm)

I remember both of those.

I was pretty upset with original Classic mode, I worked really hard on it.. Each render was 3325×3325 (insane size). and I did around 15 renders for it. But not that many people really believe it.

Nibroc: The Mario Fludd one was around a lot longer than the Original Classic Mode 64.

Personally I didn’t think that one was too good to begin with (Splatoon Mario).

I don’t know why I keep making fake rumors, it’s like a drug XD.

My normal art blog gets so boring.

I get maybe 15 or so comments and their mostly just stuff like “Nice” “Looks good”. I work hard on my stuff so it’s disappointing really. but when I do this stuff, it blows up and it’s everywhere. It’s also a really good test of skill

gameonion: vaanrose and I actually made a post on reddit with a couple of issues, but it was largely ignored.

Yeah, I saw the angry responses.

gameonion: I really do think selecting the Dr. Mario stage was a brilliant choice. A lot of people said, “Why would anyone fake that stage?”

Exactly, haha. It was an oddball choice.

How was the reaction, post-coming forward? It seems according to gameonion’s reddit post, that you’ve said it was largely negative.

There were some angry responses, some sad responses and some amazed responses. I really feel sorry for the negative and sad-ones. I don’t want to be a crusher of dreams.

I’d say I feel it was mostly negative and people upset….. However, I’d say it was worth it. XD

I had a lot of fun making it and seeing how people reacted to it first glance.

Also, I was able to fool people with this much better than say any of my older fake rumors, a lot of people really convinced it was 100% real, that was pretty cool to me.

((I think some guy said he was gonna shove a pill up my a**, best angry comment i’ve gotten yet))

Will you create a fake leak again?

No, at least not in the near future.

Let’s just say, I’m always cooking.

Do you have any suggestions for the community for dealing with fake leaks?

Don’t get salty about leaks being fake, don’t start fights over leaks. Just try to debunk them while not being aggressive against others.

Nope, good luck.

Any final comments?

I couldn’t have done any of this without gameonion, he was the perfect partner in crime. However he’s out of the game now, and not planning to assist with any more fake rumors.

But….I’m not done, so keep an eye out for me next time XD