cobble_stone (The Texture of Your Childhood)

This is cobble_stone. Doesn't seem that interesting, does it? It is just a bunch of bricks after all. Well, what if you were told these bricks have been lurking in the shadows of your life and you never knew it. This page is here to expose to you just how often this seemingly innocuous set of bricks appears throughout many of your favorite games.

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Mario Kart 64

Being that this wiki is Mario-focused, let's start with some Mario games. This promotional render will be the most in-your-face example on this page, so it's a good one to start with.

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Super Mario 64 (Beta)

Okay, so this didn't actually make it into the final game; it's only present in builds from Super Mario 64's unveiling at Shoshinkai 1995. The level it appears in wasn't even playable at Shoshinkai, but can be seen in B-roll footage used for coverage of the event. Regardless of its accessibility though, it being a cobble_stone sighting is enough to make it worth noting.

Now with both Mario games out of the way, it's time to go deeper.

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Killer Instinct

We'll start its journey with Rareware here. You're going to be seeing their games on this page a lot.

Shows up on the edges of the floor here...

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Killer Instinct Gold

...and appears on the ground there.

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Mortal Kombat 3

While we're on the subject of fighting games, here it is in Mortal Kombat 3's Graveyard stage.

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

Okay, now back to Rareware games. Looks like our good friend Donkey Kong happens to be very familiar with these bricks.

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Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble

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Donkey Kong 64

This game is filled with cobble_stone, so much so that if we showed you every appearance of it, this page would be dragged out way too long. (...and it's already quite a long page!)

Training Area

Aztec Temple

This is actually one of the more subtle examples in this game, perhaps on this entire page, but look closely at the pattern here and you will see it.

Minecart Mayhem

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Conker's Bad Fur Day

Looks like DK isn't Rareware's only platformer mascot to recognize these bricks.

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Twelve Tales: Conker 64

It also shows up in Twelve Tales, the scrapped family-friendly version of what would become Bad Fur Day.

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StarFox Adventures

This phenomenon isn't just restricted to the Nintendo 64, you know! Here you can see cobble_stone sneak its way into the sixth generation of consoles.

(You know, with all of these Rareware games appearing, you might be able to guess which series this is leading up to...)

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Turok

That's right, Turok! ...wait, was that not what you were expecting?

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Banjo-Kazooie

This game uses these bricks even more than Donkey Kong 64 does. Seriously, they're everywhere here, even greeting you at the start of the game inside Banjo's house!

Beta

In beta builds of Banjo-Kazooie, we can see that even Spiral Mountain was going to be made of cobble_stone!

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Banjo Tooie

Naturally, since Banjo-Kazooie uses cobble_stone, so too does its sequel, Banjo-Tooie. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it appears in the same locations of Banjo's house as in the first Banjo game.

This is the end of its currently-known journey with Rareware, though it's not the end of its journey in other games.

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Medievil

Yep, PlayStation games love it too! cobble_stone appears in the opening cutscene, and possibly even elsewhere in the game too.

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Final Fantasy VII

We need to investigate more with this game, but we're pretty certain it appears in a few backgrounds. This is the final game we know to feature cobble_stone in it currently.

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Drunter und Drüber (Under and Over)

Wait, this isn't a game? cobble_stone has gone beyond the medium of video games, going so far as to appear in board games too! This is the 1994 reissue of Drunter und Drüber, a board game published by German company Hans im Glück and 1991's "Spiel des Jahres" (Game of the Year) winner. It's everywhere.

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So now that you're just as big a fan of cobble_stone as we are, what exactly is cobble_stone?

We believe it's a stock texture that came bundled with Softimage programs on Silicon Graphics machines (PowerAnimator). It was first discovered on this page of the Autodesk website. Despite how popular this texture is in video games (and apparently board games too), we can't seem to find it anywhere online! Trust us, we've tried and yet we still don't know the source to this image... or so we thought.

UPDATE: The search for cobble_stone concludes.

On February 11, 2021 it was brought to the attention of the Render96 team that Fluvian of 64History had found the origin of cobble_stone. It originated as a texture included in Alias/3 from 1993, found inside a folder titled "construction_materials."

Alias/3 was a high-end software suite developed by Alias Research, later rebranded as Alias Systems Corporation following Silicon Graphics' acquisition of Alias in 1995. The software was designed primarily for producing 3D graphics on Silicon Graphics workstations. This would explain cobble_stone's appearances in games known to use such hardware, from Super Mario 64's non-playable "B-roll build" at Shoshinkai 1995 to the many titles developed by Rareware throughout the 1990s following Donkey Kong Country.

The Alias/3 software also included textures besides cobble_stone to be identified in other media, from Super Mario 64 promotional renders to Windows 95's iconic 3D Maze screensaver and potentially many more to come. The search for cobble_stone may have finally concluded, but in its place, many new searches have only just begun.