Peach's Castle (tech demo)

Peach's Castle is a Tech Demo for Nintendo GameCube. In 2001 Nintendo sent various developers an interactive Tech Demo in order to show them the graphical capabilities of their new console as part of the Nintendo GameCube Software Developement Kit.

In this demo, the player controls a red arrow that can go through various places in Princess Peach's Castle from Super Mario 64. In different rooms it shows different graphical effects, which includes the following: large textures, bumps and shadows, antialiasing, local lighting, projection textures, environment mapping, and maximum polygons.

Entrance
A hub area with 6 doors, 5 of which lead to other rooms. This room features a lot of animations.

Dome
In this room, the walls and ceiling have various flowers on it as well as mountain themed background. The floor has a Star with flower in the background, which is made of small 3-star texture.

Spiral Staircase
Spiral Staircase is a dark place with a spiral starcase in the center. As the red arrow steps on it, it begins to jump slowly to the bottom where the door to Hargar is.

Hangar
As the name implies, this is an in-door hangar with an airplane. In this room the player can find a metal Warp Pipe which leads to the Cave.

Cave
In the Cave the player will appear on a wooden bridge which leads to a Goomba statue. The cave has some bulbs and colorful projector lights to light the path. Entering the green Warp Pipe will lead the player back to the Entrance.

Cinema Theater
Cinema Theater shows a short looping video with Nintendo GameCubes of various colors.

Metal Mario
In this room, the player will see a Metal Mario statue which reflects the light.

How Many Coins?
How Many Coins? is a white colored room with Question Block at the center. Pressing while underneath will release a large amout of coins. To exit the room the player needs to press and to control camera the player should press  instead.

Camera control mode
By pressing the player can control the camera's angle and position. To move it the player should move the and  to control the angle.

Wireframe mode
Wireframe is a visual presentation of a three dimensional object using narrow green lines that specify its each edge. It can be enabled by pressing. The Wireframe mode also makes the GameCube a bit slower than without it (this can be seen on the Lag meter), this is most notable in How Many Coins? room.

Pause menu
On the Pause menu the player can set Mip mapping, Rendering, Debug information display, Lag meter display, Gamma correction, an option to enable or disable the background music, and "SE". It can be accessed by pressing. The players are also able to enter the Main Menu, where they are able to choose the following modes: Normal Demo (default, the player is able to control the red arrow to explore the castle), Auto Demo (the camera is controlled automaticly and the rooms are changing as some time passes), Normal Demo - stage select (same as Normal Demo, but the players are able to choose the area they want to go), Auto Demo - stage select (a combination of Auto Demo and Normal Demo - stage select: the players are able to choose the area they want to go).

Doors
While the next room is loading, instead of the loading screen, the arrow is "knocking" the door until it loads. It can be seen that the lighting is added when the arrow stops.

Controls

 * - Jump (How Many Coins? only)
 * - Enter Camera control mode, exit room (How Many Coins? only).
 * - Enter Camera control mode (How Many Coins? only).
 * - Enter Wireframe mode.
 * - Shifts camera a bit and goes back. Has no use and probably a bug.
 * - Enter Pause menu.
 * - Move the arrow, move the camera (not vertically).
 * - Rotate the camera (in Camera control mode it's less limited).

Trivia

 * The castle is referred in the game to as Peach Castel (castel is an old French word for castle).