Stage

A stage or scene refers to one contiguous area in space in the game. On a technical level, a stage generally refers to a file containing a collection of objects and models that should exist within the same contiguous space, while a scene refers to the space containing the objects after they are loaded into memory. However, in most cases, the terms are used interchangeably.

Explanation

Although each level generally takes place within its own stage, there are a handful of stages that contain two or more separate areas that give the illusion of being disjointed. This illusion is generally maintained by keeping the levels very far away from each other, and unloading the objects in one level if they would otherwise be visible from the other level. These examples are as follows:

• The main area of the Metro Kingdom and the New Donk City Hall Auditorium sub-world
• The main area of the Luncheon Kingdom and the Cascading Magma sub-world
• Shiveria Town in the Snow Kingdom and each of the four rooms containing story moons
• The entrance area to the Underground Power Plant in the Metro Kingdom and the corresponding platforming room

In some cases, this practice makes it possible to travel from one such level to another in the same stage using glitches such as the suckage glitch, rather than going through the intended loading zone or pipe.

Properties

Moving Mario between levels within the same stage is much faster than loading a completely new stage. This is immediately obvious when entering another level within the same stage, since the loading time will be almost instantaneous.

Changes to an area that have scene-level persistence will not be reverted when the player moves between levels in the same stage.

It is thought that the reason these levels are stored in the same stage is to allow cutscenes to be played across different levels without the need to load a new stage. For example:

• Obtaining a story moon from a musician in the Metro Kingdom will transfer Mario to the interior of the New Donk City Hall Auditorium. Storing the auditorium's interior in the same stage as the overworld removes the loading time from this transfer.
• After collecting the Climb Up the Cascading Magma story moon in the Luncheon Kingdom, the game plays a cutscene that takes place in the kingdom's overworld. If the overworld was stored in a separate stage, the game would need to switch between these stage to play the cutscene, which would introduce two loading periods.
• After collecting a story moon from one of the four rooms branching out from Shiveria Town, the game plays a cutscene that takes place in the main Shiveria Town room. If the levels were stored in separate stages, the game would need to switch between them to play the cutscene.
• The reasoning for the two rooms of the Underground Power Plant being in the same stage is not as clear, but it may be to prevent players from accidentally undoing their progress killing the Big Poison Piranha Plants at the end by going back through the pipe.