Uhh Kirby, you okay there?
That looks like the alpha map or transparency isn't mapped correctly, must be something to do with UV Mapping because it looks off...
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Now that the silhouttes are now rendered properly in that particular course in Mario 3D World, I wonder if some objects still have their bottom-side shadows appear as if it's on an upper layer.
Also, I noticed in 1.5.4, Bowser's and those black Piranha Plant's fireballs caused major slowdowns. The first part of the final course where it was raining fireballs felt like the circus switch stage. And the second fight where you chase Bowser in his car, the lava towers had weird square-shaped particle effects. These slowdowns weren't present in 1.5.3.
I'm noticing a lot of 'square' like particle effects as a lot of people are reporting them.
In my observation, Exzap probably changed something with alpha transparency because I am noticing what the game development industry calls 'opacity maps' which Nintendo abuses like crazy either incorrectly being used or mapped.
The square shaped particle effect is nothing but a sprite texture mapped to a two sided polygon representing a square.
Again, Exzap may be changing how opacity / alpha is done or rendered.
In some of the videos of Fatal Frame 5, I noticed a lot of 'black' and 'white' artifacts which likely represent opacity maps.
Keep in mind the main character in Fatal Frame 5 has an outfit which uses a lot of opacity maps, plus her hair and so on.
This leads me to believe Exzap is working on opacity maps, and trust me when I say opacity maps are 'expensive' to render.
As an artist myself, I deal with a lot of transparency and opacity settings to make convincing objects and clothes... nothing new.