“@ChrisPatstone Hey, this was something I was actually slowly working on restoring before this post! Given that, here's what I have finished so far. Quite a few of the Mario trophies were indeed used as promotional materials during the N64 era.”
twitter.com
These are pretty good, better than the one on the Models Resource. I really like how they even replicated the disjointed thumb these N64 models have.
However I need to see the topology to be 100% sold on this, and the hat insignia texture needs work (there seems to be a red outline?) while body needs to be more even and sphere-like (the fan work has the body looking a little vertically long) and the straps need to be more parallel on the chest. Stache is also a bit big, at least from those angles. Sideburns are also closer to modern Mario's; retro Mario has a much thinner set with more pronounced tapering at the base of the sideburn. Mario's eyes might need to be a tad smaller. Nose seems fine? The mouth *might* need some tweaking but can't say 100% where. Ears, seem okay. Luigi's sideburns also need to be thinner. I also need to see the back (
Nintendo helpfully provides a back reference). Luigi overall still needs some work; his overall buttons are still circular, not stretched, and his body just seems a bit off. Luigi's stache also has a gentle curve compared to the straight edge in the fan model. Luigi's head also isn't as pointy. I'd also tweak the overall colors but the renders below don't give me a very accurate idea yet so I can't specify.
Comparison references (to be fair I notice Luigi varies in those renders between Mario Party 3 and the sports ones; note the iris thickness, leg width, stache thickness, even overall button proportions)
If you're going "wow LGM picky with details", yeah, I'm kinda a trained artist. You start noticing details and stuff after working with references. I mean people do think my drawings can get close to the original 3D Mario. Not perfect, just pretty close.
Maybe I'm not being fair but those small tweaks will be the difference between great and marvelous.