A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
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Donkey Kong Land 3 was released for the regular Game Boy in 1997 worldwide; however, a special Game Boy Color version was released exclusively in Japan in 2000.
Top: the commercial for this version promoted it by stating that it contained two special cards for the (also Japan-exclusive) Donkey Kong Country trading game, being holographic Kiddy Kong cards. In the commercial, Donkey Kong looks at the cards and is moved to tears over their beauty.
Bottom: how the cards actually look, for comparison. This is what Donkey Kong is crying over.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: 83Chrisaaron
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, all Piranha Plant variants have an unused behavior whereby if a ceiling is present in a battle, they will have a 50% chance to move to the ceiling (or back to the ground if they were already on the ceiling) after an attack.
What is notable about this behavior is that the only reason it is unused is because Piranha Plants simply never appear in battles with ceilings in the finished game. The functionality is always active, checks for the ceiling on every turn, and simply always fails because there is never a ceiling to begin with.
If the game is modified to put a ceiling into such a battle, it is revealed that the functionality works perfectly. The same functionality also exists in the Nintendo Switch remake, where it is equally unused for the same reason.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: jdaster64
Concept art of King Koopa, from the production of a 1989 World of Nintendo merchandise commercial. The style resembles a typical Disney style due to being drawn by Disney artist Dale Baer, who worked as an animator on such films as Robin Hood and The Lion King, among many others.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: max6464646464
In the penguin race down the slide in Cool, Cool Mountain in Super Mario 64, the penguin is programmed to not award Mario the star if Mario wins after doing one of two things: either taking the secret shortcut behind the fake wall, or skip part of the slide by falling down from a higher point to a lower point without sliding all the way.
To determine if Mario has skipped part of the slide, the game very simply looks at the duration of his jumps. It assumes that a regular jump that keeps Mario on the slide would be brief, while jumps lasting longer than about a second before touching the ground mean that Mario tried to skip part of the slide, and trigger the cheat detection.
However, due to an oversight, the cheat detection ends when the penguin finishes the race, not when Mario himself finishes. As such, if the player simply plays around while waiting for the penguin to arrive and accidentally performs a high enough wall jump, the cheat detection will trigger due to the duration of the jump and label Mario a cheater despite the fact that he already finished at that point.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: lc_ap
In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the music that plays during the Wonder Effect in the “Cosmic Hoppos” level is a reference to an obscure track from Super Mario Galaxy 2, “Hint TV”. Hint TV plays in that game when Mario watches the hint movies on the green TV screens scattered around the levels, and would have never been heard by the percentage of the players who simply do not make use of any in-game help systems.
In this post, the Cosmic Hoppos music plays until 22 seconds in, whereupon the Hint TV music plays.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SMG2/SMBW
In version 1.1.0 and earlier of Super Mario Odyssey (patched in all subsequent versions), having Cappy hit Talkatoo directly after Mario finishes talking to him would result in a variety of glitched behaviors.
One of the most notable effects of the glitch is that if Mario talks to an NPC in this state, he will gain the ability to conserve all of his momentum indefinitely.
In the footage, a setup is achieved in which Mario obtains Rocket Flowers in this state. This causes him to slide off the edge of the Mushroom Kingdom at an extreme speed and continue preserving that speed even after the flowers run out, enabling him to reach the skybox surrounding the kingdom.
As the death plane that would normally kill Mario for going this far down does not extend to the edge of the skybox horizontally, Mario has effectively bypassed the death plane and will continue sliding into the void indefinitely. Hypothetically, if the game is left to run for thousands of years in this state, it will eventually crash due to Mario reaching the limit of the coordinate system.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: kehzou
Top: in the manual for Super Mario World, Thwomps are described as being “stone ghosts” instead of simply living stone beings as one might expect from their appearance.
Bottom: in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Prof. E. Gadd - who specializes in ghost research - is found on Thwomp Volcano, studying Thwomps.
While the alleged ghostly nature of Thwomps is not an avenue further pursued in any other official descriptions of them, the fact that E. Gadd is studying them despite normally specializing in ghosts is either an extremely deep reference on part of the writers, or a remarkably serendipitous coincidence.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: ThePipePlaza
Artwork of Mario stomping a Koopa Troopa and a Goomba, potentially drawn by Shigeru Miyamoto.
It originates from an official 1993 Japanese guide for Super Mario All-Stars that states that some drawings in it are by Miyamoto, but frustratingly leaves out any specifics about which ones they are. This Mario appears very similar to how he usually draws Mario, so it has a high probability of being one of those drawings.
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Top: one of the backgrounds used many times with different palettes in Super Mario World are these abstract, highly geometric mountains.
Middle: dataminer and 3D modeler Peardian has reconstructed the entire landscape in 3D to see whether it is physically possible and how it would look at other angles.
Bottom: the mountains as seen from the side. These create the exact structure of the original Super Mario World background when viewed from the front in orthographic projection.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source