Top: the empty Banana Hoard room near DK’s treehouse in Donkey Kong 64 is an area that exists purely for lore reasons (to show that his bananas were stolen) and is out of the way compared to all of the gameplay-relevant locations in that area, meaning that it is completely optional to ever see and some players would never visit it at all.
Bottom: despite this, the developers were so dedicated to providing an enjoyable experience visiting the area that they implemented a special “Funny Banana Floor” collision type (highlighted in blue) just for this room, whereby Donkey Kong would slip slightly whenever he touches a banana peel, accompanied by a funny noise.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: tjballaam
In Wario World, Wario sings a deliberately annoying chant on the pause screen. However, should the player stay on the pause screen for 50 minutes without closing it, Wario will say “Sorry” and stop chanting (on that instance of the pause screen; he will start again if it is closed and reopened).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: pantsudesu
In Super Mario 3D World, the level Shadow-Play Alley features a segment where the player characters enters a door and after emerging from the other end, only the character’s shadow is visible.
By modifying the game to move the view, we can see where the actual character is during this: directly behind the camera, with the shadows simply being programmed to be cast horizontally onto the wall in front of the camera, past the camera itself.
While this may seem like the most logical way of implementing this effect, many games in similar scenarios program the characters to be invisible, or the shadows to be cast from within the wall, so that this solution becomes remarkable in its simplicity by comparison.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: guinxu
Collection of concept art of various headgear for Mario, labeled “Trial and Error”, found in the 2008 Nintendo company brochure. Interestingly, many of these foreshadow similar hats actually being available for Mario to wear in Super Mario Odyssey, 9 years later.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: gamescanner
Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains an unused music track that is notably in a much earlier state of production than the rest of the soundtrack, using generic MIDI instruments (which would presumably later either be swapped out for more professional samples or the track would be orchestrated outright).
This track has been known since the game’s release, as many early unofficial soundtracks have included it under different names despite it not being used in-game (since the soundtracks obtained the files through datamining, without having in-game context for it). However, only much later was it discovered that this track also includes a Yoshi drum version, which is the one playing in this post.
The preview image used for this post is a piece of concept art for Blimp Yoshi for this game.
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It’s another Supper Mario Broth livestream for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door! Join me at the Supper Mario Broth Twitch channel as I break apart Chapters 5 and 6!
Mario Kart DS contains an unused, extremely simplistic model of a Shy Guy in its files, which was likely used for testing the DS Download Play feature (which requires most players to play as Shy Guys) while minimizing the polygon count of these players.
The footage shows what the model would have looked like if it was left in the finished game as the final version of the Shy Guy model.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: ktrmambiance1627
A compilation of highlights from my Super Mario 64 analysis livestreams is available on the Supper Mario Broth YouTube channel.
The image shows just some of the topics covered in the video!