Top: the “Funky’s Rentals” minigame exclusive to the Game Boy Advance version of Donkey Kong Country 3. Note how Dixie Kong races a boat against enemies in a winding river, and can shoot projectiles from the front of the boat.
Bottom: this is actually an extremely elaborate reference to one of Rare’s older titles, the 1989 NES game Cobra Triangle. Not only is one stage of the minigame a reference to this specific part of the game, but other stages also use other mechanics from it, such as defusing mines. This is also confirmed by the minigame maps being called “Cobra Track” internally.
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In Super Mario Sunshine, Klambers are yellow bug enemies that normally hurt Mario if he touches them, as seen in the beginning of the footage.
However, entering a manhole and jumping in such a way that Mario hits his head on the ceiling of the sewer will grant Mario inexplicable Klamber-defeating powers, so that if he touches the enemy after this, it will die instead.
This is not the only way entering a sewer permanently changes Mario’s interactions with the environment: as pointed out in an earlier post, entering a sewer also makes him constantly kick durians with full force, and prevents him from kicking them gently. The reasons for this and the extent of the effects are yet to be fully understood.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: GamesDoneQuick
In WarioWare Gold, every microgame host has a special voice clip for when the player fails a microgame by falling for a trick, such as performing a normally expected input when the microgame is surprisingly not requesting an input.
An example that can be seen in the game is the third level of the Gold Digger microgame, where the nose has a chance to be covered in piercings, causing the microgame to be lost if the player tries to pick it. Not every host has microgames that ever employ tricks at all, so some of these files are unused.
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In Yoshi’s Island, the Raphael the Raven boss battle uses the Super FX chip to rotate the battlefield. On an emulator or later official rereleases of the game that support a 1:1 perfect pixel ratio, the game is displayed in an 8:7 aspect ratio, whereby the moon in the middle is perfectly circular.
However, when playing the SNES release on original hardware, the output is stretched to a 4:3 aspect ratio. This causes the moon to become stretched horizontally in relation to the screen, however, as the screen keeps rotating, the moon keeps being stretched along a different axis in relation to the scene.
The above animation stabilizes footage of the battle to get rid of the screen rotation, making the different deformations of the moon readily apparent. Note that every element of the screen is deformed in some way due to the rotation; the moon is merely the most visible.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Masterjun3
Unique stylized/simplified “pseudo-3D” illustrations of the Donut Plains world from Super Mario World, seen in a 1990 issue of the Japanese Famitsu magazine.
Row 1: Donut Plains 1, Donut Plains 2
Row 2: Donut Ghost House, Donut Secret House
Row 3: Donut Plains 3, Donut Plains 4
Row 4: Donut Secret 1, Donut Secret 2
Row 5: Morton’s Castle
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: Famitsu (Japan), Issue 114, 1990
Under very specific and highly unfortunate circumstances in Super Mario All-Stars, Mario can die during the cutscene of rescuing Peach after defeating Bowser in World 8-4 of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.
The footage shows hitboxes of objects to visualize what happened. If Mario defeats Bowser while his hammers are being thrown, the hitboxes of the hammers freeze in place while the actual sprites unload. Normally, this would be irrelevant as everything after this is a cutscene and as such should not use hitboxes at all.
However, the game dispenses a Super Mushroom that falls from the top of the screen if Mario defeats Bowser as Small Mario (to allow Mario to be roughly the same size as Peach when she kisses him and prevent her from having to bend down). For this, the game actually turns Mario’s hitbox back on during the cutscene so that he can collect the mushroom. If one of the hammers happened to be in the precise position on screen where Mario stops to wait for the mushroom, he will be killed by its hitbox.
In practice, this scenario is exceedingly rare, but has been reported happening organically to some players over the years.
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Officially licensed 1999 Donkey Kong 64 T-shirt with illustrations created by slightly modifying official artwork and in-game renders. Note how Lanky is using an in-game render of him standing, but turned sideways, and how Donkey Kong is using official artwork with one arm edited to be turned 180°.
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The way Mario flashes under the influence of the Super Star in Super Mario Bros. 3 is dependent on his current power-up state and the palette of the environment he is in.
Above is a full diagram of every single color he can flash during gameplay (please zoom in to view details).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: Doc von Schmeltwick