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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Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon contains an unused cutscene of Luigi unlocking the front door of the Treacherous Mansion where he completely misses the keyhole with his key due to not being aligned with the door correctly. Note the keyhole coming into view behind Luigi’s head as he steps back.
While this is of course simply a consequence of the cutscene being unfinished and unused, it also seems somewhat appropriate for the haunted setting of the game for a door to be illusory and needing to be unlocked by putting the key somewhere that is not the keyhole.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: OrangeLuigi
It is well-known that Il Piantissimo from Super Mario Sunshine is secretly a reference to the Running Man from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which can be seen in-game by standing next to him and angling the camera to look up into his mask.
However, comparing the two directly reveals some differences as well. In addition to having a goatee and ponytail, Il Piantissimo also has darker skin and a different facial structure from the Running Man, including a much more defined chin.
Whether these differences are merely stylistic and this is in fact the same character in two different universes, or whether Il Piantissimo is unrelated to the Running Man and merely looks like him as an homage, has never been stated by the developers.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: 1, 2
In Super Mario World, the Sunken Ghost Ship features an area where Boos keep appearing and disappearing in different spots in the screen.
Interestingly, the game does not have the capacity to create hitboxes for every single Boo that appears during this. Instead, whenever the Boos become visible, hitboxes are assigned only to the Boos that were on screen at that exact moment, and not to any of the others.
As such, if the player is aware of it, this limitation can be exploited. The player needs to merely memorize where the edge of the screen was at the moment the Boos fade in, and can then safely swim through any Boos that were further right from that point.
Another trick is to use the L button to scroll the screen to the left, which puts most of the “active” Boos to the left of Mario and allows him to mostly swim though the hitboxless Boos that scroll into view from the right.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: NoisedeGole
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, it is relatively rare for Mario to become Dizzy since the only way it can be inflicted upon him is through stage hazards or an enemy using the Dizzy Dial item. No regular enemy attacks can inflict it.
As such, an easily missable detail of the Dizzy status effect is that in addition to the obvious reduction in the accuracy of Mario’s own attack, it also makes attack items capable of missing, when they usually are guaranteed to always hit all enemies.
The footage shows Mario being Dizzy and using a Fire Flower, which manages to miss three of the Goombas and only hit one of them.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PM:TTYD (NA, GC)
Development files for Yoshi’s Island contain a SNES program (that supported the SNES mouse for input) that the game’s developers used to edit the rotating Super FX world map on the game’s title screen.
The screenshots in the left column show the editor’s window and the ones in the right column show the islands created this way when viewed in the game’s actual engine (the glitched background is an artifact of the editor not being designed for the final version of the game).
It is remarkable that the developers made a dedicated program for creating the maps that would run on the same hardware as the game itself instead of doing it on a PC as is common for the vast majority of game development. It is possible that these kind of tools were ultimately an inspiration for the Super Mario Maker series many years later.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: furious_
In Donkey Kong 64, there is a minor code oversight in the Army Dillo boss battle whereby Army Dillo’s aim is off at the beginning of the fight.
He will only be able to actually aim at Donkey Kong after either he or Donkey Kong move from their starting positions. As such, the optimal way to start the battle is to simply not move at all until his first attack is over, as seen in the footage. Army Dillo will miss all four of his shots, allowing the first hit to him to be done “for free” without any danger in this manner.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: DK64 (NA, N64)
Prototype Nintendo 64 kiosk concepts from internal Nintendo documents, from a point during development when the console was still known as “Ultra 64”.
Of particular interest is the Donkey Kong face on one of screens, which appears to originate as an illustration from a 1995 issue of the British Computer and Video Games magazine.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: DaveBellArt
Top: in Super Mario Sunshine, no Shine Sprite is ever placed directly above or in non-shallow amounts of water, outside of the diving helmet sections in Noki Bay. Note how e.g. here in the Red Coins in the Coral Reef mission of Gelato Beach, the Shine Sprite is specifically placed over the one point of the reef that juts out above the water.
Bottom: modifying the game to place Shine Sprites above water reveals the reason. Mario does not have a swimming celebration animation, so a swimming state interrupts the collection of a Shine Sprite and leaves it impossible to collect. Note how placing a crate underneath the same Shine Sprite does allow it to be collected since Mario lands on dry land instead of swimming. This also explains the diving helmet sections, as those use special “fake water” that Mario hovers in instead of using his actual swimming animation.
It is bizarre that this game has no support for collecting Shine Sprites above or under water given how central water is to its gameplay, and how Super Mario 64 allowed Power Stars to be collected underwater without problems (and even with a special dedicated animation).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: AngryMax
Yoshi’s New Island contains a “bad ending” that is seen if a player finishes at least one level using the Flutter Wings assist item and then does not go back to finish it unassisted before fighting the final boss.
Normally, the Baby Bowser boss battle is followed by adult Bowser “suddenly warping through space and time” to challenge Yoshi. However, if the Flutter Wings were used, the game simply ends after the Baby Bowser battle, the credits are shown as usual, and Bowser rips apart the final image at the end before telling the player to go back and finish all levels without the Flutter Wings.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: jonathandillon2100