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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The Game & Watch games, as indicated by their name, featured not just the game itself, but also a clock/watch functionality that included an alarm. In many of the games, the alarm was not merely shown by a symbol on the display, but was actually represented by a dedicated character, often ringing a bell. Here are the unique alarm characters from Mario-related Game & Watch games.
Top left: Alarm Bowser in the 1986 Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch (not to be confused with the unrelated 2020 “Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.”) Interestingly, the alarm functionality is the only capacity in which Bowser appears; the only actual enemies in the game are a Lakitu and Bullet Bills.
Top middle: Alarm Koopa Troopa (called “Bell Turtle” in the manual) from Mario the Juggler.
Top right: Alarm Man from Donkey Kong Hockey.
Bottom left: Alarm Monkey from Mario’s Bombs Away.
Bottom middle: Mini Donkey Kong from the Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong. Interestingly, this character is not Donkey Kong Jr., and in fact predates him by a few months.
Bottom right: Alarm Cat from Greenhouse (related to Mario through the main character being Stanley the Bugman, who would later star in Donkey Kong 3).
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In Super Mario Galaxy, Boos briefly turn transparent whenever Mario performs a Spin near them, which is accomplished by distorting the image on the screen. Since there always is an environment around the Boos in-game, it is impossible to see what the transparency effect would look like in isolation, without having an image to distort.
Viewing the transparent Boo model in a model viewer reveals that in the absence of an environment to display, the Boo assumes a stylish monochromatic gradient instead.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: info
Officially licensed 1995 Donkey Kong Country pog slammers from Japan. Note the Enguarde one (bottom right corner) using a unique layout for the name that is supposed to be read from the top right to the bottom left, and appears to read “Edraugne” if read from the left.
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Top: in Paper Mario: Color Splash, the Lemon Thing damages enemies when used in battle, and inflicts the blindness status upon them, likely due to having lemon juice squirted into their eyes.
Bottom: interestingly, Iggy Koopa has an immunity to the blindness afflicted by the lemons, which one might surmise to be due to wearing glasses and thus having his eyes protected. However, other enemies and bosses who wear glasses or shades are not immune to the effect of the lemons.
This suggests one of several scenarios:
1. Every enemy with covered eyes was supposed to be immune and only Iggy’s immunity was implemented
2. None of them were supposed to be immune and Iggy’s immunity is a bizarre, yet fitting, oversight
3. This is intentional, and Iggy’s glasses are just better than everyone else’s.
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Unused rainbow goop functionality found in the files of Super Mario Sunshine.
It is possible that this was removed due to the designers believing it could cause eye strain if the player was forced to continuously look at large fields of color-changing goop for too long.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: sunn0
Unused DJ track found in the files of Paper Mario: The Origami King. It resembles the style of “Thrills at Night” from the finished game, but the internal filename suggests it would have played during the “Shy Guys Finish Last” minigame in Shangri-Spa.
Since the songs that play in that minigame are part of a quiz where their lyrics must be correctly completed, this implies that this song could also have been intended to have lyrics, though what they would have been is unknown. Also, since the songs there are quizzing the player on songs heard previously, it is likely the track would have also played elsewhere before the minigame - possibly the Temple of Shrooms - but that version (if it ever existed) was removed from the files.
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Left: in the prototype version of Yoshi’s Island, Prince Froggy’s Fort has a bizarre stone idol that is used as a decoration. Nothing even remotely similar appears in the finished game.
Right: curiously, the tileset for Prince Froggy’s Fort in the finished game contains an unused, similarly bizarre stone face, but in a different style. It is likely that the original graphic was changed to this one before it was decided that it did not fit the style of the level and removed entirely.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: potatoTeto
In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, obtaining the White Chuckola Fruit in Chucklehuck Woods as Mario while returning control to Luigi on the same frame will cause Luigi to become a second Mario.
The footage shows the two Marios interacting with each other, finishing with the reveal that one of them was Luigi all along.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: MTP
In Super Mario Advance 4, the World-e that features the e-Reader levels (accessible by default in the Wii U Virtual Console or Nintendo Switch versions) contains the e-Coin Castle, which showcases the e-Coins the player has collected.
In the e-Coin Castle, the Mario brother that the player is not currently playing as (Luigi in the footage) automatically follows the player (Mario in the footage) around. Interestingly, despite being an NPC, it is actually possible to kill the other brother using a glitch.
If Left and Right are pressed simultaneously (possible on an emulator or using third-party controllers), Mario is able to slide around at running speed, which makes Luigi unable to keep up as regular running is disabled in the castle. Since Luigi is normally supposed to stay on screen at all times, there is no failsafe for him going off screen, which actually results in him dying as though he went offscreen in an autoscrolling segment.
As such, Mario is able to kill Luigi just by running in a “no running” zone for 1 second.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: El_RuidoN