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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In Super Mario 64, whenever Mario touches lava, he loses 3 units of health. However, this is more complex behind the scenes than it appears to the viewer. Instead of losing them all at once, the game sets a timer during which Mario loses a specific fraction of a health unit on each frame, which is merely rounded to the nearest full unit for display on the meter.
Normally, this has little relevance for gameplay, but there are extreme scenarios in which the mechanics become more apparent. In the Bowser in the Fire Sea course, it is possible for Mario to become trapped underneath a moving platform. This normally kills him, but it is possible for him to clip out while being burned, before the abovementioned timer has the chance to tick his health all the way down to zero.
As such, Mario becomes a “dead man walking” for about a second, where he can still move around normally despite the timer being set for his death and rapidly ticking down; an effect simply not possible in other Mario games where the damage from the environment is immediate instead of timer-based.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: onethreefour_
The files of Super Mario Sunshine contain unused Pianta colorations, some of which were seen in pre-release materials for the game.
Top row: neon green and silver Piantas.
Bottom row: interestingly, black Piantas have also been seen in pre-release footage, but only in the shade. Seeing the unused color in-game reveals that it is actually a special color that appears black only in the shade, and is actually a dark teal.
On the left is one of these Piantas in the light, while on the right a Pianta with the same color in the shade. Note that shade does not affect any other NPCs as dramatically as these Piantas.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Inkstar
In the original GameCube version of Luigi’s Mansion, the portrait ghosts have three different ranks: bronze, silver and gold, based on factors like how much damage Luigi is able to deal to the ghost without getting interrupted.
However, in the Nintendo 3DS version, an additional, even more difficult to achieve platinum rank was added. Every rank’s painting is more elaborate than the last, going from uncolored for bronze, to colored on a simple background for silver, a full background for gold, and a dynamic pose for platinum.
Above are all graphics for all paintings, extracted from the game, presented in order (please zoom in to view details).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
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