A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
- Links
Top: in Donkey Kong Bananza, the elephants in the Tempest Layer are a community of weather forecasters. While at first this appears to be simply a deliberately odd combination, similarly to the zebra ice cream makers or snake sculptors found elsewhere in the game, this may actually be based on a real-world scientific fact about elephants.
Bottom: it was long suspected and finally confirmed in a 2014 study that, using a combination of not yet understood subtle signs in the environment, elephants are able to predict rainfall from 150 miles away and migrate towards it to increase chances of finding food and water. It is theorized that the mechanism of their detection involves their acute hearing and an ability to sense atmospheric pressure changes.
Whether this connection is deliberate or merely a remarkable coincidence is unknown.
Source: altermentality, original study
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Original illustration used for a 1986 officially licensed Super Mario Bros. jigsaw puzzle from Japan.
Source: blacktangent
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Super Mario All-Stars contains a debug mode for Super Mario Bros. 3 in its code, which can be activated either deliberately by setting a single address in memory to a specific value (e.g. via a cheating device) or, curiously, by complete accident simply upon starting the console (as explained in my video here).
Two of the functionalities of the debug mode is the ability to swap between power-ups at the press of a button, and the ability to enter “free movement” mode whereby Mario slides freely around the screen in all directions instead of needing to walk.
If the free movement mode is activated while Mario is in specific animations, and then the power-up is changed during it, his sprite may become jumbled. While normally, the sprite simply changes to other parts of Mario’s sprite sheet, a particularly amusing change occurs when swimming as Frog Mario and then swapping to Fire Mario while in free movement. This will make Mario assume a big “25” graphic alongside bits and pieces of his body.
Source: IgorOliveira66X
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Super Mario World concept art only ever shown once, extremely briefly, during a montage in the September 2025 Nintendo Direct, while the camera was panning across it. Here is the artwork stitched together from all frames showing it, at the highest resolution available from the video.
Source: LadySophie17
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Donkey Kong Land contains a unique glitch that causes Diddy Kong to be unable to throw a barrel for several seconds, making him appear to frantically try to get rid of it while it is stuck to him.
In Tricky Temple, the first level of the Kremlantis world, picking up the barrel before the first Krusha enemy and taking it slightly further without killing any of the enemies on the way will make the game slow down if Diddy Kong attempts to throw the barrel, due to too many entities being on screen. Only when one of the Kremlings leaves the screen will Diddy finally be able to let go of the barrel.
Source: ivanfranco120
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
The original storyboards for the North American 2010 commercial for Super Mario Galaxy 2 contain a piece of Super Mario Bros. fan art from DeviantArt.
Top: the storyboards, recovered from internal files of the ad agency.
Middle: zooming in on the frame with the TV reveals an image of Super Mario Bros. in 3D.
Bottom: this is the 2008 fan art “Nintendo 3D Mario” by DeviantArt user “NES–still-the-best”, which was extremely popular and commonly reposted online at that time.
Source: discovery, original artwork
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
With the recent release of Donkey Kong 64 for Nintendo Switch Online, more players have discovered the Beaver Bother minigame and its infamous reputation for being unfairly difficult. The image in this post presents a method (the “60° Rule”) used by Donkey Kong 64 speedrunners to consistently succeed at this minigame.
The object of Beaver Bother is to play as a Klaptrap crocodile enemy who needs to corral a preset number of Gnawty beaver enemies into a hole before time runs out. Pressing B makes the Klaptrap gnash its teeth and make the Gnawties run away briefly. During this scared state the Gnawties are able to fall into the hole.
However, the Gnawties often appear to run away unpredictably, giving the game its reputation. The image demonstrates how the Gnawty and Klaptrap need to be aligned for the scaring to work:
-drawing an imaginary line tangential to the hole parallel to the direction of the Klaptrap’s travel, the Gnawty and Klaptrap need to be aligned so that they are both on the line that is at a 60° angle to the tangent line.
-once they are aligned like this, and the Gnawty is close enough to the hole, pressing B at that moment will actually scare it away in the correct direction to make it fall into the hole.
Source: 2dos
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Complete 10-page coverage of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon series from “Computer Animation - A Whole New World”, a 1998 book on rendering techniques in 3D animation, featuring unique behind-the-scenes artwork. Please zoom in to read the pages.
Source: dkvine.com user “tylerfunf555”
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings
Players of Super Mario Advance may recall that one of the major changes in that game compared to the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (on which it is mostly based) is the inclusion of two new boss intros for Fryguy and Clawgrip, respectively.
In both cases, the action stops and a cutscene shows four bubbles (identical to Wart’s bubble attack) float up from the bottom of the screen and surround an entity before transforming it into the boss (a mask for Fryguy and a small Sidestepper crab for Clawgrip).
The game actually contains two unused scenes for the same intro happening with two more bosses: Mouser and Tryclyde, shown restored in the footage. Mouser is created from a unique small mouse sprite, while Tryclyde is created from a Cobrat.
This implies that during the game’s development the idea of Wart’s magic being responsible for most of the game’s bosses was more prevalent, before these scenes were scrapped for an unknown reason.
Source: AkiraTheGamer
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings