An obscure interaction occurs in New Super Mario Bros. Wii with the Circling Boo Buddies that appear in only one level, 5-Ghost House. These are actually vulnerable to Propeller Mario’s drill attack, as seen in the footage.

It is unlikely for players to discover this during regular gameplay because regular Boos are not vulnerable to this move and instead hurt Mario if he attempts it. As such, there is no incentive to try it on an enemy that by all logic should have the same interactions as regular Boos, being literally a group of Boos going around in a circle.

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Earliest known prototype of Super Mario Kart, recovered from development files surfaced in 2020. At this point in development, the characters were generic racers instead of Mario characters, and Mario Circuit 3 was the only track implemented.

You may have noticed that Mario Circuit 3 appears more times in the Mario Kart series than any other track, appearing in Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart Tour, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Mario Kart World (as 1/3 of the Mario Circuit track).* It is theorized that this may be due to the developers’ sentimental connection to this track as the first one ever made for the franchise.

*Note that SNES Rainbow Road also appears 6 times but only if its Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe appearances are counted as separate, while Mario Circuit 3 actually appears 6 times in completely separate games.

Source: TailsLaboratory3322

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Original 3D animation from a 1994 Hong Kong commercial for the Game Boy, promoting Super Mario Land 2.

While it features various characters like the Buzzy Beetle-like Noko Bombette enemy and the Bomubomu pig enemy from that game, some characters are included here who do not appear in that game at all like Luigi and Toads.

Note also that the yellow flying enemies are, extremely bizarrely, multiple copies of the Sewer Rat boss of Macro Zone. In-game, the Sewer Rat is a unique character, and being a rat, cannot actually fly. It does climb up walls and drop down, which the artists for the commercial may have interpreted as the ability to fly freely.

Source: magikarpfan77

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Top: in the ending sequence of Donkey Kong 64, after King K. Rool is defeated in his boxing match, Candy Kong appears in order to distract him so that Funky Kong can shoot him from the other side of the ring. When King K. Rool sees Candy Kong, he performs an exaggerated take whereby his face seems to get very close to the screen.

Bottom: looking at the scene from the side using external tools to move the camera, we can see how this is accomplished. Instead of moving King K. Rool’s head closer to the camera while keeping it the same size (which is the effect created in the finished game), his head simply grows larger for a few frames.

Source: Ballaam / LookAtTheWindow

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Top: in World 8-4 in Super Mario Bros., there is an underwater section in a castle, the only one of its kind anywhere in the game. Normally, the player would simply emerge from the entrance pipe and continue to the right. However, if the player attempts to interact with the pipe, Mario will become hurt or even killed by something seemingly invisible.

Bottom: if Mario is Fire Mario, shooting a fireball at the pipe will also destroy the invisible object and award 200 points.

This is actually a Piranha Plant which is invisible due to being incorrectly drawn behind the water background instead of in front of it. The reason the Piranha Plant is there to begin with is because every single upright pipe in the game that is not in World 1-1 is programmed to spawn a Piranha Plant if there are enough object slots open (not too many other enemies are already loaded).

This results in some pipes appearing to not have Piranha Plants during regular gameplay (as they are usually reached when there are already too many other enemies loaded), but even they can be made to spawn Piranha Plants if Mario systematically defeats and unloads all enemies around them. This invisible Piranha Plant is simply a combination of this implementation and a graphical oversight.

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Collection of all types of items retrievable from dedicated Yoshi’s Island claw machines, available in Japan in 1996. Note that the two Baby Marios have different expressions and arm poses.

Source: blacktangent

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In Super Mario Galaxy 2, crouching at the edge of a mud puddle will cause Mario (or Yoshi) to walk if the crouch button is continued to be held, although still at crouching speed (internally, he is in the crouching state, merely with a walking animation).

This results in “phantom mud” where Mario appears to be stepping into invisible mud even on clean surfaces as long as the button is held.

Source: SPG64

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In Super Mario World, the secret Soda Lake level is a unique location in that it is the only place to feature the Torpedo Ted enemies. These enemies were evidently designed to only be used in this very specific scenario and as such do not have proper interactions with even some of the most common items programmed.

Due to the fact that there are no Super Stars in Soda Lake, it is normally not possible to see that Torpedo Teds were never given an intended interaction with it. By modifying the game to place a Super Star in the level, the bizarre unintended interactions can be seen.

Note how the Torpedo Teds don’t actually “die” when hitting invincible Mario, and are merely knocked back in an arc, yet still continue moving. At the end of the footage, it is also shown that catching a Torpedo Ted right after it emerges allows it to be hit on sequential frames, quickly gaining enough points to get multiple 1-Ups.

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In Mario Kart: Double Dash, the place where the drivers emerge from after going inside the Warp Pipe on the Peach Beach track is supposed to be an open window above the pipe (the only open window on the track, making it clear this was the design intent), but this is nearly impossible to see in-game.

Top: the closest this can be seen is in two-player mode if one player turns around to look at the building, but the game’s camera does not move up high enough to show the window unless the second player is very far away. As such, this is basically not visible (note Mario and Luigi being barely larger than a pixel on Wario and Waluigi’s screen). Also note that this game does not have a rear view button so Mario and Luigi cannot look behind them as they would be able to in later games.

Bottom: only with external tools can the camera be shifted in such a way as to actually show what is happening. Note that the window is aligned with the Item Boxes but not with the exit point of the drivers; this is possibly a remnant from earlier in development where the arc was different so that the drivers could emerge directly from the window and grab the Item Boxes.

Source: Peardian

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Top: artwork used on a rare officially licensed 1986 Famicom game case, depicting the cast of Super Mario Bros. riding a car.

Bottom left: this artwork would later be used for the album cover of a 1986 Super Mario Bros. Japan-only vinyl record.

Bottom right: the place this artwork was most famously used was the cover of All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros., a limited-edition retool of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels for the Famicom Disk System that replaced some characters with caricatures of Japanese radio personalities.

With the bottom two in mind, looking at the top image reveals that due to their format, they have been cropping out details of the original drawing all along. In particular, the smiling sun on the left, the full fortress on the right, and most notably the Spiny riding a Lakitu’s Cloud in the top right can not be seen in any of the later versions.

Spinies have never actually been able to ride Lakitu’s Clouds until Super Mario Maker in 2015, 29 years after this image was drawn.

Source: bigafrodogg

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