According to Rare engineer Paul Machacek, he had been working on a possible Donkey Kong Country port to the Virtual Boy in 1995. In a series of posts on his social media account, he reports that the only thing created for the project before it was abandoned was a “single horizontally scrolling jungle background with graphics lifted from DKC” and “Donkey Kong running around being surrounded by rat sprites taken from Battletoads on the Game Boy”.

Donkey Kong community DKVine has recreated the look of this prototype as accurately as possible based on Machacek’s descriptions, seen in the above image. Note Donkey Kong, visible between the palm trees in the top middle of the image, and the rats on the platforms.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: DKVine

Mario Kart: Super Circuit is the only game in the Mario Kart series in which it is possible to “tire out” a pursuing Spiny Shell (known colloquially as a Blue Shell), causing it to give up chasing the player after a while.

In this game, the Spiny Shell will follow players at roughly their top speed and wait for them to slow down to hit them. If a player can keep up the same speed for long enough, the shell will give up the chase. In addition, hitting the shell with trailing items such an bananas or other shells also contributes to reducing its remaining “stamina”.

As such, the strategy when pursued by a Spiny Shell is to try to maintain top speed at all times and possibly collect enough items to hit it with to tire it out. This is starkly different from many following games, which encourage the player to slow down either to avoid being targeted at all, or to catch other players in the explosion if already targeted.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: AttemptResponsible49

Mini-feature on “Mario’s lesser-known friends and foes” from the 2026 Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition. It is unknown why these three in particular were chosen, though it might have been simply at random without any overarching theme.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Fawfulthegreat64

Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast concept art for a female Kremling character named Kressa/クレッサ (left), provided by Paon to Nintendo during the design phase of the game’s development. Nintendo’s character designers used this artwork to create Kalypso (right), which can be seen by their similar clothes and pose in the artwork.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

In the Rickety Race level of Donkey Kong Country 2, Diddy Kong and/or Dixie Kong need to ride a skull rollercoaster and race nine Klanks, a type of Kremling enemy, to the finish. Every time they catch up to and defeat a Klank, they receive a prize, with all Klanks needing to be defeated for 100% completion of the level.

A severe glitch occurs if the player deliberately plays badly and never overtakes a single Klank until the very end of the level where the checkered flag announces “10”, indicating the final standing of the player arriving in last place. Defeating the Klank placed in 9th after being declared last results in an error in the programming since the game does not expect the standing to change after the end of the race.

Depending on which specific frame after the flag the Klank is defeated on, the game will either graphically corrupt or freeze. Interestingly, if it freezes, the freeze will occur on the frame the Klank is defeated, where it looks directly at the screen. This causes an inadvertent comedic effect as though the Klank is shocked that the game stopped working.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Milenko777

Top: a well-known trick in Super Mario Bros. 3 (shown here in the Super Mario All-Stars version) is that in the final battle against Bowser, Mario cannot be hurt by Bowser as long as he is either touching the ground as Small Mario, or crouching as other forms.

Bottom: interestingly, this trick was explained with custom illustrations in an official 1990 Super Mario encyclopedia from Japan. Here, Mario shows off being small and not being hurt, crouching and not being hurt, and finally finishes off with a warning that the player should not do that while Bowser breaks the final floor tiles, or else Mario will fall down with him.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Mister Wu

Extremely rare 1999 “Wha hoo hoo!” ball from Spain. This ball features the rare and bizarre spelling of Mario’s “Wahoo” exclamation from Super Mario 64 as “Wha hoo hoo!”, which appeared on European licensed merchandise between 1997 and 1999.

The bottom image is the full phrase seen on an officially licensed T-shirt for reference, since the ball is too small to show it all at once.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

Stereoscopic images from an officially licensed 1989 set of Super Mario Bros. 2 View-Master reels, animated to flip between the left-eye image and right-eye image every second. The GIFs are of a remarkably high resolution; please zoom in to view the details.

The reels show a group of images from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show live-action set, which do not appear to be taken from any specific episode and as such could have been taken specifically for this product. These are followed by a retelling of the show’s first episode, “The Bird! The Bird!”, though redrawn.

Notably, King Koopa has been redrawn to be Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2 (although he is still referred to as King Koopa by the captions), likely since the product had the Super Mario Bros. 2 branding.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: kazoodac

Title card for an episode of Satella-Q, a 1997 quiz show broadcast over the Satellaview add-on for the Super Famicom in Japan. Note Toad’s unique catlike mouth as he is sleeping.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Wifi_h1024

In Mario Kart World, the trains that periodically pass on the various railroads in the world actually have their engineers visible in the windows of the locomotives, though they require pausing the game and entering Snapshot Mode to be seen clearly.

The engineers are relatively low-quality Toad models with no facial animations, perpetually stuck with this extremely cheerful expression.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: TheEPICMarioBros