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 Nintendo Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door introduces a character design inconsistency that was not present in the original GameCube version.
Top: in the original, X-Nauts only had back sprites when they are audience members, which shows their suits having no X designs on the back, and instead a zipper. This is retained in the Switch version.
Bottom: however, in the Switch version, Peach can be seen from the back while in her X-Naut disguise, which shows no zipper, and the same X design as in the front, no longer matching the audience X-Nauts.
Note that Peach’s disguise is portrayed as perfect in the story, and as such can not be reasonably argued to somehow look different from regular X-Nauts from the back. As the sprites for other audience members also have minor color/shape differences from the regular sprites in this version, the most likely explanation is that there was not enough communication between the art team members responsible for overworld sprites and the ones responsible for the audience to ensure consistency between the designs.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PM:TTYD, Switch
Top: in Mario Superstar Baseball, there is a blue stick and a green stick hidden inside Birdo’s bow. This can not be seen in-game and requires external camera tools to zoom in and view.
Bottom: a comparison of Birdo’s normal model, the sticks, and the model in wireframe with the sticks visible. The internal names for the sticks are “Bip01 Îßưð٠1” for the green one, and “Bip01 Îßưð٠2” for the blue one.
It is most likely that these were leftovers from a point during the modeling process where they were used to aid positioning the bow correctly, and were simply overlooked when the model was cleaned up for the finished version.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Geno Penguin
Some Mario Kart games put small hearts on the asphalt in parts of tracks that are extremely difficult to notice due to their size, the player’s speed, and their oblique angle to the camera.
Top: in Mario Kart: Double Dash, there are hearts on the ground in the pink alley shortcut through the downtown area in Mushroom City.
Bottom: in Mario Kart 8/Deluxe, there are extremely faint hearts on the ground on the main road of N64 Royal Raceway. Note that while these are also shaped like clover leaves, they are overwhelmingly likely to be hearts since pink hearts are found elsewhere on the course while clover iconography is absent.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
Kevin Bayliss, character designer for Donkey Kong Country, revealed on his personal social media accounts that the Kremlings in that game actually originate with a design made in 1991 for a canceled project.
As such, Kremlings actually predate Donkey Kong Country by 3 years and were merely adapted from a pre-existing idea rather than being designed from scratch for that project.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario can bring Hammer Bros very far away from their homes by continuously stunning them with a spin, which will throw them aside a certain distance, waiting for them to recover, and repeating this indefinitely.
This reveals a normally unseen property of Hammer Bros whereby they are programmed to always return to their homes with a single jump, no matter how far away they are. Note the immense jump accomplished by the Hammer Bro in the footage.
Even with this failsafe, the Hammer Bros are not always able to land in the correct spot, which is also shown in the footage as the Hammer Bro has to jump such a large distance that he lands in the lava and dies.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PurpleSunSR
The files of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe contain remainders of a test course that once existed during development, called “test_DanceFloor”. No models remain of the track itself, but the lighting setup is still available and can be seen in action by applying it to other courses.
In the screenshot, the lighting from test_DanceFloor is applied to Mario Circuit, making it look dark purple. As such, it can be assumed that the track likely resembled a dance club with similarly low lighting. Whether the test track eventually became Electrodrome or whether it was made purely for the developers without any intent of being developed into a finished course is unknown.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario 64 DS, normally only Mario can fight King Boo to obtain the key to unlock Luigi. When Mario enters the boss battle room, he sees that his reflection in a large mirror changes to look like Luigi. Internally, this is accomplished by mirroring the movement of the control points (“bones”) of Mario’s model and simply applying the bones to a Luigi model instead. Since the two are so similar in build, the result appears natural.
However, if glitches are used to bring Wario into the boss battle instead, it becomes apparent that this method was not designed to work with anyone except Mario. Since Wario’s bones are arranged very differently from Mario’s, Luigi’s model becomes distorted and unnatural upon copying them, as seen in the screenshot.
Note that the screenshot was taken by increasing the internal resolution of the game and this could not be seen in such clarity on original hardware.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: fawfulthegreat64
Top: animation from the “A Really Short History of Donkey Kong” extra feature on the “Ultimate Donkey Edition” DVD of the 2007 The King of Kong documentary.
Bottom: animatic for the scene, found on animator Gabe Swarr’s personal website.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: image, info: devilslefthandman
