Court documents from the 1983 Universal vs. Nintendo lawsuit about whether Donkey Kong infringed upon the King Kong trademark reveal that the initial official names of the characters in the Donkey Kong arcade were, according to Nintendo, “Mr. Kong”, “Little Mario the Carpenter”, and “Beautiful Girl”.

This suggests that the initial idea was that “Donkey Kong” was not the character’s actual name but merely a description of him to be used as the title, while the actual name would have been “Mr. Kong”.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: GamingHistorian

Top: in the “Runaway Ferris Wheel” mission of Pinna Park in Super Mario Sunshine, the Ferris wheel in the park is rotating at a dangerously high speed. A Pianta near the wheel tells Mario “Some weird turtle is doing bad stuff back there! It’s crazy!”

Bottom: however, climbing the Ferris wheel reveals that the “crazy bad stuff” the “bad turtle” in question (the Electro-Koopa King) is doing is merely sleeping. In fact, sleeping is all that enemy ever does; the only way to interact with it is by hitting it from below, which kills it instantly.

It is unknown if the dialogue from the Pianta is merely supposed to make the situation seem more exciting than it really is, or if the original intent of the designers was to make the Electro-Koopa King encounter an actual battle and this was removed during development.

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In Luigi’s Mansion 3, some objects have “self-preservation routines” whereby they will respawn at their initial position if they go out of bounds. However, this still keeps their momentum, resulting in scenarios where an object goes out of bounds several times even after respawning.

In the footage, a barrel is shot high in the air due to a physics glitch. It then respawns but falls off a cliff due to the momentum imparted from the fall, causing it to respawn again.

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Descriptions of various officially licensed 2002 Hi-C fruit drinks that describe them in relation to Mario franchise and other Nintendo characters (please zoom in to view).

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: linksliltri4ce

An extremely rare event that may happen during the Card Party mode in Mario Party 5 is a Star found by a player randomly becoming a Ztar.

This happens suddenly and dramatically, featuring multiple camera angles of the Star exploding and revealing the Ztar, and reduces the finder’s Star count by 1.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: MachuGamingDX

Top: concept art for Yoshi’s Woolly World, made during a period of development where Yoshi was conceptualized as a flat yarn outline, similar to Kirby’s appearance in Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

Middle: the model used for this scene is actually still found in the game’s files, though it looks less detailed than the concept art.

Bottom: not visible in the concept art, but found in the unused model, is a single Shy Guy lying on the ground by himself in a corner.

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Luigi’s Mansion for the Nintendo 3DS features a psychedelic moving background for the Chauncey, Bogmire and Boolossus boss battles that cannot be seen in full during gameplay due to always being partially obscured by the boss arena.

When isolated, it resembles battle backgrounds from Earthbound, also known for their slowly moving shapes and shifting colors.

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Officially licensed 2023 Bob-omb cap from Japan.

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Development files for Super Mario World contain an unused “Flower Toad” character (left), which based on the location of its data, appears to have been planned as a friendly NPC that Mario could have talked to.

The character has an extremely close resemblance to Hanazukin-chan, the mascot of Expo ‘90, an international gardening expo taking place in Osaka in 1990. As the expo would have been going on at the time of the game’s development, it is nearly certain that the character was intended to be a reference to it.

Interestingly, 33 years later, Super Mario Bros. Wonder introduced the Poplin species, which are a different take on the same “Flower Toad” concept, also being a Toad-like species with flower heads.

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Behind-the-scenes footage from the production of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, showing the Yoshi animatronic in an early stage of construction.

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