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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Just like “Tomorrow Hill” in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Penny’s song in WarioWare: Get It Together has a “failure mix” version whereby off-key alternate segments replace some parts of the song whenever Penny loses a microgame. Since it is only possible to lose up to four microgames before the song ends, it requires many attempts to hear all parts of the mix, and it cannot ever be heard in full in-game.
This is the full failure song extracted from the game’s files. Here is an example of how the lyrics change in this version:
Original: Tinker, thinker, dreamer to the core.
Singer, mechanic, she’s all that and more.
Failure: Tinker, thinker, dreamer to the core.
Pick yourself up when you fall on the floor.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: jamnjelly3102
Top: the Tree Top Town level in Donkey Kong Country is set in a village of houses built into tall trees. The music that plays in this level is called “Treetop Rock” in the English version of the official soundtrack. However, in the Japanese version, the music is called “The Ewok Level” instead (number 23).
This is a reference to the 1983 film Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, where a location called the forest moon of Endor was featured that the Tree Top Town level greatly resembles. It was populated by the Ewok species, hence the name of the track.
Bottom: interestingly, the name has remained as the official title of the track on the Japanese version of the Nintendo Music app, which is surprising given Nintendo’s usual willingness to remove any references to outside media to prevent any legal issues.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
At one point in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Bowser Jr. announces an extremely large coin reward for catching Mario and Luigi, which appears to be simply a random number to Western audiences.
However, this is actually intended to be a pun using goroawase, a type of Japanese phonetic matching, to sound like a sentence when spoken aloud. Different digits each have several ways they can be pronounced for the purposes of goroawase, but with a certain pronunciation, the number spells out “Bowser is the best”.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: this_Ozzi
Extremely rough concept sketches of the Mario and Bowser post-battle dialogue scenes in Super Mario Galaxy (top), seen in the official 2007 Prima guide for the game.
Despite being very rudimentary, they already reflect the finished scene (bottom), with Mario landing next to Bowser, then Bowser talking and disappearing with a spin.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: rishisdonuts
A small obscure item drop in Paper Mario is a Shooting Star that can be retrieved from Goompa’s balcony in Goomba Village if Mario goes back there after visiting Shooting Star Summit in the Prologue. It is presumably implied that it landed on the balcony as a result of Mario visiting Shooting Star Summit and meeting with the Star Spirits.
As the player would have no stated reason to go back to Goomba Village at that point and no one mentions the item or even any shooting stars landing anywhere else, it is very easy to miss this item.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Melmoth54
Yoshi’s Island contains an Easter egg with the Slot Machine Bonus Challenge. The instructions appear to simply state that getting a match of three Shy Guys, stars or watermelons would get a 1-Up, which is correct.
However, if the player gets a line with the Shy Guy in the first slot, a star in the second and a watermelon in the third, mimicking the instructions, the player will also get a 1-Up. Note that they have to be on the machine in that specific order, and this is the only result that rewards the player that does not involve matching three of the same icon.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: racknaee
In Donkey Kong Country, highlighting “Erase Game” on the main menu and pressing Down, A, R, B, Y, Down, A and Y will unlock the sound test mode. By pressing Select, the music will change and cycle through all available music tracks in the game.
However, it is also possible to inadvertently crash the game if after unlocking the sound test, the player then erases a save and presses Select again. This will cause the screen to become black and require the game to be restarted, as shown in the footage.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: DKC (NA, SNES)
Footage from an extremely early point during the development of Super Mario 3D Land, shown by the game’s director, Koichi Hayashida, during a Game Developers’ Conference 2012 presentation.
At this point, Mario had no animations and was represented by a static model sliding around, while the environment was a Whomp’s Fortress model imported from Super Mario 64.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source