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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1995 preview footage for Super Mario 64 showcases an extremely brief moment in which Mario performs a “sliding punch”. In the finished game, pressing B while moving at that speed will instead cause Mario to do a dive (called a “Slide Attack” in the manual) instead.
In addition, Mario’s momentum is conserved while performing the punch. While in the finished game, punching an enemy will cause Mario to experience recoil, here he continues moving in the same direction and only the enemy recoils instead.
The combination of the slide and the conserved momentum gives Mario’s punch a much more forceful impression.
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Various tests for Wonder Effect concepts, from the development of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Curiously, standing on top of a giant Goomba in this manner highly resembles the Trophy Tussle 1 event in Super Smash Bros. Melee, where the battle takes place on top of the head of a similarly-sized giant Goomba trophy.
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A small detail on the file selection screen in Super Mario Galaxy is that causing the heads representing the save files to spin by moving the pointer will make them close their eyes if they spin too quickly.
This mimics how people tend to close their eyes while spinning quickly in real life in order to reduce nausea caused by the fast-moving visuals of the environment spinning around them.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: JoyconSwitch
Upper and lower parts of an officially licensed 1993 Super Mario World ticket redemption arcade game, featuring a combination of preexisting artwork (sometimes partially recolored) and original drawings (please zoom in to view details).
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Bafflingly, despite logical assumptions and visual appearances, moving platforms in Super Mario Maker 2 are not aligned with the ground on the same elevation. During regular gameplay, this is impossible to see since a character walking across both ground and moving platforms will not visibly change elevation, but internally, the elevation changes by an invisible fraction of a pixel.
This fraction of a pixel is enough to no longer align a character with a gap between spikes while in Balloon form. Note how Balloon Luigi is able to perfectly fit through the spikes while aligning himself with ground, yet gets hit after aligning himself with a moving platform that appears to be on the exact same height.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: LooygiBros
The Game & Watch games, as indicated by their name, featured not just the game itself, but also a clock/watch functionality that included an alarm. In many of the games, the alarm was not merely shown by a symbol on the display, but was actually represented by a dedicated character, often ringing a bell. Here are the unique alarm characters from Mario-related Game & Watch games.
Top left: Alarm Bowser in the 1986 Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch (not to be confused with the unrelated 2020 “Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.”) Interestingly, the alarm functionality is the only capacity in which Bowser appears; the only actual enemies in the game are a Lakitu and Bullet Bills.
Top middle: Alarm Koopa Troopa (called “Bell Turtle” in the manual) from Mario the Juggler.
Top right: Alarm Man from Donkey Kong Hockey.
Bottom left: Alarm Monkey from Mario’s Bombs Away.
Bottom middle: Mini Donkey Kong from the Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong. Interestingly, this character is not Donkey Kong Jr., and in fact predates him by a few months.
Bottom right: Alarm Cat from Greenhouse (related to Mario through the main character being Stanley the Bugman, who would later star in Donkey Kong 3).
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In Super Mario Galaxy, Boos briefly turn transparent whenever Mario performs a Spin near them, which is accomplished by distorting the image on the screen. Since there always is an environment around the Boos in-game, it is impossible to see what the transparency effect would look like in isolation, without having an image to distort.
Viewing the transparent Boo model in a model viewer reveals that in the absence of an environment to display, the Boo assumes a stylish monochromatic gradient instead.
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Officially licensed 1995 Donkey Kong Country pog slammers from Japan. Note the Enguarde one (bottom right corner) using a unique layout for the name that is supposed to be read from the top right to the bottom left, and appears to read “Edraugne” if read from the left.
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