In video game development, “attract mode” refers to a state a game enters when left without input on the title screen for long enough, whereby it usually shows demo gameplay either in-engine (e.g. Super Mario 64) or as a prerecorded movie (e.g. Super Mario Sunshine). This is a holdover from arcade machines that did this to attract customers that would be walking past.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door does not have an attract mode, instead simply replaying the game’s intro if the game is left on the title screen. However, the game’s files contain an unused attract mode that would have been a combination of movie playback and an in-engine overlay.

The game would have played a video file (deleted in the finished game so the Super Mario Sunshine credits were used in the footage due to being in the same format the game expects), and random characters from the game would occasionally enter the screen, look around, and exit, as seen in the footage.

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Bizarre design from an officially licensed 1989 Nintendo T-shirt. The object Mario and Toad are situated on is the “NES Advantage” arcade-style controller for the NES.

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Top: a bizarre glitch occurs in the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2 in World 4-3. If the player gets a Game Over in World 4-3, then replays the game to that level from the beginning in a single session, this particular screen at the top of the tower will be completely corrupt, with most of the wall being missing and the crenellations on top of the wall being partially replaced with various animated tiles.

Bottom: how the area should look under normal circumstances.

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The files of Donkey Kong Country 3 contain an unused block of text that seems to contain most of Klubba’s dialogue from Donkey Kong Country 2. However, the text has been pasted into the files haphazardly and without any formatting, resulting in a “stream of consciousness” style frenzied rant.

Note also that due to the random cropping of the text, it starts off with an incomplete phrase (“u have plenty of. lives!”) and ends with an equally incomplete phrase (“Y'must be jokin if I’m gonna let ye across fer t”).

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Story summary from a 1989 Japanese guide for Super Mario Bros. 3, featuring four original illustrations.

Note that the first drawing reads “S. Mario Bros. 2” to show Mario and Luigi winning against Bowser at the end of that game (meaning the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, known internationally as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels; the international Super Mario Bros. 2 did not feature Bowser).

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Warning: squashing and stretching footage that may induce nausea.

Donkey Kong 64 contains an extremely unique reuse of a game state for two completely unrelated scenarios. In Gloomy Galleon, one of Chunky Kong’s missions results in him becoming seasick, during which he walks slowly and the screen distorts to simulate his nausea.

When Lanky Kong performs his Trombone Tremor, the screen distorts in the same way. Internally, this is actually the seasickness state being applied for the duration of the cutscene. Instead of decoupling the seasickness from the camera effect so that both could be used separately, the developers simply used it counting on the fact that Lanky cannot move during the cutscene anyway, so none of the gameplay would be affected.

However, by entering the updraft in Creepy Castle, the cutscene is interrupted, and the seasickness remains while Lanky can walk around, showing that he has the same slow movement as Chunky during his “legitimate”, intended episode. This lasts until the next time Lanky plays his trombone, which clears the associated flag.

As such, the takeaway here is that playing the trombone literally makes Lanky Kong seasick for a few seconds, according to internal logic.

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In Mario Kart Tour, the low-quality models used when racers are far away from the camera have extremely small textures, often being reduced by a factor of 10 to 12.

Tanooki Mario’s low-quality facial texture is so small that his eyes are reduced to a few pixels each. This gives them an appearance similar to the dot eyes used in the Paper Mario series, so that low-quality Tanooki Mario may inadvertently seem to be in a different style from the regular model, appearing to be a 3D rendition of a Paper Mario character or a Super Mario World sprite.

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Deck of small playing cards printed on a single page (for cutting out by the user) included with a 1987 issue of the Japanese Wanpakku magazine, featuring original artwork based on Super Mario Bros. and other Famicom games.

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In Mario Kart Wii, playing three-player local multiplayer matches allows for a visual glitch to be seen if a player throws items right before the fourth camera switches to that player.

This is shown in the footage with a Mii, whose low-quality model is still visible even though his high-quality head model is also present, briefly giving him two heads.

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In Mario Party DS, the Bowser’s Pinball Machine board contains a roulette-themed event. Due to restrictions on depictions of gambling in media, the Korean version actually replaces that event with a Korean-exclusive whack-a-mole game, seen in the footage.

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