Top: official art for Yoshi’s Island shows the various Yoshis with differently-colored shoes, similar to their later portrayals in the series.
Middle: however, in-game, all the Yoshis’ shoes are barely distinguishable (yet still marginally different) shades of red.
Bottom: strangely, the Yoshis all have differently-colored shoes in the game’s intro only, which then go away when actually playing as them. As these shoe colors resemble the official art, it is clear that this is how the Yoshis were intended to look, but it is unknown what exact technical reasons were behind the developers not being able to implement that during gameplay.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: YI (NA, SNES)
Extremely rare Mario Party 4 artwork of the “GOOOOOOOAL!!” minigame, found in a 2002 issue of the French official Nintendo magazine.
This is the only high-resolution version of this artwork that is currently known to exist, and not even this version is fully visible due to Wario being partially covered by a screenshot.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: MON (France), Issue 7, 2002
In Paper Mario, using a complex series of glitches to reset the game back to a Prologue state after having already unlocked Kooper as a partner will make Kooper act as Goompa during the cutscene of Mario and Goompa arriving back in Goomba Village.
All characters in the game use different animation indices for different expressions (e.g. one character’s “cheering” animation could be #3 while another’s could be #10), since the game expects that it would never refer to one character’s animations while another one is the one actually loaded.
Yet, since exactly this scenario occurs due to the glitch, Kooper is forced to assume animations based on Goompa’s animation indices, which result in him swapping between states clearly not meant to be used for this scene.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: gamesdonequick
All sprites of Bowser in his underwear, seen in the final scene of the PC version of Mario is Missing (when Luigi removes Bowser’s shell), extracted from the game’s files.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: see bottom of image
Bizarre unused object found in the data of Super Mario Bros. 3. The graphical tiles that would have been used by it no longer remain in the files, so a representation of the tiles as their addresses is shown.
The object would have stood motionlessly until Mario touches it, whereupon it would “stick” to him, becoming attached to his sprite and following all his movements. Despite this, it would have had no gameplay effect, with the attachment being purely cosmetic.
Finally, it appears to have been some type of enemy as it is coded to be able to be killed with a Koopa shell or a hammer thrown by Hammer Mario, but no other attacks. What the purpose of this mysterious object could have been is unknown.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario World, whenever Mario and Yoshi take a hit while Yoshi is in the middle of eating an enemy, the enemy will free itself. This can be used with normally stationary enemies to move them in unnatural ways, such as the Pipe Lakitu in the footage.
By chaining the same glitch together, the Lakitu can be brought out of the pipe, whereupon its full body can be seen, which is not normally possible. In addition, it will float in mid-air as gravity does not affect it, since it was only even intended to appear inside a pipe.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: peasoroms
In Donkey Kong Country 3, secret honks can be heard while riding the Motor Boat, Hover Craft and Turbo Ski vehicles by holding X and pressing L and R on the same frame.
The honks are, in order, the theme to the 1968 Hawaii Five-O TV series, Gangplank Galleon, and La Cucaracha.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Source: twitter.com user “webbedspace”
Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers was a Donkey Kong puzzle game that was in development for the GBA from 2000 to 2002, but was cancelled due to Rare being purchased by Microsoft and losing its license to Donkey Kong, only being able to work on remakes of preexisting titles. The game was later released without the Donkey Kong IP as “It’s Mr. Pants” in 2004.
According to a 2010 Rare interview with the British Edge magazine, one of the early names for the game during development was “Splonge”. It is unknown for how long this name was used, and whether it was ever used in conjunction with the Donkey Kong theme, such as e.g. “Donkey Kong Splonge”.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source