“Irregular Mario Brothers”, or nonstandard recolors of Mario’s sprite that are explicitly not him or Luigi, have occasionally appeared both in games (top left: the yellow and blue Marios from the GBA Mario Bros. included with the Super Mario Advance series games and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga) and in merchandise (top right: pre-Luigi recolored Marios from a 1982 Donkey Kong board game).

However, the earliest appearance of an irregular Mario brother in-game is the obscure COMP1 from the Japan-only Golf: Japan Course for the Famicom Disk System. He is the brother that appears as the opponent in the “Mario Match Play” mode, the only mode that is played against the CPU. His colors appear to be based on one of Mario’s invincibility frames after picking up a Super Star in Super Mario Bros.

Source: solvershadz

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In 2001, Nintendo of America promoted the release of Wario Land 4 with an Adobe Flash microsite called “Welcome to Greedville”, containing various Wario-related activities.

Here is the biggest custom graphic from the site, a large animated fountain dedicated to Wario, extracted from the site’s files at maximum quality. An APNG version with a transparent background and translucency effects for the water cannot be displayed directly within the post, but is provided here.

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Print ad for officially licensed 1996 Mario character plush/squeaky hammer hybrid toys from Japan. Each toy has a handle on the back and a squeaky hammer inside, so that it can be hit against a surface to make a silly sound.

Source: NintendoMetro

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In Donkey Kong Country 2, it is normally not possible to bring Animal Buddies to the end of the level due to the No Animal signs positioned before the exits. However, it is possible to bypass one of them through a combination of two factors: Enguarde moves by himself after being hit, and the Animal Buddies have a larger active radius that the signs do.

The latter part means that it takes a larger distance off-camera for Animal Buddies to despawn than it does for signs, so technically, an Animal Buddy could go off-camera and pass by the location of the sign while it hasn’t spawned. In the Lockjaw’s Locker level, that is possible in the manner seen in the footage, simply by letting Enguarde be hit and then following him with specific timing.

Since no Animal Buddies were ever meant to be shot out of the barrel onto the level goal, the animation at the end becomes glitched. Note Enguarde turning into a second, blue Dixie and playing her guitar while the actual Dixie merely stands there.

Source: kfin45

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The cutscenes in Hotel Mario are animated in the exact same way used in traditional cel animation: every cutscene uses a handful of static background images, over which a sequence of images that contain characters and other moving objects are overlaid.

As such, it is possible to isolate the moving animation frames by removing the background images, creating these GIFs with a transparent background. These can be used to change the backgrounds, for video editing, or other purposes. This post contains GIF versions of all cutscenes in the game, including the rare Bowser’s Ghost Cologne cutscene (third image in the fourth row).

Source: LuigiBlood

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The “bah” sound in the New Super Mario Bros. series of games (technically named as “paah” in the original sample CD used, but colloquially called “bah”) is a dynamic part of the track, causing various enemies and objects to react to it. Since the tracks were designed around accommodating it, removing it results in the music feeling somewhat “empty”.

Here is the New Super Mario Bros. Wii overworld music with the “bah” sound deactivated.

Source: RontoSoundtrack

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Original artwork used for the cover of a 1995 issue of the Brazilian SuperGamePower magazine, featuring Yoshi and Baby Mario. Please zoom in to see details.

Source: originalvideogameart

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Concept art for “Kasa de Koopa”, a variation of King Koopa’s castle appearing in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show episode “Mario and Joliet” (top), and the background artwork from the actual episode, for reference (bottom).

Source: Soshi the Yoshi

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Top: in Super Mario Sunshine, the Chain Chomplets appear in the “Chain Chomplets Unchained” mission of Pianta Village, where they are on fire and will hop along the village’s path while leaving a trail of fiery goo. They have to first be temporarily cooled off by spraying them with water, and then be launched into the central spring via tugging on their tails to be permanently cooled off.

Bottom: the internal programming for them is surprisingly complex, with this image representing the Chomplet Pathing Map. While on fire, they follow the black paths; when cooled off, the Chomplet will always go toward the dot matching the color of the area it is in, unless Mario is between it and that dot, in which case the Chomplet will go to the adjacent dot that is furthest away from the direction Mario is in.

While this information is much too specific to be of any actual use to anyone outside of people trying to create tool-assisted speedruns of the game (especially since the mission is easy enough to complete without needing to understand the mechanics), this is a great showcase of the fact that even the most minor and unremarkable parts of video games have tremendous programming effort behind them to function in the expected manner.

Source: nokidoki

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In Super Mario 64 DS, if Yoshi puts a Koopa shell in his mouth in Snowman’s Land, then bumps into the Chill Bully boss so that he is knocked in the lava, he will be riding the shell in a glitched way that allows him to stay alive with 0 HP as long as he does not stop riding the shell, or being in other states that override death (clinging to trees, walking through a door, etc.)

In this state, touching the tree next to the Chill Bully arena will make Yoshi cling on to it seemingly normally (except for the fact that he is actually dead), but actually steadily increase his speed variable in the background due to the wind acting on him (known in the Super Mario 64 glitch/speedrunning community as “building hyperspeed”).

After building hyperspeed for over a minute, Yoshi can slide down the tree to activate this speed. Since standing on the ground is not a state that overrides death, Yoshi will die instantly… but due to his hyperspeed, will keep sliding along the ground. This results in the “sliding dead Yoshi” seen in the footage, who will only actually activate the script to exit the stage after he has slid all the way out of bounds into the death barrier.

Source: p_yoshi

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