In Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64, the Ring Tournament mode is a special mode where the player can enter codes to access special tournaments. The codes were given away on Nintendo’s official site between 2000 and 2004, and included such cups as “IGN64 Tennis Cup”, “Nintendo Power Cup” etc. After completing the tournament, the player would get a result code that could be submitted to Nintendo for a chance to be shown on the official site’s leaderboards.

However, there are also codes for tournaments that were never published on Nintendo’s site. One of them is the enigmatic “Mr. Pickle’s Cup”, accessed with the code 4YHWOR4Y2. Not only is the name not explained anywhere in the game, but the tournament appears to be a joke, since it ends not after a specific number of sets or matches but after scoring a single point, being the only Ring Tournament to do so.

This is most likely an inside joke from Camp Hyrule, Nintendo of America’s online camp that ran yearly from 1995 to 2007. Very little of Camp Hyrule has been preserved, but it appears that pickles were a common running gag, and it is likely that this tournament was publicized internally at Camp Hyrule instead of publicly on the website.

Source: GamerFolklore

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In Super Mario Galaxy 2, it is possible for Luigi to fall sideways out of reality and die.

In the second mission of Slipsand Galaxy, there is a 2D room with adjustable gravity. If Luigi is made to land on the pipe in the specific way shown in the footage, the gravity will become glitched, so that upon emerging from the other end of the pipe he will no longer be aligned with the 2D plane of the room. This will cause him to miss the floor and continue falling upward out of bounds until a failsafe kills him.

Source: Nokoo-game

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As is very widely known, the North American Super Mario Bros. 2 is a retool of the Japan-only Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic for the Famicom, while the original Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 was not released on the NES and was later retroactively called Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels internationally.

As such, since the Japanese market already had a game called “Super Mario Bros. 2”, when the international Super Mario Bros. 2 was brought back to Japan, it was renamed “Super Mario USA” due to its origin as a US-specific game.

To play into this, the official 1992 Japanese guide for the game featured a fold-out poster meant to teach Japanese children the English alphabet, using Mario characters. Note that despite being included with a Super Mario Bros. 2 guide, the poster uses Super Mario World artwork instead.

Source: jossemiati0

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The Hot Top Volcano music from Diddy Kong Racing features singing in the background. This is actually taken from a commercial sample CD called “Heart of Asia”, where it is a chant in the Kannada language (spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka).

The post plays back the original sample, followed by the point in the Diddy Kong Racing track where it is sampled.

Source: TheEisenbergExperience

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In Mario Super Sluggers, all characters have unused ice skating animations, which are compiled here. These were likely intended for the Peach Ice Garden stadium, which features no ice skating in the finished game.

Note that out of all characters, only Tiny Kong (among the characters in the bottom right) has two unused ice-related animations: ice skating and twirling. It is unknown if she would have interacted with ice in a unique way from everyone else, or if the animation was planned for all characters and hers was the only one finished.

Source: Geno Penguin

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In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Crazee Dayzees and Amazy Dayzees actually change the pitch of their song attack if they are afflicted by the Tiny status effect (making it higher-pitched) or the Huge status effect (making it lower-pitched).

While making the enemies Tiny is trivial as a variety of moves and an item exist for this purpose, the only way to get them to become Huge is for them to spawn holding a Power Punch, and then use it on themselves, making this very rare during regular gameplay.

This post plays the Tiny attack sound, the regular attack sound, and the Huge attack sound in order.

Source: Koopatrol

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“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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