2025 Mario toy capsule dispenser from Japan, decorated to look like a particularly spherical Goomba.

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At E3 1995, Nintendo of America distributed a VHS tape with prerelease footage to the press. Curiously, the footage of Donkey Kong Country 2 on the tape is not just in an early state, but seemingly lacking extremely basic functionality and exhibiting errors.

At one point during the footage, Dixie and Diddy fall down into water, whereupon it is revealed that they simply fall right through and stand on the bottom instead of swimming. Then, their animations briefly freeze while the number “14” (possibly an error code) is displayed near the top of the screen, and the footage abruptly cuts to a different level.

Interestingly, this is not the only time debugging footage for a SNES game has been used specifically in 1995 for public distribution, so this may have been a large-scale oversight on Nintendo’s part in that year in particular.

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Top: the letters Mario receives at the beginning of each world in Super Mario 3D Land are made out of separate parts that can be made to move by shaking the console. In particular, the World 7 letter contains a very detailed scene with many overlapping assets that obscure each other in such a way that vigorous shaking is necessary to see some parts of the artwork.

Bottom: by extracting the detailed middle layer depicting many enemies, we can see the artwork clearly without shaking.

Of particular note are some enemies that are positioned in such a way that they are very difficult to see in-game, such as the Fake Block on the far left, the Blokkablok immediately to the right of the Fake Block, the big Morty Mole under the Blooper (not to be confused with the small Monty Mole above the Magikoopa, which is easily visible), and the Flophopper and Peepa hiding behind the Piranha Plant.

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Extremely rare officially licensed 1988 4-foot tall Mario plush.

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In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the Co-Star Luma controlled by Player 2 is able to immobilize enemies. If this ability is used to immobilize a Whomp immediately before its slam attack, and Luigi* is positioned in a precise manner on top of the Whomp, he will be launched with immense amounts of momentum, as seen in the footage. Eventually, Luigi will leave the boundaries of the playable area and die.

*Note that Mario is also able to be launched, but not as far.

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One joke in Paper Mario: The Origami King involves Mario saving a stack of 10 Toads in Overlook Mountain, whereupon they all start talking simultaneously. The only way the player can read all the text is by using the Nintendo Switch’s built-in recording feature to save the footage and keep replaying it to read all speech bubbles.

Above, the sequence is presented as a looping animation, which should make it more convenient to read the text. Every Toad says 3 speech bubbles; to read a single Toad’s dialogue, simply focus on a single point on the screen, and every speech bubble that appears in the same spot is intended to be said by the same Toad.

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Set of rare officially licensed 1995 plush Donkey Kong Country keychains from Japan, available exclusively as prizes from claw machines.

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In Mario Kart Wii, whenever a racer falls into the water on the N64 Sherbet Land track, Lakitu retrieves that racer encased in ice, which breaks upon landing.

While the ice is very difficult to see through, it is not entirely opaque and the racer’s silhouette can be seen within. Curiously, Toadette’s mushroom pigtails disappear while inside the ice and reappear when it breaks. The footage zooms in so far that the camera shows her inside the ice, though this can also be seen (with difficulty) during regular gameplay.

The reason for this provides surprising insight: Toadette’s pigtails have their own physics engine that makes them react to her movement. Looking inside the game’s code, the physics calculations still run while she is inside the ice, so making the pigtails visible would have caused them to move while she is frozen due to her downward motion, which the developers likely found undesirable.

As such, instead of disabling the physics engine (which they may never have been programmed to be possible to begin with), the developers simply decided to make her pigtails invisible so that no motion could be seen inside the ice.

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In New Super Mario Bros., if Fire Mario defeats a Cheep-Chomp with a fireball on the exact frame where he would be eaten, he will enter a state in which he is both alive and dead for the purposes of different parts of the game’s code.

Since Mario is technically dead, he is no longer controllable, does not animate or move (except for blinking), and the timer (top right corner) is stopped. However, since Mario is also technically alive, the level continues on as usual instead of being exited.

This results in the game becoming unplayable and needing to be reset to continue since the alive/dead Mario is no longer responsive.

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Officially licensed lenticular Bob-omb Battlefield painting magnet from Super Nintendo World.

It depicts a smaller version of the large Bob-omb Battlefield painting hanging in the Peach’s Castle area of the park, which is also lenticular and displays Bowser Jr. stealing the Golden Mushroom (the plot of some of the activities in the park) from a certain vantage point.

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