A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
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An obscure detail about the ending of Yoshi’s Story is that the two text boxes shown at the final pop-up image of the Yoshis gathered around the Super Happy Tree have three different versions that change based on the player’s final score.
Since all three versions convey roughly the same sentiment and differ only in the precise wording, this requires paying attention across multiple playthroughs to notice.
Top left: this version is displayed when getting a final score of less than 20,000 points.
Top right: this version is displayed between 20,000 and 30,000 points.
Bottom: the final version is shown when getting a score of over 30,000 points.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: YS (NA, N64)
In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, due to a bizarre internal implementation of Rawk Hawk’s ceiling shake attack, it is able to cause dead partners to be revived using a Life Shroom. It is the only attack in the game that has that property.
What is particularly notable is that it took 20 years after the game’s release for this interaction to be discovered because of how utterly unlikely and convoluted the scenario for it to occur is.
In order for this to happen, Mario must both have a dead partner and a Life Shroom in his inventory when Rawk Hawk uses this attack. However, a partner dying in battle normally causes the Life Shroom to be used up automatically. As such, Mario must
1. not have a Life Shroom at first
2. let the partner die
3. buy or otherwise obtain a Life Shroom while the partner is dead
4. not heal the partner/sleep in a bed at any point during this.
Since Chapter 3, where Rawk Hawk is fought, offers a convenient bed Mario can sleep in for free before each battle, this scenario is exceedingly unlikely to occur naturally during gameplay.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: jdaster64
Mario being projected onto the side of a building during a GameCube launch party in New York City in 2001.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: cakehoarder
In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, butterfly colors are randomized every time a level is loaded. While the positions and number of butterflies are fixed, each of them can assume one of three colors.
This is the latest in a long tradition of adding very subtle elements of randomization to 2D Mario levels that are only noticeable when paying extremely close attention and comparing different playthroughs of the same level, such as e.g. the item outlines in the sky in Super Mario Bros. 3 changing positions, or the flowers in the foreground of Yoshi’s Island being slightly different every time.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SMBW (NA, Switch)
An unused interaction with Melody Pianissima in Luigi’s Mansion found in the game’s files has her play Totaka’s Song, the recurring musical Easter egg in games composed by Kazumi Totaka, which is then identified as “Totakeke’s theme”. Totakeke is the real name of K.K. Slider, the dog musician character from the Animal Crossing series, where this song is his theme, and called “K.K. Song”.
Of particular interest is that Melody Pianissima claims to have written the song herself. This raises a number of possibilities:
1. If Mario and Animal Crossing are taken to exist in separate universes, then this song appears to exist diegetically in-universe in both, but have different origin points, being composed by her in the Mario world and by K.K. Slider in the Animal Crossing world.
2. If both of them take place in the same universe, then K.K. Slider didn’t actually write his own theme, but rather had it ghostwritten by Melody Pianissima (in both the sense that it was written without credit and that it was written by a ghost).
3. Melody Pianissima could also just be lying.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario Bros. 3, there is a visual glitch with two frames of the wand whenever Mario clears an airship level and falls down to one of the kings’ castles. Due to the wand moving extremely quickly in-game, this can only be seen by severely slowing down the footage.
Top: the scene as seen in the game, slowed down.
Bottom: the glitched frames in question, making the wand appear Y-shaped.
While it can potentially be argued that these could be intentional smear frames, this is highly unlikely since the effect only appears on some orientations of the wand, and more importantly, that it only happens in the castles. When the wands drop down after defeating the Koopalings in the airships, the glitch does not occur.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SMB3 (NA, NES)
