In Super Mario 64, objects in levels are divided into 20 groups, whereby objects in a group are always loaded together into memory. It is impossible to use an object without loading the entire group. For example, Group 10 (The Castle Grounds Group) contains Peach, Yoshi, and decorative birds. As such, the game cannot put a decorative bird into a scene without also loading the models and code of Peach and Yoshi.

Interestingly, the Wing Mario Over The Rainbow secret course loads the Lava Group, consisting of Bully and the unused Blargg enemy, and the Cave/Lava Group, consisting of Dorrie, Mr. I, Scuttlebug, Snufit and Swoop, into memory despite not using a single entity from either group. This is the only area in the game that loads groups of entities it does not use.

Together with development data that reveals that Rainbow Ride was supposed to be “Lethal Lava Land 2”, this suggests that at some point during development, the final part of the game (Rainbow Ride, this course, and potentially Bowser in the Sky) was supposed to have a lava theme, as used traditionally for final areas in Mario games, before being reworked to be sky-themed instead.

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Behind-the-scenes footage of Charles Martinet during his first ever public performance as Mario using the “Mario In Real Time” motion capture setup at the 1991 Winter Consumer Electronics Show.

Here, he is testing how well the facial motion capture rig conveys extreme expressions for Mario by switching between exaggerated smiling and exaggerated sadness.

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Donkey Kong decoration used at E3 1998.

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Top: the Aviator outfit as seen in Super Mario Odyssey, from the back.

Bottom left: Mario’s Aviator outfit in Mario Kart World is nearly identical to the Super Mario Odyssey version except for the addition of a white scarf.

Bottom right: this scarf has actually been added there to create a matching couple with Peach’s Aviator oufit, which has the same scarf.

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In Super Mario Maker 2, if a character walks through a door and it is blocked from the other side, the character automatically returns to the door that was entered. However, if that door is also blocked somehow, the character will die instead.

Interestingly, the time it takes to automatically return to the first door in this scenario is slightly longer than it takes to walk through a door normally. This can be abused in multiplayer mode to kill another player with nothing but a POW Block and a pair of doors. In the footage, Luigi watches Mario walk through a door and blocks the other one with a POW Block.

Since it takes Mario slightly longer to automatically return to the first door than it would take him to manually walk through it, Luigi can paradoxically enter the door after Mario tries to open it, but exit out the other side before him. This allows him to block the first side with the POW Block as well, trapping and killing Mario.

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Officially licensed adjustable Chain Chomp desk lamp.

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In Super Mario Odyssey, the Broodals’ airship emits diegetic music (i.e. music that actually exists in the game’s world and is emitted by a physical object in the scene, as opposed to background music that exists solely to underscore the action for the player).

Normally, the airship music is played in situations where there is also background music overlaying it, so it takes specific angling of the camera to be as close to it as possible to hear it clearly. If the player listens very carefully, at the end of the loop, a sound similar to the changing of a cassette tape in a cassette player occurs, suggesting that the airship is using such a player to play the background music on a loop.

Here is the sound file extracted from the game’s files, allowing the sound at the end to be heard clearly. Note that this music is not in the in-game sound menu so it cannot be heard in an isolated form without datamining.

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Normally, after activating the midway checkpoint Star Barrel in the Mine Cart Carnage level in Donkey Kong Country, dying and restarting will result in the playable Kongs falling from the barrel directly into the minecart positioned underneath it, and starting the minecart sequence.

However, due to an oversight, a well-timed jump out of the barrel allows the Kongs to not land in the minecart. Due to the way the “spawn out of the Star Barrel” action is programmed, not landing on ground or a minecart after spawning actually gives them the power to perform infinite double-jumps, as seen in the footage.

Rolling resets their ability to jump to the Kongs can just air-jump their way to the end of the level without engaging with the minecarts.

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Original sketch used as the basis for the artwork for the 1981 North American Donkey Kong arcade flyer.

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Top: it is well-known that the in-game version of the Super Mario World logo has a stray pixel between the “O” in “MARIO” and the “W” in “WORLD”.

Middle: however, it is less known that Nintendo was evidently aware of the stray pixel, as it was fixed in the Super Mario Advance 2 version of the game.

Bottom: a zoomed-in comparison of the original (left) and fixed GBA version (right).

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