Super Mario Sunshine contains an unused object that is a sandbox with terrain that is not pre-modeled, but rather generated by the engine with variable parameters, and could technically be made into an infinite variety of shapes (using a technique similar to e.g. the puzzle game Wetrix for the Nintendo 64).

For an unknown reason, despite this being a powerful tool to create terrain and which could potentially have been used to make Mario change the terrain dynamically, it goes unused in the final game.

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In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, during the post-Chapter 5 Bowser intermission in Twilight Town, there is an extremely difficult to activate dialogue from within the locked inn.

The exclamation point indicator that shows the dialogue can be activated only appears when Bowser is standing in an extremely precise location near the door, so that the majority of the players would simply approach the door, see that it is seemingly not interactive, and leave.

For many years, the “National Not-Get-Eaten-By-Monsters Day” dialogue was known about due to datamining, but presumed unused due to how bizarrely precise the positioning is.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PM:TTYD (NA, GC)

Original artwork for the 1996 Nintendo 64 launch announcement print ad, from the personal archives of the ad’s artist, Stephen Peringer (please zoom in to view details).

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Original_VG_Art

Top: in a 1995 developer interview for Yoshi’s Island, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned that during development, Baby Mario would transform into a full-grown Mario when collecting the Super Star. In the finished version, he transforms into “Powerful Mario”, a form of Baby Mario with a cape, instead.

Bottom: internal files which surfaced in 2020 revealed the actual unused graphics of the full-grown Mario form that Miyamoto was talking about in the interview.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: shmuplations, sprites

In the finished version of Super Mario Kart, the award ceremony is only displayed when the player has achieved first place in a Grand Prix. However, the game’s prototype version has alternate versions of the award ceremony for placing second and third.

Interestingly, these do not feature the flying Cheep Cheep from the regular ceremony. Above, the second place variation is seen, which actually features a Super Koopa from Super Mario World. The first place winner (which in this case in not the player character) then shoots the Super Koopa with a champagne cork, causing it to spin out.

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Yoshi’s New Island is one of the many games that contains the hidden Totaka’s Song Easter egg, due to Kazumi Totaka being the sound director for the game.

Here, the way to hear it is to wait at the World 6 screen for five minutes. The sound file in this post starts about 13 seconds before the Easter egg and includes one last loop of the map music before it activates.

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Development files for Yoshi’s Island contain this bizarre text that appears to be someone’s personal account of buying a TV (translated from Japanese in the image).

What this is doing inside the files, and whether it was ever meant to be used as part of development itself (such as e.g. as a test message) or whether it was completely unrelated and simply ended up there as a mistake, is unknown.

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In World 2-1 of Super Mario 3D Land, there is an extremely difficult to see Easter egg that requires the player to go to the Binoculars near the start of the level immediately upon gaining control of Mario and then look up, since at about 4 seconds after the level starts, a small animation of what looks like a rocket launch happens in the sky. If the player waits or slows down at any point, the launch will not be visible.

Extracting the event from the files reveals that there is unfortunately no actual rocket; the only files involved are a circular texture of smoke and a white triangle that blasts off, since the player is never supposed to see the event up-close.

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Top: a well-known exploit that is used at the start of nearly every speedrun of Super Mario 64 is the Lakitu Skip. In the beginning of Super Mario 64, one of the Lakitu Bros. stops Mario when he walks up to the bridge in front of Peach’s Castle to explain the camera system. The activation radius for this cutscene covers almost the entirety of the bridge, but there is a very thin strip of ground on the railings where Mario can stand without activating it.

Bottom: this visualization of the hitbox shows that the trick is much more precise than it may appear. Note the extremely narrow width of the ground that Mario can land on compared to most of the railing being covered by the red hitbox and activating Lakitu if Mario’s center of gravity is inside it when touching the ground. While many speedrunners are able to execute this trick flawlessly repeatedly, this is the result of months or years of practice.

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In Donkey Kong 64, there is a cabin in Crystal Caves that has a rotating interior that can be activated with Simian Slam switches.

The collision of the walls while rotating is not terribly robust and can result in Donkey Kong simply phasing through the wall as it is rotating, ending up in the void outside the room. From there, the only way to continue playing is by exiting the level through the menu, as the room itself is no longer reachable.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Cfoxx7