Top: In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, getting the Cookbook for Zess T. allows her to cook with two ingredients. This is the only stated effect of the Cookbook being acquired; at no point does Zess T. or anyone else say that there are other things that getting the Cookbook allows her to do.

However, there are in fact new single-ingredient dishes that Zess T. can cook that only work after she has the Cookbook, and will result in a Mistake beforehand despite them technically being something she can attempt to cook.

Bottom left: attempting to cook a Dried Shroom without the Cookbook results in a Mistake.

Bottom right: doing it after handing over the Cookbook results in a Shroom Fry instead, the same dish that would result from cooking a regular Mushroom. This is by far the most useful out of these hidden single-ingredient recipes.

There are only a handful of these changed single-ingredient recipes in the game (again, note that cooking them without the Cookbook gets a Mistake instead):
Dried Mushroom or Poison Mushroom -> Shroom Fry
Horsetail, Snow Bunny or Dried Bouquet -> Spicy Soup
Hot Sauce -> Tasty Tonic

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Officially licensed 2013 “clasping hands” Cat Mario/Luigi/Peach/Toad plushes from Japan. The plushes have magnets in their hands that can be used to make them grasp poles, or each other.

Source: blacktangent

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In Super Mario 64, the Wing Mario Over the Rainbow course appears to be a regular rainbow-themed sky level at first, but various details about it seem to bizarrely suggest it was both supposed to be a cold level and a hot level, at least at some points during development.

Points in favor of cold:
-In this course, Mario will not fall asleep, and will instead shiver when left idle for long enough, just like in the two snow courses. While this could be interpretable as cold temperatures due to high altitude, the same does not apply to Rainbow Ride.
-Hanging on to the undersides of the clouds makes snow particles come out. Again, this is unique to the clouds in this area specifically.

Points in favor of hot:
-When in this course, the game loads the code for all enemies from Lethal Lava Land, including even the unused and unfinished Blargg enemy, despite not actually using a single one of them.
-Development files for the game reveal that Rainbow Ride was known as “Fire Bubble 2” (“Fire Bubble” being the internal name for Lethal Lava Land) and “Fire Building” at various points; it is possible that this related sky area was also at some point planned to be fire-themed instead, which would explain the Lethal Lava Land enemy code.

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In Super Mario Odyssey, the “Jaxi Reunion!” Power Moon in the Sand Kingdom requires reuniting a Jaxi with a Jaxi statue at the edge of the desert. However, it is possible to (tediously) obtain this Power Moon without ever riding a Jaxi at all.

Top: if Mario captures Glydon, jumps into a Jaxi and uncaptures Glydon during this, the Jaxi will begin slowly sliding in the direction away from Glydon. The direction can be changed by repeating the action, but the speed can not be increased beyond the one seen here in the footage.

Bottom: if the player slowly pushes the Jaxi towards the pedestal in this manner, the Power Moon will be obtained without ever riding the Jaxi. This has no purpose other than as a self-imposed challenge for the player.

Note that as a side effect of this, the Jaxi’s usual 30 coin riding fee will be waived, so that Mario can ride it for free afterward. As such, this could also be used in a different type of self-imposed challenge where Mario needs to spend as little money as possible.

Source: Dosle22

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In Super Mario World, the item reserve box on top of the screen is a light blue color for the vast majority of gameplay. However, during the final boss battle against Bowser, it is actually a darker blue color.

The reason for this is that the item reserve box during the Bowser battle is implemented in a completely different manner from the one during regular gameplay. Normally, the box is part of the HUD background layer (“background” referring here to “not the sprite layer”; it is actually drawn above the sprite layer, making it technically the foreground).

However, the Bowser final boss battle uses Mode 7 to rotate and stretch Bowser. Mode 7 is a very powerful graphical tool of the SNES but only allows a single background layer (which in this case is Bowser and his clown car) to be used. No other graphics can be drawn on the Mode 7 layer since all deformation is applied to the entire layer at once, so that it would all move with Bowser. This means everything else on that screen must actually be a sprite, since no other background elements can be displayed.

This is the reason why most of the HUD is gone, and why the floor is so sparse, as they all must be displayed using sprites and each additional graphic gets the hardware closer to the sprite display limit. As such, the item reserve box is also drawn as a sprite, which have different palettes from the background layers, resulting in the designers not matching the color of the box used during regular gameplay exactly.

Source: Samb

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Top: the Giant Squirrel was a planned flying squirrel boss for Donkey Kong ‘94 that appeared in pre-release screenshots of the game, but was scrapped in favor of focusing the entire game on fighting Donkey Kong (so that the finished game has 29 boss battles, each of them against Donkey Kong).

Bottom: this was used as a plot point in a 1994 Donkey Kong manga, whereby the Giant Squirrel is frustrated with being excluded from the game and attacks Donkey Kong Island with a Kremling army.

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Donkey Kong 64 contains a broad category of glitches called “skew” whereby the playable Kong’s model will be angled unnaturally, as though standing on a nonexistent slope. This results in the Kong’s collision not interacting with parts of the environment, allowing the player to simply walk through certain walls.

A relatively easy method of achieving skew is using a cannon as shown in the footage. If Lanky Kong is hit a rebounding orange at the same time he would have been shot out of the cannon, he will become skewed, with his model being angled more than 90° forward into the ground. This allows him to pass through most walls by jumping backwards through them.

Source: Znernicus

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Original illustration on “console wars” for a 1992 issue of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, featuring Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Zonk from the Zonk side series of games from the Bonk franchise on the TurboGrafx-16.

Source: OriginalVideoGameArt.com

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In Luigi’s Mansion, there is a refrigerator in the Kitchen on the first floor of the mansion. Looking extremely closely at the model for the refrigerator reveals that it does not have unique textures for the hinges of its door.

Instead, the hinges are textured with the same image used for the fridge itself, making the two hinges look like two miniature refrigerators attached to the larger one.

Source: Xandeath75

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In Mario Kart Wii, CPU racers prioritize being mean to the player over actually winning the race. If a CPU player has a Mega Mushroom and the player is a short distance ahead of them, the CPU will do everything possible to be able to squash the player, including driving off the optimal path and even into hazards.

Top: note how Baby Peach drives into a wall trying to catch Mario.

Bottom: note how Baby Peach drives off a bridge into the lava trying to catch Mario.

In addition, the same rules apply when the CPU has a Thunder Cloud item. The CPUs will chase after each other as well, though since all of them normally follow strict pathing this does not result in them driving into hazards in practice.

Source: B_squo

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