In 1993, the French game studio Infogrames released an Asterix video game for NES, SNES, and Game Boy.

In 1992, upon request from the French Super Power magazine, the developers sent them concept documents for the game while it was still being developed, a rare instance of such behind-the-scenes material being shared ahead of time instead of after the game’s release (at least for the time; such practices have become common with the advent of indie devlogs on the Internet).

One piece of concept art compares Asterix’s and Obelix’s sprites to those of Super Mario as seen in Super Mario Land (note that in Super Mario Land, Super Mario is 16 pixels tall while Small Mario is 12 pixels tall, compared to Super Mario Bros. where it is Small Mario who is 16 pixels tall while Super Mario is 32 pixels tall.)

As such, curiously, one of the first pieces of media released regarding this Asterix game that is completely unrelated to Mario coincidentally happened to include Mario in it.

Source: Super Power (France), Issue 4, 1992

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In Super Mario Advance 3, a bizarre glitch may cause the flipper gate at the end of the first area of World 4-4 to turn into a Winged Cloud sprite when the Winged Cloud next to it is hit with an egg (note the normal flipper gate suddenly changing, visible in the top right corner at the beginning of the footage). The glitch is purely visual, but surprisingly causes the Winged Clouds to turn sideways the correct way when Yoshi passes through them.

This glitch has only been seen in Super Mario Advance 3, not in the original SNES version of Yoshi’s Island.

Source: ivanfranco120

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Promotional Club Nintendo pouch from Japan decorated with Mario items, featuring a bizarre slogan: “Club Nintendo was founded for all the Nintendo Game Players to feel more pleasure”.

Source: babahobosstore

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Top: hill mynas are birds that are common in Asia and as such would be familiar to Japanese audiences. However, due to being rare in other parts of the world, there have been cases of “hill myna erasure” in Mario-related games where they have been replaced with other birds in Western regions.

Middle: the Raven enemies seen throughout the Yoshi series games are actually supposed to be hill mynas, not ravens, as explained by the official Japanese guide for Yoshi’s Island.

Bottom: in WarioWare: Touched, the “Pet Parrot” souvenir was originally a talking hill myna in the Japanese version before being changed to a scarlet macaw parrot internationally.

Source: TheRaoul1992

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A memorable side quest in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door involves going to Poshley Heights and talking to Toadia, the president of the Luigi Fan Club, while wearing the L Emblem badge. Not only will she mistake Mario for Luigi, she will also mistake the real Luigi who coincidentally wanders into the scene for an impostor.

An obscure extra part of this scene can only be seen if Toadia is approached while Mario’s inventory is completely full. Instead of being able to give Mario the Choco Cake she prepared, Toadia will become distraught that “Luigi has too many things” and decide to leave the cake on the edge of the fountain instead. Due to the sidequest being unrepeatable, the player only has a single chance to see this on a save file.

Please excuse the presence of Professor Frankly in the footage, who is there due to an unrelated glitch. He is not required to view the extra dialogue.

Source: SilverGames136

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Splash page featuring a movie theater filled with Marios and a single Wario, from a 2007 issue of the British nRevolution magazine (please zoom in to see all the Marios clearly).

Source: nRevolution (UK), Issue 8, 2007

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Top: official emblem depicting Donkey Kong’s face distributed to the press to promote Donkey Kong Jungle Beat in 2004.

Bottom: of particular interest is an additional document depicting permitted and forbidden usages of the emblem. It is permitted to change the colors as long as the emblem is lighter than the background, and put it on a colorful background as long as it is not too colorful (right column). Conversely, it is forbidden to invert the colors and to put it on backgrounds that are too colorful (left column).

Source: Kong, JeuxActu

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Wario Land: Shake It famously features a very unique level select animation whereby Wario rhythmically wiggles in front of the portal leading to the Shake Dimension while waiting for the player’s input.

Here is the isolated Wario animation, extracted at maximum quality from the game’s files.

Source: blueberrymuffin

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In Super Mario Odyssey, breakable rocks interact in a very odd way with the inside of the Odyssey. If the door to the Odyssey is opened and Mario throws a breakable rock into it from a specific location,
-the rock will never actually break no matter how many times Mario kicks it, and
-Mario will not count any of the kicking as an “interaction”, continuing to treat this scenario as “idling” instead.

Due to him being considered to be “idling”, he will eventually fall asleep without ever actually stopping kicking the rock. He will continuously wake up just for the kicking animation and then immediately fall asleep indefinitely, as seen in the footage.

Top: the setup.
Middle: after 30 seconds, Mario will yawn and sit down, drowsy.
Bottom: after 1 minute, he will fully lie down and fall asleep.

Source: AdolescentCore

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Extremely limited edition 2020 Super Mario World Boo-themed watch, from Japan.

Source: FarmboyinJapan

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