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).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SMW (NA, SNES)
In both versions of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, there is normally no way to fall off the roof of the Excess Express during the Chapter 6 boss sequence, as it is surrounded by a railing near the stairs and invisible walls around the top of the cars.
However, if Koops is used to hit the wall of the train in the manner shown, he will recoil through the gaps in the railing and actually fall off the train.
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Top: in Mario Kart 64, there are unused “pillar of fire” objects found on the Bowser’s Castle track, particularly around the wooden bridge leading out of the castle. Here is what the track looks like when they are reenabled.
Bottom: interestingly, when the track returned in Mario Kart Wii, actual geysers of lava were added to these locations, showing that the developers did not merely base the track on its finished version but also consulted the internal files to be able to actualize the original vision for the track.
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Original painting used for a promotional poster for the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie (please zoom in to view detail).
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Mario Kart World does not have any measures in place to prevent the camera from clipping into other racers’ models during races.
As such, moments like the one shown in the footage may occur, whereby an opponent Piranha Plant racer is briefly positioned perfectly to cause the camera to show the inside of its mouth.
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In both Paper Mario: Sticker Star (top) and Paper Mario: Color Splash (bottom), entering a battle while on quicksand and then not issuing any commands to Mario will cause him to slowly sink into the quicksand, and finally get an automatic Game Over if the player does not press any buttons during that time.
The time it takes to get a Game Over is 1 minute in Paper Mario: Sticker Star and 1 minute and 15 seconds in Paper Mario: Color Splash. While it is unlikely that a player would idle that long while actually playing, especially without noticing that Mario is sinking, this can lead to an unwelcome surprise if the player enters a battle and then steps away from the game (since in a turn-based game like these, normally there is no penalty for waiting indefinitely on one’s own turn).
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