While the vast majority of GameCube and Wii games use generic screens without any particular effort put into their presentation for their “disk read error” messages (due to only very few players ever encountering them), Donkey Konga inserts a humorous reference to the original Donkey Kong arcade into its disk read error.

The bottom of the screen includes Donkey Kong’s defeated sprite from the victory animation of the 100m level of the arcade.

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

WarioWare: D.I.Y. contains some sample comics that were completely replaced in non-Japanese versions of the game, instead of being translated. One of them is this comic about a ghost exchange student, which was replaced with an unrelated comic about a smooth cactus.

Note that the English translation here is created by a dataminer; the original comic is only available in Japanese. It is possible that the comic was not used for Western audiences due to depicting a ghost with a triangle headband and surrounded by hitodama (ghost flames), both specific to Japanese cultural depictions of spirits. However, the substance of the joke itself (a ghost being upset due to receiving a warm welcome instead of people being scared) is still understandable to worldwide audiences.

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Unused enemy found in the data of Super Mario Bros., with the unused ID of 13. Due to being unfinished, its graphics are glitched and appear as a scrambled Buzzy Beetle.

The enemy is immobile and turns into a regular red Koopa Troopa when stomped. Development files for Super Mario All-Stars surfaced later that contained part of the original game’s source code; according to those, this enemy would have been related to Lakitu, as the Lakitu has unused code where it would have thrown these enemies instead of Spinies.

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

Unused “Mario Attractor Area” object found in the files of Super Mario Galaxy. Whenever Mario is shot out of a cannon, this object would have made him uncontrollably attracted to it, making his flight path curve so that he lands in it.

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1994 Mario supplement booklet for a Japanese magazine, featuring original artwork on the front and back covers.

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

Officially licensed 2024 Super Mario merchandise collection featuring a spelling mistake on the packaging: the word “Villains” is spelled as “Villians”. In addition to being very visible on the front of the outer packaging, the mistake is repeated several times on the smaller tags and pieces of packaging inside the box as well, and the word “villains” is not spelled correctly a single time.

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

1986 Japanese print ad for officially licensed Super Mario Bros. ramen noodles, featuring original artwork.

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In the “Grab Bag” minigame in Mario Party 2, control is taken away from the players and the characters all walk to predetermined locations when the timer runs out. If one of the characters is in the middle of jumping onto another in a precise manner when the minigame ends, it is possible to cause the minigame to never end.

The character that is being jumped on (Yoshi in the footage) will keep walking because all characters are programmed to walk until they are no longer being jumped on. However, the jumping character (Peach in the footage) will continue bouncing automatically without any player input. If the starting position was precise enough, this will last forever and the game must be reset to continue playing.

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

Prototype versions of officially licensed 1996 Super Mario RPG plushes, from Japan. While the finished versions of the plushes are already extremely rare, these prototypes have never surfaced.

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In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the prompt for the “Invisible” status effect states “Invisible! Attacks will now miss!”. This makes it seem like all attacks would miss. This is then seemingly confirmed if the player uses it on Mario or his partner, which does cause every single enemy attack to no longer affect them.

However, there is an undocumented detail about the status that while all enemy attacks do in fact miss, not all of Mario’s attacks do. Special Moves like Earth Tremor, Art Attack (shown in the footage) and Supernova can still damage invisible enemies like normal, providing an easy way to ignore this status as long as the player knows about this property, which is never stated in-game.

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