A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
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Early concept art of a scenario for New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey, where a cat is holding a Power Moon in its mouth and Mario tries to obtain it by beckoning the cat to come closer. Nothing even remotely like this scenario occurs in the finished game.
Note that early artwork shows Peach being present in many scenarios in New Donk City (note her being visible cut off at the left edge of the image), suggesting that she was at some point thought to accompany Mario in that area, or be a more important character for that segment.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Donkey Kong Country, a bizarre glitch can happen when riding Enguarde and collecting an Animal Token. Whenever three matching Animal Tokens are collected, a bonus stage featuring that Animal Buddy is briefly entered to collect tokens for extra lives.
However, if the Animal Buddy (Expresso in the footage) clips through the ground and dies during the bonus stage, the game will not return to the regular gameplay prior to collecting the token. Instead, it will restart the game (start the beginning of the first stage, Jungle Hijinxs) using the current characters, which includes Enguarde.
As shown in the footage, this results in Enguarde being controllable in a non-water stage. Due to the game never expecting this to happen, Enguarde still treats the environment as water, allowing him to swim through air.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: RetroTortuga
In the Spin-Dig Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, a large square planetoid is featured in the second mission where the objective is to drill inside to collect five Silver Stars. The planetoid forces Mario into a 2D plane so that he can only drill it from the sides of the square.
However, there is an extremely small decorative round planetoid near the large square one. If Mario is able to reach it via skillful jumps and tricks, he can jump back towards the square planetoid and drill into it from a direction perpendicular to the plane he is usually forced into.
The footage shows the results. Mario will dig all the way through the planetoid but not actually stop drilling due to this being an unintended direction, and continue drilling through space for a while before dying.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Shadow64_SMG2
Left: one of the releases of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 features a box art that seemingly has very little to do with Donkey Kong, except for the inclusion of a ladder and hammer. The clown and the monsters do not seem to depict anything that actually appears in the game.
Right: it turns out that the artwork is simply a redrawn version of key art for a different game, “Mr. Do!’s Castle”, which does star a clown. It is possible that the artist chose to redraw that picture specifically due to the prominence of the ladder and hammer, believing it to be a “close enough” rendition of the main gameplay of Donkey Kong.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: image: 1, 2, info: MarioSonicFan_1992
In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, blending new drinks at the Starbeans Cafe causes E. Gadd to appear in seven different scenes, one for each drink. However, the game’s files reveal that the scenes were actually meant to each feature a different Nintendo character cameo, with E. Gadd merely being the first. The other six would have been Wario, Fox McCloud, Captain Olimar, Samus Aran, an unnamed Excitebike racer, and Link.
The game contains finished graphics, animations, and even fully translated English dialogue for all of those scenes, suggesting they were scrapped late in development. However, it is missing other cutscene data such as character movement, timing, and the animations for Mario and Luigi.
The footage shows a fan recreation of the Wario scene using all available in-game data and filling in the gaps with reasonable educated guesses based on the game’s other cutscenes, by YouTube user SeanMacProductions. Please note again that Wario’s sprites and animations and the dialogue are official, while Mario and Luigi’s reactions and the timing of the movements are not.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SeanMacProductions
Mario Artist: Polygon Studio was an entry in the Mario Artist series for the Japan-only 64DD add-on for the Nintendo 64 that allowed users to create their own 3D models and insert them into scenes.
In a 2003 issue of the Japanese Nintendo Dream magazine, a tutorial was published on how to create a model of a specific Shy Guy, who has been a popular recurring character in the magazine’s long-running “Dream Drunker” comic (famous for his gimmick of never saying anything except variations of “HO~”).
A reference image of the Shy Guy riding a minecart and the finished model are provided. Note that the model also includes one of the exercising men from the opening of Mario Paint, who also appear in the Mario Artist games.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: ND (Japan), Issue 89, 2003
In Maro Golf: Toadstool Tour, bouncy mushrooms can affect the physics of the ball in unusual, glitched ways.
If the ball is able to rest against the stem of the mushroom (as seen in the beginning of the footage, with Boo needing to clip into the mushroom to hit the ball) then it will perform several loops in mid-air after being launched, which should be physically impossible.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: bluekandy
