Splash page of a faint Mario head in a beret, labeled “FUTURE”, from the 1998 Nintendo Japan company report.

The head is taken from an official render for Mario Artist: Paint Studio for the Japan-only 64DD peripheral for the Nintendo 64, which was released in 1999 and as such was in the future relative to when the report was published.

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In Super Mario Bros. 3 (shown here in the Super Mario All-Stars version), Donut Blocks begin vibrating as soon as Mario touches them, but remain solid ground until he stands for them for about a second, after which they actually begin falling.

However, the fact that the vibrating Donut Blocks are solid ground applies only to Mario. Other objects such as enemies or items will fall right through them as soon as they start vibrating, as shown in the footage. As such, Mario can defeat any enemy walking on Donut Blocks simply by standing in front of it and letting it fall through the vibrating block.

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Officially licensed 1986 Super Mario Bros. jigsaw puzzle from Japan (top: illustration provided with the puzzle as visual aid, bottom: finished puzzle).

Notably, it depicts the Goombas with the blue palette seen in underground levels such as World 1-2 as being actually blue even in daylight, instead of merely being affected by the technical liminations of the underground palette.

This predates the introduction of Gloombas in Paper Mario (blue underground Goombas playing on the same idea that they actually look like that instead of simply being limited by the palette) by 14 years.

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Mario Kart Tour uses automatically-generated low-quality models to be used when drivers are too far away from the camera, made by simplifying the high-quality models with a rudimentary algorithm.

The driver most affected by this is Roy, whose low-quality model is completely mangled by the automatic simplification. His snout is crooked, part of his sunglasses is embedded in his head, and his bracelets are splintered into fragments.

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Top: the manual for Wario Blast contains a secret password. The tiny screenshot next to the section explaining passwords has the barely visible password “2264” already input. While one would logically assume that this is merely a regular password one would obtain during gameplay, this password is actually manual-only and is not given out by the game itself.

Bottom: while most passwords simply start off the game in a different level, this one starts the game at the beginning, but with all power-ups unlocked. Note how Wario is already riding the Moto (the bike he obtains as his last power-up) and can set several bombs with large explosions, while regularly he can only set a single bomb with a small explosion at the beginning of the game.

Note that playing through the game as both Wario and Bomberman and writing down their passwords reveals that Bomberman’s passwords are Wario’s, but reversed. As such, this allows the player to also figure out the password “4622” for the same effect, but playing as Bomberman instead. This one is not given anywhere at all, neither the game nor the manual, and relies entirely on pattern recognition to deduce.

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Officially licensed 2008 Dr. Mario boxer shorts.

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According to Rare engineer Paul Machacek, he had been working on a possible Donkey Kong Country port to the Virtual Boy in 1995. In a series of posts on his social media account, he reports that the only thing created for the project before it was abandoned was a “single horizontally scrolling jungle background with graphics lifted from DKC” and “Donkey Kong running around being surrounded by rat sprites taken from Battletoads on the Game Boy”.

Donkey Kong community DKVine has recreated the look of this prototype as accurately as possible based on Machacek’s descriptions, seen in the above image. Note Donkey Kong, visible between the palm trees in the top middle of the image, and the rats on the platforms.

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Mario Kart: Super Circuit is the only game in the Mario Kart series in which it is possible to “tire out” a pursuing Spiny Shell (known colloquially as a Blue Shell), causing it to give up chasing the player after a while.

In this game, the Spiny Shell will follow players at roughly their top speed and wait for them to slow down to hit them. If a player can keep up the same speed for long enough, the shell will give up the chase. In addition, hitting the shell with trailing items such an bananas or other shells also contributes to reducing its remaining “stamina”.

As such, the strategy when pursued by a Spiny Shell is to try to maintain top speed at all times and possibly collect enough items to hit it with to tire it out. This is starkly different from many following games, which encourage the player to slow down either to avoid being targeted at all, or to catch other players in the explosion if already targeted.

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Mini-feature on “Mario’s lesser-known friends and foes” from the 2026 Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition. It is unknown why these three in particular were chosen, though it might have been simply at random without any overarching theme.

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Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast concept art for a female Kremling character named Kressa/クレッサ (left), provided by Paon to Nintendo during the design phase of the game’s development. Nintendo’s character designers used this artwork to create Kalypso (right), which can be seen by their similar clothes and pose in the artwork.

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