In Donkey Kong 64, there is a cabin in Crystal Caves that has a rotating interior that can be activated with Simian Slam switches.

The collision of the walls while rotating is not terribly robust and can result in Donkey Kong simply phasing through the wall as it is rotating, ending up in the void outside the room. From there, the only way to continue playing is by exiting the level through the menu, as the room itself is no longer reachable.

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In Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, there is a platform in Gloomy Woods that appears as a completely ordinary ramp, but has a glitchy property whereby Mario and Luigi will get stuck on specific frames of their jump animations as long as Paper Mario is not on the ramp.

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In Super Mario 64 DS, Wario’s “Psyche Out!” minigame consists of trying to guess a card while it is turned away from the viewer. The ostensible conceit of the minigame is that the card is very slightly translucent and allows the front to be seen through the back, however…

Every few rounds, the front is simply not visible through the back at all, and the card is actually not determined until the player chooses what the card is supposed to be, at which point it will be randomly either correct or incorrect. This can be verified by using savestates to attempt a single such round many times, with the card turning out to be different based on the player’s choice. As such, the game is about 2/3 skill-based (actually seeing through the translucent cards) and 1/3 luck-based in the random rounds.

If the player gets a high score of 15, the message “PSYCHIC!” appears, referencing the fact that it is unlikely to get that far without either extreme luck, cheating, or actual psychic abilities.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SM64DS (NA, DS)

During the “Tall Trunk’s Purple Coin Slide” mission of Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario must make his way down the slide and collect 100 out of 140 Purple Coins on it.

Since the track is curved inward and many of the coins are in the middle of the track so that Mario collects them without any active input, it is actually quite difficult to purposefully avoid every single coin.

If Mario makes it to the end with 0 coins, the Gearmo will question whether the player did this on purpose (which is exceedingly likely), admit that this is impressive, and then kill Mario anyway.

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Original painting used for the 1991 “We Just Signed The Biggest Names In Entertainment” trade magazine ad for the Philips CD-i, wherein the company boasted having licensed rights for these major Nintendo franchises for their system.

Note that only Mario, Link, and Zelda’s planned games ended up being released (Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, respectively); the planned game featuring Donkey Kong was cancelled.

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Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains a number of leftover files from development, alongside test for an area used as a dialogue test zone. That area contains a variety of bizarre dialogue for NPCs, such as Toads saying things like “crab crab mochi crab crab crab” and “3”, as seen in this earlier post.

One of the NPCs encountered would have been the Honey Queen, who would have said four text boxes in sequence, reading
Queen? Queen?
I am the queen
Uhuhu
Ohohoho

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In Super Mario Bros. 3, whenever Mario collects the 100th coin and his coin counter resets, there is a single frame in which the counter displays “64”.

This is because internally, the number of coins is stored in the hexadecimal system, and on every frame, a function is performed to convert that number into decimal for the purposes of displaying it to the player. As such, the “true” representation of the number of coins may be e.g. 2F while displaying it to the user as 47.

100 in decimal is 64 in hexadecimal. The reason it flashes 64 for a single frame is that due to an oversight in the code, on the frame where the counter resets, only the “reset counter” code is run while the “convert to decimal” code isn’t. As such, the player gets a single-frame glimpse at the “true” number before it starts being converted again on the next frame.

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Officially licensed 2019 Lakitu-themed travel hanger pouch from Japan with a whimsical design.

In its completely folded state, it appears as a Lakitu’s Cloud (top left). Opening it shows it is made out of two compartments, and a Lakitu-themed hanger that folds out (top right).

It is also possible to fold out only the hanger while closing the pouch itself, whereupon it will appear as Lakitu riding his cloud (bottom).

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In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, enemies can hold badges in battle. While only a fraction of the game’s badges is actually ever held by enemies during normal gameplay, all of them have code for being held, including correct effects as applied to the enemies (for example, Happy Flower restores FP to the only enemy in the entire game that uses FP, the Flower Fuzzy).

When Mario wears the All or Nothing badge, the effect is the following: if the player correctly executes an Action Command, the damage of Mario’s attack is increased by 1; if the Action Command is failed, the attacks instead do no damage.

Interestingly, if enemies are made to wear that badge, their attacks always do no damage (note the little “does no damage” star in the right screenshot). This means that internally, enemies are considered to always fail their Action Commands, which from an in-universe standpoint implies that there could theoretically be more powerful, “successful” versions of their attacks that we simply never get to see.

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

In multiplayer mode in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, all players are able to enter a bubble by pressing a specific button. If only one player who is not in a bubble is left, and that player enters a bubble on the same frame as touching a Goal Pole, that player’s character will be erased from existence.

Note how Mario disappears in the footage and Player 1 is left controlling a seemingly empty bubble. Since there is now nothing left that can pop either of the bubbles, and the game does not proceed with the end-of-level sequence, the game becomes unplayable and needs to be reset to continue.

Humorously, the bubbles even float offscreen, which they normally cannot do since they are supposed to bounce off the edges of the screen, and leave the field of view completely empty.

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