In Super Paper Mario, Green, the second bridge guard of Yold Town, only has a single mandatory interaction. He activates the bridge and then asks Mario what his favorite color is. If Mario says it is red, Green will get mad and throw him out; if Mario says it is green or both red and green, Green will accuse him of lying or being spineless and also throw him out.

That is most players’ extent of interaction with Green. However, there is additional depth to the character if he is visited in later chapters. He will be continuously rude to Mario and, surprisingly, Peach (top row), presumably due to pink being interpretable as a shade of red. He will not say anything to them except demand them to leave for the entire game until the postgame, where he will reluctantly recognize them as heroes.

However, he will talk to Bowser and Luigi in a friendly way, presumably due to Bowser’s shell being green. Of particular interest is the fact that he will have new dialogue for them (which for most of the game can only be heard as Bowser since Luigi only joins late in the game) in nearly every chapter, while not having new dialogue for Mario and Peach. All of this is surprisingly involved for a character most players would expect to exist for a single gag.

Source: dialoguetree

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Paper Mario contains a curious “pseudo-softlock” whereby the game will look as though it has become unplayable and will require a reset to continue playing, but then serendipitously fix itself two minutes later.

In Dry Dry Desert, one of the screens contains a Tweester tornado and a few item blocks. If Mario hits one of the item blocks with Kooper with correct timing while the Tweester approaches, he will become stuck near the block in mid-air, as seen in the footage. No inputs will work at this point, so that it will seem as though resetting the console is necessary.

However, waiting around 2 minutes will result in the Tweester making a full loop around the area (skipped in the footage for brevity to the point where it approaches again), causing Mario and Kooper to be caught in it properly and get sent to another area, where inputs will work again and the game will continue normally as though nothing happened.

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

Extremely rare officially licensed 1991 Super Mario Bros. T-shirt depicting Mario performing a skateboarding trick (top: regular orientation, bottom: rotated to get a better view of Mario).

Note that the bees are the Bunbun enemies from Super Mario Land and the Moai heads reference the background of the Easton kingdom in the same game.

Source: threadzbylucky

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Many games have a demo mode whereby footage of gameplay is shown if the player idles on the title screen for a certain amount of time. Most such games include a few pieces of demo footage, sometimes a single one but usually not more than 5-6 different recordings.

Wario Land 4, however, has an absurdly high amount of various demos that can play on the title screen, showing 14 out of the game’s 18 levels and 2 out of the game’s 6 bosses. As such, simply by idling long enough on the title screen, it is literally possible to see most of the game’s locations before even playing it.

The total runtime of all demos together is over 19 minutes, which does not count the time waiting for the demo to start after restarting the title sequence.

Source: WhiteKhakis, YoshiKong

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Top: ever since development files for Super Mario 64 surfaced in 2020, the only known early version of the Scuttlebug enemy was this one, called “Walker” internally, which was shown for about 2 seconds in early 1996 pre-release footage.

Note the bizarre corrupted eyes and single visible leg; this is actually how it appeared in-game at the time. The other three legs are present but are mistakenly only set to be visible when the Walker is viewed from behind, leaving only one leg visible from the front.

Bottom: recently, a slightly later version of the Scuttlebug, named “Spider”, was found in the files. The footage shows Spider being inserted into the finished game. Unlike the Walker, it has dark eyes and limbs, but interestingly, still suffers from the same leg visibility problem. Note how its legs turn invisible when it is directly facing Mario in the footage.

Source: StudioXK7321

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Super Mario Strikers is well-known for giving Mario characters a more aggressive demeanor than they normally have in most of their other appearances.

However, the finished game’s depictions are actually toned down compared to the prototype version. In that version, characters looked even more angry as seen in the footage, including during moments in which they have been changed to look happy in the finished game (such as running into the field at the start of the match).

Source: GrafCedricVonLeuchtenberg

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Top: there is a line of 5 coins on one of the slopes of the starting area of Dire, Dire Docks in Super Mario 64. It is a relatively bizarre feature of the level, being the only such line of coins on a slope and the only point of interest on the upper slopes of the vortex area in general.

Bottom: possibly due to this bizarre placement, there has been an oversight in the process of adapting Dire, Dire Docks in Super Mario 64 DS whereby the coins are still in the level, but the actual slope was changed to go above them rather than below them. The footage uses a model editor to show that the coins are only visible from out of bounds instead of from within the playable area. As such, they are not collectable without glitches.

This continues a trend of so-called “impossible coins” started by the original Super Mario 64 itself, whereby some coins are mistakenly placed inside solid landmasses (though the name merely refers to their unavailability during regular gameplay; with complex enough glitches these can of course be collected by clipping out of bounds).

Source: Really_Tall

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In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, a glitch will occur if Baby Mario drinks water, then Baby Luigi hits him with a hammer, whereupon adult Mario and Luigi immediately leave and reenter the screen.

If this is performed, Baby Mario’s orientation will be locked. Instead of walking around normally, he will be sliding while always facing the same direction, as seen in the footage. This persists even after spitting out all the water, and will last until Baby Mario and Baby Luigi either leave the screen or are reunited with the adults.

Source: jbbajangamer

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A relatively well-known quirk of Super Mario Sunshine is the interaction between Mario losing his hat and talking to NPCs. Losing his hat (through getting it stolen by the Swipin’ Stu enemies) will make Mario quickly lose health (commonly assumed to be due to heat stroke from the high temperatures on Isle Delfino; supported by the fact that he will not lose health when in water).

When talking to an NPC without the hat, Mario will lose health during the conversation and eventually die, which the NPC will completely ignore, and simply continue talking.

However, there is a variant of this interaction that makes the NPC appear even more rude. If Mario talks to an NPC with a set facing direction from behind, as seen in the footage, the NPC will turn away from Mario’s body after he dies during the conversation, adding another layer of disrespect to the scenario.

Source: theeasteregghunter

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In Vanilla Dome 2 in Super Mario World, there is an isolated square of ground tiles that is relatively easy to clip in due to Empty Blocks above it able to push Mario inside, as shown in the beginning of the footage.

Inside this area, physics work in an unusual manner, whereby many objects have no friction and keep sliding back and forth between the walls indefinitely, as shown with Yoshi, a Buzzy Beetle shell, and a P-Switch. Depending on the momentum the object had when it was released, it will slide around at different speeds.

Source: MrPyt1001

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