In Super Mario World, Mario’s punching animation when he is climbing on the backside of a fence suffers from a discoloration in his arm, whereby part of it is pink.

Top: this can be seen most easily as Fire Mario, since the pinkness of the arm does not change even when Mario’s shirt changes colors to white. The footage uses a glitch whereby a well-timed jump off a rotating panel can cause Mario to climb while mostly unobscured, showing the pink arm more clearly.

Bottom: this is an oversight resulting from how the game stores sprites. Each sprite is made out of 8x8 pixel squares (which are called “sprites” on the hardware level, not to be confused with the colloquial term “sprite” meaning the full image of a character) whereby each is assigned a palette. The two squares on the right, containing Mario’s arm, are accidentally assigned a different palette (also visible by the outlines becoming black instead of remaining brown).

Source: MrPyt1001, Kaizoman, Mister Man

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In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, in the build-up to Chilliam and Burnadette’s wedding, Mario and Luigi are asked to get a wedding cake. The friendly NPCs all suggest getting a cake from Slippenglide Island while the Extension Corps make a plan to lure Mario and Luigi into a trap with a brochure about a cake from Lottacoins Island.

Since getting the Lottacoins Island cake requires trusting the Extension Corps, most players are more likely to decide to get the Slippenglide Island cake instead, and would not see both cakes unless doing two playthroughs of the game.

Above are the models for the two cakes (top: Slippenglide, bottom: Lottacoins) extracted from the game’s files.

Source: DogToon64

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In Mario Kart 7, extreme attention to detail was added to the preview of the gliders if Peach is selected as a driver.

If the Paraglider or Swooper gliders are selected, which are attached to the kart at the corners, Peach’s ponytail will be normal. If however a glider is selected that is attached via a pole in the center, Peach’s ponytail will move subtly to the side as though being pushed aside by the glider, for extra realism.

Particularly bizarre is the fact that this is only present in the driver selection screen and not during gameplay. During gameplay Peach’s hair always blows slightly to the side while gliding, regardless of whether there is a pole behind her or not. So this detail was added specifically to make the preview look as good as possible.

Source: B_squo

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Packaging of an officially licensed 1996 Super Mario 64 jigsaw puzzle from Japan.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: WaveRace64

A panel from a 2017 issue of the official Futurama comic series (Issue 83, “Bendocchio!”) features a reference to the Mario series by including a couple consisting of a character who is almost identical to Mario except for a lack of an M emblem and an additional set of overall buttons, and a princess character who is very similar to Rosalina except recolored to Peach’s color scheme.

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

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, being Electrified is a purely beneficial status condition for anyone who receives it (whether it is Mario’s party or an enemy), as all it does is deal contact damage to whoever attacks that character with a non-ranged attack.

However, it turns out that in the game’s code, an unused functionality for Electrified exists that would have made it act more like the Paralysis status common in RPGs (e.g. like the Pokémon series games), whereby it would also have a chance of preventing the afflicted character from making a move on that turn. Note how in the footage, Mario and Goombella only briefly shake instead of being able to perform their attacks.

This actually explains an odd behavior in the game whereby enemies would sometimes use items to cure Electrified when it never needed to be cured in the first place (bottom image, dramatization from an earlier post explaining this phenomenon). These enemies must be acting upon a script written under the assumption that Electrified is still able to incure the Paralysis-like effect, which was not updated when the effect was removed during development.

The Spiky Goomba in the scenario means well, he is simply acting on outdated information.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SilverGames136

Extremely rare officially licensed 1981 Donkey Kong arcade foil balloon, featuring a unique redrawn version of the cabinet side artwork with additional detail and shading.

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The 2D segments of Super Mario Odyssey feature a quality-of-life mechanic common in modern platformers whereby a grace period is given to Mario after running off a ledge during which he can still jump even though he is not touching the ground, to make platforming easier. This is called “coyote time” in game development, referring to the Looney Tunes cartoons featuring Wile E. Coyote, where he would often run off a cliff but remain suspended in mid-air without falling down.

The factors governing the amount of coyote time afforded to Mario are complex and based on all manners of speed and position variables, so it is not consistent how much of it the player can expect in any given situation. The footage shows one of the most gratuitous amounts of coyote time that has been documented in the game, afforded when Mario performs a crouch-jump and grazes a ledge on the way down, whereby he is able to perform a completely physics-defying save.

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

In 2015, the official Rayman Twitter account posted three images featuring parodies of Mario-related Nintendo games featuring Rayman in Mario and Luigi outfits.

Top: a parody of the Donkey Kong arcade.
Middle: a parody of Super Smash Bros.
Bottom: a parody of Luigi’s Mansion.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: 1, 2, 3

The recently released Nintendo Switch Online version of Donkey Kong 64 applies some emulator-level patches to the game to make it more playable than the famously glitched Wii U Virtual Console version, including adding carefully calibrated lag to make the emulation as accurate as possible to the Nintendo 64 hardware, and other enhancements.

One inexplicable enhancement, however, is “conditional grape darkening” introduced in Lanky’s shooting minigame in Hideout Helm. This is the only place in the game where the graphic for Lanky’s grapes has been darkened considerably through a patch included in the NSO version. Note that this place features a lot of grape-shooting, but Lanky can shoot a lot of grapes literally everywhere else in the game as well if the player wishes, so singling out this one spot is particularly bizarre.

Top: how the grapes appear during regular gameplay.
Middle: how they appear during that one minigame.
Bottom: a side-by-side comparison.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Ballaam, Zorulda