Top: in the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (though oddly not in the Nintendo 3DS version), waiting near the front of the train in the Fright Train Flight level for 5 minutes will cause a ghostly face to appear underneath the tracks.

Bottom: extracting the texture from the files reveals that it is the “dead Boo” texture, used for when Boos are defeated by shining a light at them, only stretched to a large size. As such, it appears that the train is haunted by what is technically a dead ghost, or a ghost of a ghost.

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

In Super Mario Maker, Yoshi enters a glitched state in the New Super Mario Bros. U game style if he touches spikes underwater while swallowing an enemy.

Left: Yoshi’s orientation will be locked. In the footage, he is always facing left no matter what direction he is moving in.

Right: in addition to this, only Yoshi’s legs and eyes will be animated, while his torso and the rest of his head will remain static. Note the extremely stilted running animation due to only the legs moving, and the bizarre idle animation whereby Yoshi appears to do a little dance.

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

Full collection of officially licensed 1996 Yoshi’s Island cards from Japan.

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

Super Mario Sunshine contains an unused object that is a sandbox with terrain that is not pre-modeled, but rather generated by the engine with variable parameters, and could technically be made into an infinite variety of shapes (using a technique similar to e.g. the puzzle game Wetrix for the Nintendo 64).

For an unknown reason, despite this being a powerful tool to create terrain and which could potentially have been used to make Mario change the terrain dynamically, it goes unused in the final game.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: sunn0

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, during the post-Chapter 5 Bowser intermission in Twilight Town, there is an extremely difficult to activate dialogue from within the locked inn.

The exclamation point indicator that shows the dialogue can be activated only appears when Bowser is standing in an extremely precise location near the door, so that the majority of the players would simply approach the door, see that it is seemingly not interactive, and leave.

For many years, the “National Not-Get-Eaten-By-Monsters Day” dialogue was known about due to datamining, but presumed unused due to how bizarrely precise the positioning is.

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

Original artwork for the 1996 Nintendo 64 launch announcement print ad, from the personal archives of the ad’s artist, Stephen Peringer (please zoom in to view details).

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

Top: in a 1995 developer interview for Yoshi’s Island, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned that during development, Baby Mario would transform into a full-grown Mario when collecting the Super Star. In the finished version, he transforms into “Powerful Mario”, a form of Baby Mario with a cape, instead.

Bottom: internal files which surfaced in 2020 revealed the actual unused graphics of the full-grown Mario form that Miyamoto was talking about in the interview.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: shmuplations, sprites

In the finished version of Super Mario Kart, the award ceremony is only displayed when the player has achieved first place in a Grand Prix. However, the game’s prototype version has alternate versions of the award ceremony for placing second and third.

Interestingly, these do not feature the flying Cheep Cheep from the regular ceremony. Above, the second place variation is seen, which actually features a Super Koopa from Super Mario World. The first place winner (which in this case in not the player character) then shoots the Super Koopa with a champagne cork, causing it to spin out.

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

Yoshi’s New Island is one of the many games that contains the hidden Totaka’s Song Easter egg, due to Kazumi Totaka being the sound director for the game.

Here, the way to hear it is to wait at the World 6 screen for five minutes. The sound file in this post starts about 13 seconds before the Easter egg and includes one last loop of the map music before it activates.

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

Development files for Yoshi’s Island contain this bizarre text that appears to be someone’s personal account of buying a TV (translated from Japanese in the image).

What this is doing inside the files, and whether it was ever meant to be used as part of development itself (such as e.g. as a test message) or whether it was completely unrelated and simply ended up there as a mistake, is unknown.

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