During the introduction of the Mecha-Bowser Mayhem minigame in Mario Power Tennis, Bowser’s Castle is seen in the distance beyond the court before the camera tilts down and it is not seen again for the rest of the minigame.

Zooming in on the castle reveals that it is based on the design of Bowser’s Keep as seen in Super Mario RPG, a rare example of that game being referenced outside of an RPG context.

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

Original illustration from the “Favorite Mario Kart Character” message from Swapdoodle, whereby Nikki, the host of the program, draws Peach in response to the question.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: image, Skyevlyn

In Mario Kart Wii, the giant Luigi statue in Luigi Circuit has collision that exists purely to provide a realistic interaction if a player for some reason decides to throw bananas at it, and is not relevant for gameplay otherwise.

Most notably, the pipe into which Luigi’s left leg is going actually has an opening in the collision, allowing the bananas to correctly fall inside it, despite the hole not actually being modeled and instead being merely painted onto the statue. Note the bananas falling down into the pipe next to Luigi’s leg.

This amount of effort is likely to go completely unnoticed since a regular player is unlikely to throw even one banana at the statue, much less enough to notice how detailed the interaction is.

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

Top: collecting all 120 Shine Sprites in Super Mario Sunshine rewards the player with a low-quality image of many of the game’s characters standing around in front of the curtain in Casino Delfino. The image is not actually rendered in-engine and saved as a lossy compressed picture in the files, causing many of the details to be hard to distinguish.

Bottom: an in-engine recreation of the image created by Super Mario Sunshine dataminer AngryMax, made by placing all of the same NPCs in the same positions, allowing the scene to be viewed in greater detail. Please zoom in to view.

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

Modified version of Super Mario Galaxy artwork where Mario normally looks off to the side, changed to make him look directly at the viewer, seen in a 2007 issue of the UK GamesMaster magazine.

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

Footage of a Flash game available on the official European website for the Game Boy Advance version of Donkey Kong Country in 2003. Note how Donkey Kong has no animation whatsoever and merely slides around instead of moving naturally.

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Left: rare official art of Mario used on a 1994 officially licensed greeting card from Japan.

Right: interestingly, this artwork was referenced in a set of drawings made for official 2017 Japan Post stamps, whereby Mario is seen in a similar chair next to a similar lamp, reading a letter very clearly implied to be from Peach (as she is seen writing a letter in a different illustration in the set).

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

In Donkey Kong Bananza, Donkey Kong can create grass in some specific locations, as shown in the footage. Note new grass appearing whenever he performs a Hand Slap.

The underlying reason for this is that a Hand Slap slightly modifies the height of surrounding soft terrain. Whenever grass, dirt or other soft terrain is used to cover indestructible terrain, a layer of it is put underneath the indestructible part that protrudes upward in the parts where it is meant to be visible.

After destroying the grass and then using the Hand Slap, the underlying layer is brought back to the surface above the indestructible part, causing Donkey Kong to appear to have the magical ability to create grass.

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Various original drawings of Mario, Luigi and Peach from an officially licensed 1987 Mario/Zelda activity book from Japan.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: History of Hyrule

A Super Mario World reference was added specifically to the Nintendo Switch version of Undertale, whereby getting to the end of the Mad Mew Mew battle without being hit once will cause her to say “That was Gnarly! Tubular! Way Cool! Awesome! Groovy! Mondo! Outrageous! Funky!”, listing the eight levels of the Special Zone of Super Mario World (bottom).

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