Trade magazine showcase for a line of cancelled 1999 “Mario’s World” Nintendo action figures.

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In Donkey Kong 64, the Kremling Krusha is an unlockable character in multiplayer mode, but cannot be used in single-player mode. If the code is modified to change to him in the regular adventure, it is revealed that he has a number of unique animations that are never seen in multiplayer mode, and which may suggest he could have been intended to be playable in single-player mode as well.

The footage shows Krusha’s unique unseen idle animation, whereby he struggles to not fall asleep.

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In Super Mario 64, the “Blast Away the Wall” star is notorious for being difficult to find for some players, particularly without guides and who do not immediately infer that this relates to shooting Mario at a wall from a cannon.

There is an alternate way a player could discover where the star is, though due to its situational nature, it is impossible to say whether any players have actually discovered the star this way in practice. If the player reaches the top of the fortress and then looks down from the top, paying close attention, it becomes apparent that the breakable walls are missing, and the star can actually be seen inside one of them (directly to the left of Mario’s head in the footage).

Of course, this is simply due to the fact that the regular walls are course geometry, which is rendered at all times, while the breakable parts of the wall are separate objects and have a finite rendering radius to conserve resources. The top of the fortress is far enough away to cause the breakable walls to stop rendering.

If a player notices this and tries to jump down to get the star, the walls will reappear and the star will once again not be visible, which may be taken as a hint that the walls can be destroyed.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SM64 (NA, N64)

It was recently discovered that the Spin Dash move from Paper Mario has actually been there, unused, in the files of Super Paper Mario all along. The move is functional (as a move activated by Dashell, merely deactivated in-game) and requires rewriting only one line of code to insert back into the game.

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In a 2010 interview, Koji Kondo related a story of how when he met Paul McCartney of the Beatles, Paul and his wife immediately sang the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme unprompted, which was a very proud moment of him to be recognized in such a way by such a prominent musician.

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Frenetic advertising video that was played on screens nonstop in the Nintendo New York store (known as the Nintendo World store at the time) in 2005.

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Unique 3D animated segment from a 2005 Japanese commercial for the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country 3, showing Ellie the Elephant using her water-shooting ability to save Donkey Kong from a lion.

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A special feature in a 1986 issue of the Japanese Famitsu magazine had a yogi (yoga practitioner) develop yoga poses based on video game characters. A pose he describes as “advanced” is the Super Mario jumping pose, based on his sprite from Super Mario Bros.

According to the yogi, the Super Mario pose strengthens the legs and fists through mental concentration.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: Famitsu (Japan), Issue 3, 1986

In Level 7-1 of New Super Mario Bros., striped swinging poles can be found in a bonus room. If Mario times his swing in such a way that he is blocked by a cloud platform, he will enter a glitched state where he will stay on the platform but move as though he was still holding on to the pole instead.

Note him swinging back and forth and climbing on seemingly nothing. Letting go of the pole will make Mario teleport underneath it, as seen at the end of the footage.

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

In Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, the bonus missions in each mansion all play their own arrangement of the same song (the “Gradual Infiltration theme”). The arrangements use the same leitmotif but in a style that reflects the regular music from the respective mansion.

However, interestingly, there is one mansion with two main music tracks, being Old Clockworks. The aboveground part of the mansion has an antique-sounding theme with a harpsichord lead, while the underground part, Clockwork Ruins, is Egyptian-themed.

The bonus mission of Old Clockworks, Outlandish Interruption, plays the Gradual Infiltration theme in the style of the aboveground mansion in-game. However, an unused track exists in the game’s files that is an arrangement of it in the style of the Clockwork Ruins, which is heard in this post.

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