In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, World Coin is a world that appears exlusively in the multiplayer Coin Battle mode. The second level of that world, Coin-2, is based on World 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. However, it does not actually feature the underground bonus room famously accessed via the last pipe before the first pit in that level.

Curiously, internally, the room actually does exist in the files, and is merely inaccessible. It is theorized that the reason the warp leading to it was removed is because the pipe was made into a fake pipe hiding a Star Coin so that Mario would have been shown to go down a fake pipe, potentially causing visual glitches as seen in the beginning of the footage.

The most notable part of this implementation of the bonus room is the amusing “twist”. The room gives the player enough time to collect the coins in the familiar Super Mario Bros. layout before revealing that there are very quickly moving coins coming out of the walls in various configurations (implemented with the same code as the “rolling hills” platforms seen in the rest of the game). It is very unfortunate that such a memorable setpiece relying on familiarity before adding a unique spin on it was unused in the finished game.

Source: GameArchitect

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Original illustration of Mario Golf from a 1999 issue of the Australian N64 Gamer magazine.

Source: N64 Gamer (AU), Issue 20, 1999

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Various unique illustrations from a 1988 Japanese guide for Super Mario Bros. 3.

Source: BrianCNerd

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In the second mission of Honeyhive Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy, a Mandibug is placed near the left side of the observation deck.

With absurdly unfortunate positioning, it is possible for the Mandibug to attack Mario in such a way that he hits various platforms that could technically stop his fall on the way down, but manages to fall off each of them before dying in a black hole.

Source: cowboyofspace17

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Bizarre 2005 British print ad for Yoshi Touch & Go, placing undue emphasis on blowing when the actual game is mostly controlled with the stylus. While blowing into the microphone does have a functionality (dissipate all clouds on screen), this is not crucial to the gameplay and only represents a very small fraction of the experience.

Source: NGC (UK), Issue 107, 2005

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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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