In Super Mario Land 2, the most efficient way for Mario to move is to duck on every eighth frame while running, which provides marginally higher speed than running normally.
The footage shows Mario moving through Wario’s castle with maximum efficiency.
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Various illustrations from an officially licensed 1985 Super Mario Bros. activity book, featuring nonstandard designs for many of the characters.
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Filenames for stickers used on the official Japanese site for Mario Kart World reveal that the internal names for some of the tracks are drastically different from the finished names, and even seemingly indicate that they were originally planned to be remakes of retro tracks before being turned into completely original tracks.
Above are the tracks whose internal names do not match either their English or Japanese names. Note how Moo Moo Meadows was seemingly originally intended to be Moo Moo Farm from Mario Kart 64, Faraway Oasis was intended to be DK’s Jungle Parkway from Mario Kart 64, or how Starview Peak was intended to be Rosalina’s Ice World from Mario Kart 7.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: 1: gur_madness, 2
A well-known glitch in Donkey Kong Country 2 is the Castle Crush glitch, whereby it is possible to put down a barrel on the moving floor in the Castle Crush level and pick it up at the same time as it explodes, with the Kong holding seemingly nothing. This can cause all manners of corruption in the level, including crashing the game or deleting save data.
Interestingly, even exiting out of the level after performing the glitch does not actually save the player from its effects. In the footage, the player escapes Castle Crush only to find that animal transformation barrels now unceremoniously kill the Kongs instead.
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Mario & Luigi: Brothership contain Bouncy Blooms, platforms that cause Mario and Luigi to enter a helicopter spin similar to tornadoes in Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Galaxy.
If Mario and Luigi land from a spin in such a way that Luigi lands exactly on the edge of a Question Block, Mario will be unable to move too far without Luigi and will get teleported to his position. However, at that point, neither Mario nor Luigi will be able to move, with Mario becoming stuck inside Luigi’s body as seen in the footage.
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In Yoshi’s Story, the dragons that the Yoshis can ride in levels 3-1 and 6-4 do not have any proper names in most languages, being named only as “Dragons” with a color qualifier.
The only exception to this is German, which actually lists a unique name for the red dragon that swims through lava in level 6-4 in Nintendo of Europe’s official guide for the game, being “Lawawa”.
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In Donkey Kong Bananza, Donkey Kong whistles a tune when calming down Odd Rock in the beginning of the game. This tune actually harmonizes with the Donkey Kong main theme, first heard in the NES version of Donkey Kong, and then remixed as the main theme of Donkey Kong Country.
Whether the harmonization was intended (likely, given the abundance of hidden musical references in the game) or is a notable coincidence is unknown.
The sound in this post overlays Donkey Kong’s whistling with a rendition of the theme provided by Twitter user “TheStaticCling”.
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Various extremely early concept art sketches from the design process of Super Mario Odyssey, seen in a 2018 Nintendo of Japan promotional booklet.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: History of Hyrule