A Super Mario variety blog.
Screenshots, photos, sprites, gifs, scans and more from all around the world of Super Mario Bros.
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Top: a turnaround view of PlanetDisk, an unused planetoid found in the files of Super Mario Galaxy.
Bottom: it actually appears in concept art featured in the official Prima guide for the game as a small sketch in the background of the Starman Fort concept art (another area that exists in the files but isn’t used in the final game), suggesting PlanetDisk was also a very early location.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Peardian
For the entirety of its existence, the Mario series has been extremely averse to using password save systems, despite these being very common in the 1980s and 1990s. The Mario games that could not provide the player with a battery save instead had no save system at all, and relied on secrets to let players skip ahead on repeat playthroughs (like the Warp Zones in the Super Mario Bros. games).
Interestingly, there have been only five games in the extended Mario franchise that used passwords to let the players continue where they left off, and three of them were originally never intended to be Mario games to begin with, and instead retooled as such during development. The remaining two are licensed edutainment games produced by an American studio with very little oversight by Nintendo.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
During the development of Donkey Kong 64, some characters’ final high-quality models (right) were not finished by the time they needed to be used in promotional material, so temporary models (left) were used instead that were a unique hybrid of in-game models and promotional models.
Their polygonal structure was based on the in-game models so they looked very angular, but they were given the same high-resolution textures as intended for the eventual promotional renders, giving them a bizarre “in-between” appearance. Note also that Tiny Kong’s hair used a high-quality model while the rest of her body did not.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source
In Super Mario 3D Land, performing a long jump and bouncing off of an enemy gives the playable character a speed boost.
When combined with a Super Star (which enhances speed) and the fact that enhanced speed can be built up even further when only touching the ground for one or two frames between jumps, this can be used as Kitsune Luigi to achieve immense speed and finish a level in a fraction of the regular time, as seen in the footage.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: KingBoo1997
Design from an extremely rare officially licensed 1991 “Jettin’ Mario” T-shirt, featuring Mario on a jet ski surrounded by Super Mario Land enemies.
Ahead of him is a Gunion octopus enemy, above him is a Bunbun bee enemy, and behind him is a Yurarin Boo seahorse enemy (though spitting water instead of the usual fire).
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: CoolBoxArt
The Wii Phone (left), known from various speculative social media posts and videos around 2008, is not actually a completely original idea made by fans, but is rather based on a real patent filed for a gaming phone by Nintendo in 2001 (right), which of course never materialized into a product.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: nintendostuff
1991 print ad for a Kool-Aid/Nintendo cross-promotion, featuring original illustrations of various Mario characters and Link.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: vgartandtidbits
In Super Mario 64 DS, Wario’s unique ability is to be able to destroy black brick blocks, which contain some of the game’s stars. However, Yoshi can actually clip through any black brick block simply by collecting the 100th coin while above it and then performing a sideways somersault while collecting the star that spawns.
The block will be the correct distance away to be intangible when the star is collected (blocks in both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS only have collision when the player character is very close to them) and collision is not turned on during the star obtaining cutscene, causing Yoshi to fall through the block and get the item or activate the switch (as seen in the footage) inside.
While a lengthy and cumbersome process to set up, this completely obsoletes the need for Wario.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Really_Tall
Previously, I have posted about a mysterious screenshot published on the IGN forums in 2000 claiming to be a preview of a Yoshi game for the Game Boy Advance. While being unrealistic in terms of the smoothness of the graphics and usage of dynamic shadows, it was claimed to be sent in by “a Japanese correspondent”.
It has been discovered that the image was in fact taken from a mock-up in an issue of the Japanese Famitsu 64 magazine that was only recently scanned. While it was generally assumed that the picture was fake to begin with, this is finally definitive proof that it was never official.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SMWikiOfficial
