Officially licensed 1991 Mario golf club cover from Japan.
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Officially licensed 1991 Mario golf club cover from Japan.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source
Top: many models found in development files for Super Mario 64 that surfaced in 2020 are present in an extremely fragmented state in their source files, requiring manual assembly and the addition of assets from other places in the code to regain their intended appearance. This is how the early model for the penguins, named "Ping" internally, appeared in the files originally. Note the near unrecognizable state of the penguin.
Bottom: the model after being properly assembled, assigned the correct textures, and placed in a level in-game.
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In Donkey Kong Country, the Kongs are able to balance on a moving steel keg after throwing it if they manage to jump on top of it. Doing it near the exit of a level results in a glitch where the playable Kong (Donkey Kong in the footage) will become detached from the keg and get stuck at the top of the screen in the balancing animation.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Source: twitter.com user "RainDingRandom"
Officially licensed 1988 T-shirt depicting Mario skateboarding.
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Concept art for Daisy's dress in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: twitter.com user "smbmovie"
Super Mario Galaxy contains an early version of the Tox Box enemy in its files that has crudely drawn faces on each side, similar to the original Super Mario 64 design of the same enemy, instead of the finished version's modeled Thwomp-like faces. Above is an animation of it being rotated, in a manner similar to how it might have rotated during gameplay.
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Wario: Master of Disguise contains this background that is only used in a debug room, and appears to depict a scene in an abstract art style not found anywhere in the parts of the game intended to be seen by the player.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: WMOD (NA, DS)
Top: in Super Mario 64, the wooden doors in Peach's Castle (leading e.g. to the rear courtyard) have a texture with metal elements that include visible hinges (on the left in the image). The handle of each door, naturally, is on the opposite side from the hinges, as it would be in real life.
Bottom: however, due to an oversight, in Super Mario 64 DS, the texture was mirrored before being applied to the doors, so that the hinges are now visible on the side where the handles are. Since those sides are the ones that the characters open, the doors are thus not attached to anything. In-game, they close automatically after the characters after being opened, while if real-world physics were applied, they should instead simply fall over due to being unhinged.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: SM64/SM64DS (NA, N64/DS)
In Super Mario World, an object is considered as being offscreen if the leftmost edge of it is offscreen, regardless of how much of it is still onscreen. This causes all of the object's interactions with Mario to be turned off.
Most of the time this is not relevant or noticeable as Mario is usually near the center of the screen and most objects are so small that if their left edge is offscreen, the object would likely fully leave or fully enter the screen in the following frames anyway.
However, there is ironically a situation at the very beginning of the game where this oversight can be experienced in a way that is very noticeable. Immediately at the beginning of the first level, Yoshi's Island 1, a Banzai Bill comes flying in from the right. If Mario follows it to the left edge of the screen, he will be able to jump through it unharmed as soon as even a single pixel of it leaves the screen, as seen in the footage.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: SMW (NA, SNES)
Mario Party Advance featured a physical game board included in the game’s manual that can be cut out and used to supplement the video game with a board game portion. In addition, the Japanese official website for the game featured a second, downloadable game board with a Bowser theme, shown above.
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Left: original model used to render Mario's sprites for the SNES version of Super Mario RPG, found in a 2024 Japanese guide for the Nintendo Switch version of the game. Note that this is the first time this model has ever been shown to the public.
Right: compare this to the model used in the game's promotional artwork, which has different proportions for an unknown reason.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: twitter.com user "MikeLuckas"
Donkey Kong 64 has a very large amount of collectibles. One particular collectible remained hidden for 18 years after the game's release, only being discovered in 2017, despite being able to be collected completely legitimately without the use of tricks or glitches.
The game contains dirt mounds that can be destroyed with a Crystal Coconut charge attack (Super Slam), each releasing a single rainbow coin (worth 25 Banana Coins, 5 for each Kong). One such dirt mound is hidden in the tall grass in an area of Fungi Forest, being almost completely undetectable as using first-person view does not let the Kongs see underneath the grass.
The only way the mound can be pinpointed is by very carefully watching the Kong and noticing that the elevation where the Kong is standing in the grass is slightly higher in one spot. As this is very difficult to notice even when specifically looking for it, it is nearly impossible to notice when unaware of any secrets, leading to this item remaining hidden for this long.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: twitter.com user "sera18171"
Production artwork for a 1990 Super Mario Bros. 3 manga.
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Top: officially licensed 1985 Super Mario Bros. Goomba figurine from Japan.
Bottom: viewing the figurine from behind reveals that the Goomba has arms, which are folded behind its back. Whether this was merely a visual gag by the designers of the figurine, or whether this was a legitimate interpretation of the enemy's sprite as seen in Super Mario Bros. (which is only seen from the front), is unknown.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: twitter.com user "maedax_x"
Screensaver available for download from the McDonald's official website in 2006 as part of a Mario/Happy Meal cross-promotion event.
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Design from an officially licensed 1990 Super Mario World desk mat from Japan.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: twitter.com user "kikaim"
3D scan turnaround of the Mario mascot head used in the late 1980s and early 1990s for promotional images in Nintendo Power.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Source: twitter.com user "superfamicom"