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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The first four notes of the xylophone intro section of the Ghostly Galaxy music in Super Mario Galaxy, before the main melody starts, spell out “D-E-A-D”. Below is the relevant part isolated alongside a guide on how to read the lowest octave in the treble clef. Whether this is a coincidence or a deliberate reference to the nature of the level is unknown.
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Left: in the international Game Boy version of Donkey Kong Land 3, Bear, the shopkeeper, is animated as he talks to the playable characters.
Right: however, in the Japanese Game Boy Color version, Bear is no longer animated due to difficulties in keeping the correct colors during the animation, and is instead part of the background.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Source: myself, DKL3 (NA & Japan, GB/GBC) in a GBC emulator
The music track playing during the intro to Super Mario Odyssey, extracted from the game’s files so it can be heard without the sound effects that are usually present. Note that at 59 seconds, an orchestrated version of the Super Mario Bros. Airship theme from Super Mario Maker plays; this is to date the only time when Super Mario Maker music was used in the main Mario series.
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2003 drawing of Mario and a Star by Shigeru Miyamoto, framed and displayed at the Nintendo of Europe headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source: N-Zone (Germany), Issue 05/05, 2005
Top: in Paper Mario, all bodies of water are translucent, allowing details below the surface to be seen (left), except for one: the pool in the Toad Town Plaza, which has a completely opaque surface (right). Note how Sushie cannot be seen at all below the water on the right.
Bottom: the reason why this particular body of water is different can be found in the game’s first reveal trailer, shown at Nintendo Space World in 1997. There, the pool is seen briefly and is shown to have a reflective surface. Since in Paper Mario, reflective surfaces are faked by having a copy of the area be present upside-down on the other side, at some point in development this was removed due to needing to render too many buildings. As a result, there is nothing below the surface of the pool, which is hidden by the opaque water.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Source: 1: myself, Paper Mario (VC) in Wii emulator, 2
Officially licensed Nintendo DS Lite cover decorated with Swarovski crystals. This design, along with others based on different games, retailed for a limited time in 2007 for $600 at the Nintendo World Store in New York.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source: N-Zone (Germany), Issue 06/07, 2007
Top: a microscopic recreation of the standing Small Mario sprite from Super Mario Bros., created by genetically engineering bacteria to express three different colors and arranging them in a petri dish. This was part of a 2009 genetic engineering program by the University of Osaka, Japan.
Bottom: in addition, several different arrangements of the bacteria were photographed to create a stop-motion animation of Mario running.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source
