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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In Super Mario 64, some objects are not rendered whenever the game is paused. The most significant example of this are the cliffs on the side of Tall, Tall Mountain where the Monty Moles are located.
Top: Mario standing on one of the cliffs. Note the vine-covered wall behind him as well as the various cliffs around him.
Middle: The game is paused. All cliffs disappear and Mario appears to be standing in mid-air in front of the wall.
Bottom: Zooming in on Mario on the pause screen.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Source: myself, Super Mario 64 (NA, N64) on N64 emulator
Top: The instructions for the Japanese version of a Nelsonic “Mario’s Egg Catch” Game Watch, a licensed electronic watch containing a minigame featuring Mario and Birdo.
Bottom left: Note the name under the picture of Birdo; it is spelled “バード”, which is “Birdo” transliterated phonetically into Japanese.
Bottom right: This, however, is not Birdo’s actual name is Japanese. There, Birdo is called “キャサリン”, or “Catherine”, as seen on this playing card from Nintendo of Japan.
The reason for this discrepancy is that Nelsonic, the manufacturer of the watch, is an American company, who likely hired an independent translator to create their Japanese manuals; the translator did not know Birdo had a different name in Japanese, so transliterated it directly. As a consequence, this manual is the only time Birdo is called “Birdo” in official Japanese media.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source: 1, 2
One of the hardware testing routines from the Japanese Game Boy test cardridge used by Nintendo of Japan’s technical support team. It contains a scene of 10 Raccoon Marios circling a pillar to test sprite layering, followed by a scene of the Super Mario Land and Alleyway title screens scrolling on top of each other to test tile layering.
Interestingly, this test cartridge is the only appearance of Raccoon Mario on the Game Boy, as no Mario games containing the Raccoon power-up were released on the system.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source
Top: One of the most obscure hidden 1-Up locations in Super Mario Bros. 3 is to the right of the brick wall in the first outdoor segment of Level 5-Tower. However, note that at the end of the footage, after Mario flies off-screen again, a second 1-Up Mushroom falls past.
Bottom: This is due to there being two more hidden 1-Up Mushrooms in this room. Only one block appears on-screen as seen in the footage; but two additional ones are above the visible area, making them doubly hidden due to nothing in-game suggesting their existence. As getting these requires precise mid-air maneuvering without being able to see Mario, they might be the most difficult-to-obtain items in the game.
Note: these are present in the same capacity (outside the area shown by the camera) in all three major versions of the game (NES original, Super Mario All-Stars, and Super Mario Advance 4.)
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Source: 1, 2: myself, Super Mario All-Stars (NA, SNES) in SNES emulator
Segment from the official British Club Nintendo magazine naming the enemies from Super Mario Bros., using nonstandard spelling like “Goombs” and “Koopa Trooper”.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source: Club Nintendo (UK), Issue 1, 1989
Inflatable Mario being prepared to be shown at the 2019 Arizona State Fair.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source: see bottom of image
Top: Shigeru Miyamoto in his office at Nintendo of Japan in July 1989, from a Japanese book on how video games are manufactured.
Bottom: the book takes special note of Miyamoto’s chair and elaborates on it. The cushion was chosen by Miyamoto for containing the first artwork of Super Mario Bros. that he drew for the finished version of the game. He had been using the same Super Mario Bros. cushion for nearly 4 years prior to the release of the book, and likely also for some time afterwards.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Store | Small Findings | Source
