Small Mario Findings

Set of officially licensed 2011 Mario Kart 7 rubber toys from Japan.

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Top: Power Stars in Super Mario Galaxy have an exaggerated “beacon” halo effect when Mario is far away from them so that they can be seen from anywhere in the galaxy. This is the “Hot and Cold Collide” Power Star in the Freezeflame Galaxy, seen normally during that mission.

Bottom: however, this particular Power Star does not unload correctly in the other missions, and its halo remains even when it is itself not there. The halo can be seen in the “Purple Coins on the Summit” and “Conquering the Summit” missions as just floating in the air by itself.

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Unique sample Famicom cartridge of Super Mario Bros. that surfaced from a private collection and is believed to be the earliest known copy of the game, if not potentially a master copy that was used as a base for the mass-produced cartridges.

The cartridge is a re-programmable EPROM, meaning that it was used to continuously rewrite the game during development for testing purposes, instead of a mass-produced regular ROM (like the finished game) that is only written once and can never again be changed.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Kyle Orland

Promotional standee for Donkey Kong Country 2.

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Dancing Donkey Kong mascot suit actor seen at the Nintendo booth at Summer CES 1994 to promote Donkey Kong Country.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: GTV Japan

Extremely rare and unknown officially licensed 1993 Yoshi mall ride from Japan, which is known to have appeared only once in a trade magazine, and for which there is no definite proof that it was ever actually released to begin with.

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Cover of a 1989 official Japanese guide for Super Mario Bros. 3.

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An extremely bizarre glitch may occur during the final battle in Princess Peach: Showtime. The screen may become frozen, but only regarding the in-game scene; the overlay consisting of the text that captions the cutscene, as well as the sound, will continue playing.

This almost creates the wrong impression of the cutscene being intended to be this way, since it is extremely unusual for the action on screen to freeze while captions are still continued to be displayed normally, and may take a while for the player to realize this is a glitch.

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Promotional 2005 pin distributed to select store employees by Nintendo of America to promote Mario Party 7.

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Illustration from a 1993 article in the Japanese Famitsu magazine on theories on the Mario series, used for the commonly raised idea of Mario being evil since Toads are a friendly NPC species in Mario’s world who are mushrooms, but he seems to enjoy eating mushrooms himself.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Source: Famitsu (Japan), Issue 239, 1993

Set of seven officially licensed baked bean plates from a Japan Railways/Nintendo cross-promotion event in 2026. Note each of the plates featuring a type of train alongside a Mario character.

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The code of Donkey Kong 64 contains an unused option for the boss rematch menu to include the final battle against King K. Rool, which would have featured a unique name not mentioned anywhere in the regular game: “The Main Event” (referring to the boxing match theme of the battle).

This was likely removed since King K. Rool never “becomes beaten” on a save file due to the game not saving after his defeat. As such, to refight him the player can simply enter a save file that cleared all eight levels and find him inside the crashed airship on DK Island, making the option to select the battle from the menu redundant.

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Bizarre collectible Dr. Mario card from a series of 1993 cards as part of a British Nintendo/Kellogg’s Frosties promotion, which makes both the Viruses and Dr. Mario’s capsule so oversized that only two Viruses fit inside the bottle while the capsule barely fits at all. For reference, the actual bottle from the Dr. Mario game can fit 128 Viruses, or 64 capsules.

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Officially licensed 2026 Diddy Kong pouch.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: videogamedeals

In Super Mario Odyssey, defeating a Sherm tank enemy and then jumping repeatedly in its respawn location may result in Mario bouncing off the Sherm’s collision in the brief window of time after it loads, but before the actual model becomes visible.

If this happens, the Sherm will continue remaining invisible for as long as Mario is bouncing on it without moving, as seen in the footage. If Mario makes a higher bounce or otherwise makes any inputs, the Sherm will finally appear.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Terido_dsc

Unused Whomp King battle intro animation found in the files of Super Mario Galaxy 2. In the finished game, he appears dramatically by not being in the arena when Mario first enters it, and then jumping into it from outside.

Interestingly, this animation is much more like the one used by him in his original appearance in Super Mario 64, where he was standing in the arena and waiting for Mario to arrive, turning around to talk to him.

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In Mario Kart Wii, a Star usually has precedence over a Mega Mushroom, so that the Star player damages the Mega Mushroom one but not the other way around.

However, if the players collide at a specific time during the animations when they are about to run out, both of them will be able to damage each other in their respective ways (the Star player will be squashed and the Mega Mushroom one will be knocked over).

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Unused black and white dithered early version of the title screen, found in the data of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.

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Officially licensed 2008 Nintendo DS carrying case with an embroidered Mario design.

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Extremely rare officially licensed 2001 Mario Party 3 collectible card depicting a high-quality version of Waluigi’s render for the Log Jam minigame, which has never been released in a standalone form.

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Top: in the “Here Come the Hoppos” level of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Hoppos roll along the bottom of the screen close to the camera during the Wonder Effect, appearing blurry (note the blurry purple shapes at the bottom edge of the image).

Bottom: interestingly, instead of simply using a blur filter on a regular model or image of a Hoppo, these are in fact a giant 1024x1024 pixel texture of a Hoppo that has already been pre-blurred.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: DogToon64

Comparison between “DangerBomb”, an unused early design for a Bob-omb left in the files of Super Mario Galaxy (left) and the finished design seen in the game (right).

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Unique illustration of Mario cutting out pages, from a 1989 officially licensed Super Mario Bros. coloring/activity book.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: J. Gray Dingler

In Super Mario Party Jamboree, Donkey Kong’s Jamboree Buddy ability is to “launch the player somewhere else”. However, this merely launches the player to a random place on the board, which has a chance to be the exact same space the player launched from, instead of being guaranteed to in fact be “somewhere else”.

As seen in the footage, this results in no net effect whatsoever.

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Fire-themed Mario decoration inside a Japan Railways train during a 2026 Nintendo cross-promotion.

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Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains a list of references to removed objects in its files. Only the names of the objects are known; no other data remains to more closely examine what they could have been.

One of these is called “KoopsBattleMapPlanet”, seemingly referencing Koops from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. This is almost entirely certainly simply a misspelling of “Koopa” given how the two letters are next to each other on a keyboard, but the fact that it creates the name of a character from an unrelated Mario game is still notable.

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In Super Mario 64, the Bowser in the Dark World course loads a group of entities into memory consisting of Bubba, Lakitu, Spiny (and its egg form) and Wiggler. The way loading entities works in this game is that they can only be loaded as a whole group instead of individually.

However, none of these are actually used in this level. The most logical explanation is that a Lakitu was possibly used as an enemy somewhere in the level (as Bubba would be absurd in this location and Wiggler is a boss) and then removed (possibly due to this being an early-game area while Lakitu is confined to later areas in the finished game) without the loading code being adjusted.

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Officially licensed 2007 Super Mario Galaxy trading card depicting the planetoid in Good Egg Galaxy where Dino Piranha is fought. The caption has a minor typographical error, spelling it “Dino Pirahna” with the “h” before the “n” instead.

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In Super Mario Odyssey, the rendering radius of the secret areas is normally large enough that it is impossible to get them to disappear using regular movement.

However, in the Pokio tower climb subarea of Bowser’s Kingdom, it is possible to use a precise jump from the very top of the tower to get so far away from it that it stops being rendered (in several steps, as seen in the footage) and then pops back in if Mario is in Assist Mode and gets transported back in a bubble.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: adalydebest

Promotional handheld paper fans distributed at the premiere of the Super Mario Galaxy movie in Japan.

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