1926
In the Moped Mayhem minigame in the Extras Zone in Mario Party 8, Whomp is one of the competitors. Although his arms are too short to reach his moped's handles, he is nevertheless able to steer simply by leaning into curves.
1927
Super Mario Kart contains sprites for all racers at 10 different sizes, depending on how far away they are from the camera. Here are the sprites of the smallest size for each racer. From left to right, top to bottom: Mario, Peach, Bowser, Koopa Troopa, Luigi, Yoshi, DK Jr., Toad.
1928
At the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, Nintendo's booth featured Virtual Boy stations offering demos of Mario Clash. The stations displayed a different name for the game, "Mario Smash". This is the only documented instance of this name being used.
1929
Illustration of Bowser with a lollipop from the Japanese "Super Mario Story Quiz Picture Book 2: Mario's Sports Day".
1930
Official Aquabeads designs of Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser from a licensed Mario Aquabeads kit.
1931
Bowser riding on his personal shooting star, from the Japanese Super Mario Story Quiz Picture Book 6: Friend Kidnapped.
1932
The final shot of King K. Rool from the credits of DK: Jungle Climber. This is King K. Rool's last appearance in the main Donkey Kong series, as all his subsequent appearances were in sports, fighting, or party games.
1933
Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3-branded pastels from South Korea, featuring illustrations of the characters with alternate color schemes.
1934
Cartridge artwork for the Brazilian version of Mario Bros. for the Atari 2600. Since the game's low-resolution sprites made Mario and Luigi's mustaches resemble mouths, it is possible the artist interpreted them as such and drew the brothers as children.
1935
In the data of Paper Mario, there is unused functionality to have Mario's "boots" entry in the pause menu display as "none" (left). While this does not prevent him from jumping in the overworld, the "Jump" command becomes greyed-out and unusable in combat (right).
1936
Rare piece of official artwork depicting Donkey Kong playing the Snowball Summit minigame from Mario Party 3, found only in Japanese promotional content for the game.
1937
In 1990, a truck toured Canada to advertise the 1990 Nintendo Challenge Championship, the first Canadian Nintendo video game tournament (top), sponsored by PepsiCo. The sides of the truck were decorated with original artwork of Mario smashing through a television (bottom).
1938
During the design process for Donkey Kong Country 2, Shigeru Miyamoto sent Rare sketches of ideas he had for a symbol to be displayed on Dixie Kong's beret. In the end, Rare decided to leave her beret plain, although the Rare logo can be seen on it in a few select renders.
1939
Actor in a Bowser costume with the recording crew at the set used for the North American commercials for Mario Superstar Baseball.
1940
Mario Artist: Paint Studio for the Nintendo 64DD contains a render of Gruntilda from Banjo-Kazooie that is posed differently from renders in official Banjo-Kazooie material, resulting in official Banjo-Kazooie content that is exclusive to a Mario game.
1941
In the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 3, if Mario is hit while wearing the Goomba's Shoe (or Kuribo's Shoe), it will turn red while flying off him instead of remaining green. This may have inspired the red coloring of the stiletto in the SMB3 theme of Super Mario Maker.
1942
Annoyed and saddened expressions of Mario series characters in Fortune Street.
1943
In Super Mario Sunshine, the Blooper surfing room in Ricco Harbor uses the secret course "train tracks" skybox, which can be seen by entering first-person view near a wall. The same is true for Corona Mountain, however, this cannot be seen in-game and requires tools to view.
1944
In Super Mario 64, standing between the left and middle Cool, Cool Mountain paintings in Peach's Castle and using first-person view to look through the wall reveals a big red F floating in the darkness. This is actually the entrance to Bowser in the Dark World seen from below.
1945
The flight action game Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy+ for the New Nintendo 3DS contains unlockable aircraft based on Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser, as well as additional designs for them only unlockable with their respective amiibo (marked with "amiibo" in the image).
1946
A very early piece of concept art for Paper Mario used sprites for Mario and Luigi that were edited from their appearances in Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World. I have attempted to recreate Paper Mario concept art Luigi as closely as possible.
1947
Earlier today, I have made a Tweet that due to a technical issue, did not contain an image and had to be deleted. Below is an explanation of the situation along with the Tweet as it was intended to be presented.
1948
Frame from a commercial for the Hyundai Super Comboy, the South Korean licensed version of the SNES, featuring Buster Bunny and Dragon Ball characters alongside Mario series characters.
1949
In Super Mario World, entering Star World 3 with Yoshi and following any three moving objects to the goal (left) will result in the Lakitu suddenly vanishing (right) due to the game running out of sprite memory. While normally Lakitu respawns, it never returns in this scenario.
1950
A licensed 1982 Donkey Kong arcade sticker (left) depicts Mario wearing a green hat and overalls and a reddish shirt. The sticker ended up predicting Luigi's appearance in the 1983 Mario Bros. arcade (right), a year before Luigi existed.
Additional obscure Mario content for suppermariobroth.com.
Now on Patreon: patreon.com/suppermariobro…