26
Illustration of enemies being terrified of Mario using a Fire Flower, from the Japanese 64 Dream magazine.
27
In the NES and SNES versions of Super Mario Bros. 3, if Mario touches an enemy and a Fire Flower at the same time, he will briefly turn into Frog Mario. However, instead of fixing this glitch, the GBA version merely changes it: here, Mario will turn into two Marios instead.
29
Illustration of Toad without his mushroom cap, from an officially licensed 1989 Super Mario Bros. greeting card.
30
Based on documentation and statements by Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi has been part of Super Mario 64 for around 85% of the game's development, before being deemed too demanding on the game's memory and removed only 3 months before the game was finished.
31
In Super Mario World, Yoshi cannot enter castles and ghost houses, with Mario making him wait outside. Development files contain what is believed to be an unused "Yoshi resting cushion" that would have provided a comfortable place for Yoshi to sit while waiting for Mario.
32
In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Yoshi's tongue can become astronomical in length, dwarfing Starship Mario in magnitude, as a result of a glitch. Details in image.
33
In addition, here is the full Super Mario Bros. Deluxe ad that contains the artwork:
34
Last year, I posted about an extremely rare artwork of Toad and Yoshi holding hands, which was only available in low quality. I was finally able to track down a high-resolution version of the artwork in a Japanese magazine.
35
Officially licensed 1993 British Toad figurine.
36
In Donkey Kong 64, if a Kong plays an instrument while sliding off a ledge into water, the game will lag immensely and produce harsh, corrupted noise for the duration of the instrument scene, whereupon it will return to normal as though nothing happened. (Warning: loud sound.)
37
Mario Party 8 contains a debug room that consists of nothing except MC Ballyhoo standing in a dark void, holding two Mii heads in his hands and wearing a third Mii head as a hat.
38
In Super Paper Mario, Tippi appears as an abstract geometrical butterfly without a face. To make her more expressive, the official Super Mario-kun manga adaptation of Super Paper Mario completely redesigned her to be more in line with regular Mario series character designs.
39
Whenever Mario remains idle for long enough in Super Mario Odyssey, he will fall asleep, whereupon a bird native to the area may land on his nose. However, there is an extremely rare event where instead of the regional bird, a UFO will land on Mario's nose instead.
40
In Super Mario Sunshine, it is FLUDD that makes Mario take damage when falling from great heights. While not wearing FLUDD, Mario can fall from any height unharmed. When wearing it, he will take fall damage instead.
41
Please note that these manga are filled with jokes and eccentric theories such as this: twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog…, so this should be taken more as an interesting thought experiment than anything that would actually be endorsed by Nintendo!
42
A 1996 Super Mario 64 manga suggests that 1-Up Mushrooms grow from the bodies of dead Marios, perpetuating the cycle of life and death.
43
Development files for Super Mario World contain graphics for the "block dancer", a simplistic egg-like creature that would dance on a row of blocks. Nothing else is known about it, as it appears only a single time in a file from July 12, 1990 and is never seen again.
44
Extremely rare officially licensed 1990 Mario mask.
45
During the second mission of Pounce Bounce Isle in Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, a "Phantom Blockstepper" event can occur. If one of these Blocksteppers falls off the ledge, it will become glitched and continuously materialize and dematerialize out of existence.
46
In Super Paper Mario, it is possible to "bully" Mr. L by stealing his drinks. When his health is low, Mr. L attempts to restore it with a Shroom Shake. By using Thoreau, Mario can grab the Shroom Shake out of Mr. L's hands and add it to his own inventory.
47
Datamining Miitopia reveals that some Yoshi colors and a Toad color are referred to differently internally at Nintendo than they are called publicly. Light Blue Yoshi is Sky Blue Yoshi, Blue Yoshi is Vivid Azure Yoshi, and Purple Toad is actually Fuchsia Toad.
48
In Mario Kart Wii, each vehicle has seven stats (speed, acceleration, drift etc.), which are each modified depending on the chosen driver. By analyzing all driver-vehicle combinations, it is revealed that the one with the highest stat total is Baby Peach riding the Quacker.
49
Despite looking much more detailed, the model for the coins in Super Mario Odyssey is actually 65% simpler than the one used in Super Mario Galaxy, due to taking advantage of modern rendering techniques. Details in image.
50
A demo version of Mario Kart: Double Dash found on a European GameCube multi-demo disc contains an early model for the Freezies seen on the Sherbet Land track, who have the word "COOL" in place of their mouths. Here is a comparison between the early and finished Freezies.
Additional obscure Mario content for suppermariobroth.com.
Now on Patreon: patreon.com/suppermariobro…