Small Mario Findings

Box artwork for an officially licensed 1986 Famicom-themed mahjong game from Japan, featuring some redrawn and even unique Mario artwork like the Bloopers on the bottom.

Source: chriscovell

Model of the "Spiked Beetle" enemy from the Nintendo Switch version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, one of the many Mario series references in that game.

The Spiked Beetle is nearly identical to a Spiny, except for its shell/spike color scheme, and having eyes that are neither angry like a Spiny's, nor darkened and glowing like a Buzzy Beetle's or Spike Top's. The friendly appearance most resembles a Para-Beetle's eyes.

Source: Centrixe the Dodo

Top: in Orbulon's stage in WarioWare: Get It Together, completing a microgame briefly displays a variety of cutouts of various cultural items from across the world, before they fly away. These are never seen in a way where they stay still on-screen, and always overlap each other, so it is not possible to get a good look at them unobstructed.

Bottom: the actual graphics for the cutouts, extracted from the game's files. All of them appear to be stock photos, except for the Orbulon version of Edvard Munch's 1893 painting "The Scream".

Source: DogToon64

Officially licensed 1989 "Team Nintendo Power" T-shirt, featuring Mario.

Source: davesfreshlyused

(Footage contains rapid camera rotation that may cause nausea)

In Donkey Kong 64, the animation of the Kongs entering a DK Portal features the camera rotating while the Kongs appear to be sucked into the portal, becoming smaller as though rapidly traveling away from the screen.

However, in reality, the Kongs are not actually moving into the portal at all, and are instead physically shrinking to simulate that effect. This can be seen directly by throwing an Orange Grenade into the portal so that it rebounds and hits the Kong after touching the portal. As seen in the footage, Tiny Kong is knocked out of the spiraling animation, which briefly shows how small she has become. Unfortunately, this only lasts for a second before the room unloads due to the portal activation.

Source: Mauzasaurus

Front and back cover of a 1986 Japanese guide for Super Mario Bros., featuring unique illustrations.

Source: pukuzone

Extremely simple test map found in the files of Luigi's Mansion 3, featuring Luigi on a cube with all the ScareScraper items.

Source: Dr18

In Super Mario World, glitches exist that allow Yoshi to put an unintended object in his mouth, which will corrupt the game if it is spat out while on a rotating platform. Normally, a corruption results in a crash with no parts of the game working after this.

However, rarely, an interesting form of crash occurs whereby the graphic engine is no longer running (the screen is frozen) but the sound engine is still working, cycling through music or playing sound effects in a random manner. Here is a sound recording of such a crash.

Officially licensed Mario skateboard.

Source: lisac3700

Top: in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the second part of the Hooktail battle is unique in that it takes place in front of the stage rather than on it. Since Mario needs to be on stage for the level up screen, if he gets a level up on this battle, he (and his current partner) will actually walk offscreen backwards before appearing on the stage.

Bottom: this was fixed in the Nintendo Switch version, where they turn around and walk away normally instead.

Source: zonaljump1997

Scrambled name activity from an officially licensed 1990 Super Mario Bros. 3 coloring book.

Source: J. Gray Dingler

Rare officially licensed 2008 Yoshi plush toy from Japan, created only to be dispensed as a claw machine prize and forbidden from being sold at retail.

Source: Djinte

Mural of Mario and Luigi greeting visitors at Narita Airport in Japan.

Source: ultimatentomologist

Officially licensed 1989 Super Mario Bros. pinball toy with sliding panels.

Source: etbl-1370

The 2003 official website for Super Mario Advance 3 states that Kamek also sometimes goes by "Fang". This is also repeated in the game's official guide.

Bizarrely, this information is not present in either the original Yoshi's Island documentation, nor has this name ever been used again for Kamek in any capacity.

Source: site, via MarioUnivRsalis

Officially licensed 1995 Donkey Kong Country 2 keychain of Squawks carrying Dixie Kong, from Japan.

Source: hog-a-japan

Paper Mario: Color Splash contains debugging text to be used during the Roshambo Temples that reads "Undead Legion Enemy..." in English. It is theorized that this would have referred to a Dry Bones 5-Stack since in other places in the code Dry Bones are classified as "undead" while stacked enemies are called "legion" enemies, and this is the only enemy in the game that is both.

This results in a unexpected effect whereby an unassuming group of five cartoon skeletons is called an "undead legion", a name that one would normally imagine for much more frightening entities.

Source: Scrooge200