video game textures

An extremely minor and easily overlooked detail in Super Mario 64 is that one of the four pillars in Shifting Sand Land actually has a different texture from the other three, being more visibly covered in sand. This is the pillar that is located in the quicksand near the Tox Box maze; it is also the only pillar that is lower than the other three, presumably due to having sunken into the quicksand.

While this may at first appear to be an oversight, it must be deliberate since the texture used for that pillar is unique and not used by any other object in the level. It seems that it was supposed to indicate that this pillar is less well-maintained than the others, with it being sunken into the quicksand, but the difference between the textures is so subtle that very few players would actually notice it during gameplay.

Source: its_mirrors

The stone wall texture in Jolly Roger Bay in Super Mario 64 is taken from a commercial texture CD, where it was cropped from a photo of a building with plaster crumbling from its walls.

The side of Bowser's arena in the Bowser in the Dark World course in Super Mario 64 is a photo from a commercial texture CD that was recolored to be blue from its original orange color.

It is notable that this texture is never seen up-close during regular gameplay since it is on the outside of the area, only viewable when the camera zooms out. Why the developers found it necessary to create a unique texture for it instead of reusing one of the textures found on top of the platform is unclear.

The upper screen in the Standard mode of Tetris DS shows footage of various NES games, among them Mario games like Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, with filtered photos as backgrounds.

The source for the landscape photo used as the background for Level 1, depicting World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., has been found, being a photo from a commercial texture CD.

The Super Mario 3D All-Stars version of Super Mario 64 uses a basic upscaling algorithm to increase the resolution of some textures (in addition to that, a small number are actually redrawn, while most are completely untouched).

Provided is a comparison between the Hazy Maze Cave map texture from the original game (left) and the Super Mario 3D All-Stars version (right).

In Mario Golf: Super Rush, the textures for all the characters' flags are the same size, except for Pauline's and Boo's, which are inexplicably twice the size of the others.

Note that the flags themselves are exactly the same size in-game, merely the images being double the resolution.

Top: the Super Mario 64 box art.

Middle: development files for the game contained a version of the box art without Mario or most of the overlay, though leaving the planet and a glow effect from the logo.

Bottom: the development image was instrumental in finding the original photo used for the sky, which comes from a commercial texture CD. Now, all traces of Mario have truly been removed.

regular sky texture

sky texture used on the uk map

sky texture used in the roundhouse

Top left: in the character selection screen of Super Smash Bros., the icons have a flame image behind them.

Top right: the flame is actually taken from a commercial stock texture CD.

Bottom: this allows the Mario icon to be recreated in extremely high quality, since his artwork is just a render from Super Mario 64.

Top: textures on various walls in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door contain small wanted posters for three criminals: a Goomba, a Koopa Troopa and a Boo.

Bottom: the Art Gallery in the Nintendo Switch version of the game provides concept art for these characters. This reveals that the Boo is nearly identical to Bootler, Lady Bow's butler from Paper Mario (and who has a small cameo in this game as well), having the same closed eyes, mustache, and pale green color. Assuming this is indeed him, this implies that Bootler was a wanted criminal either in the past or even in the current day.

According to backstory divulged by a Toad NPC from Paper Mario, Bootler used to "travel the world with Goompa and Koopa Koot" in his youth, which the Goomba and Koopa in the artwork may be intended to be young versions of. This is, however, not entirely likely as Koopa Koot has a turquoise shell while this Koopa has a red shell; though shells are exchangeable and it might in fact be the same character.

In Super Mario 64, the Lethal Lava Land/Bowser in the Fire Sea skybox is taken from a photo of the sky from a texture library CD, mirrored and tinted in a red color.

Top: the skybox recreated as closely as possible using the original assets after being recolored.

Bottom: the skybox modified to use the original sky photo in its real colors.

In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the ring platform used for the battle against the Megahammer boss uses a texture of a GameCube logo for a reflection map... except that the platforms are not actually reflective, making it impossible to see in-game.

In Super Mario 64, the texture for the flowerbeds is actually taken from a very small cropped segment of a photo of a flower field from a Japanese texture library CD, with additional flowers drawn on top of it.

Due to the extremely small part of the source image that was used, making it very hard to identify, this was only discovered in 2025, 29 years after the game's release.

Various Mario-related stationery extracted from the files of Swapdoodle.

Top: in the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (though oddly not in the Nintendo 3DS version), waiting near the front of the train in the Fright Train Flight level for 5 minutes will cause a ghostly face to appear underneath the tracks.

Bottom: extracting the texture from the files reveals that it is the "dead Boo" texture, used for when Boos are defeated by shining a light at them, only stretched to a large size. As such, it appears that the train is haunted by what is technically a dead ghost, or a ghost of a ghost.

Unused CD textures found in the files of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, likely intended as placeholders for the collectible CD items.

These depict (presumably soundtracks for) a GameCube Star Fox game, a Zelda game that appears to be The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time due to the shape of the shield and sword on the logo and being identified as a Nintendo 64 game, and Yoshi's Story.

Top: in the Pipe Plaza battle course in Mario Kart: Double Dash, a thin yellow line can be seen on one of the hills in the distance.

Bottom: zooming in on the line reveals that it has a sand texture. This is due to the sand texture being next to the grass texture on the texture image file and the texture being very slightly misaligned on the hill, taking part of the neighboring texture on the seam.