Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels, Issue 4, Week 39/2018 (Patreon)

Welcome, Supper Players, Broth Siblings and Supperstars, to the fourth issue of the Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels feature! Thank you again so much for your support! Since this is the final feature of this month, I hope that after reading it, you will feel like you received a fair value for your subscription in September!

Before I start, let me briefly restate some things of note about the  article series. For more detailed explanations, please refer to Issue 1.

• All images without an attribution have been recorded/created by me. If you wish to know what emulators/programs I used, please leave a comment. I will reply promptly.
• All comments and criticism are greatly appreciated, and all suggestions are evaluated and incorporated into future issues. You can shape the form and content of the articles with your feedback, so don't hesitate to tell me anything!

Now, let us jump into a Mysterious Mountainside and go down a slide to the depths of obscure Mario content.
This is Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels.

Pinna Park: Not Originally an Island

Upon starting a file in Super Mario Sunshine, you will see it even before being able to control Mario for the first time.

The island Mario and Peach's plane is flying towards is neighbored by a smaller island, to the south-west of the main one. This is Pinna Island, where Isle Delfino's amusement park, Pinna Park, is located.

(Interestingly, the name is only mentioned once, by FLUDD, in the cutscene of Shadow Mario taking Peach away to Pinna Park. The location is only called "Pinna Park" in all other in-game text.)

Pinna Island is one of the main landmarks of the game and visible from almost every single one of the 7 main levels (except Noki Bay), so it may come as a surprise that it was not always intended to be an island. There are several pieces of prerelease content that indicate that Isle Delfino was originally envisioned to look more like a typical dolphin, with a tail fin that is still attached to its body.

The first clue is the name, Pinna Park (which, according to in-game datestamps, has been in use [in its Japanese version, "Pina Parco"] since the earliest showcase of the game). "Pinna" is Italian for "fin", and while the island still makes up the "fin" of Isle Delfino in a metaphorical sense, the name does also fit for a park that is on a fin-shaped peninsula.

As an aside, I have always believed that the symbols above the entrance to Pinna Park seem to resemble the word "parco", which is both Italian for "park" and, as mentioned, used in the Japanese version of the game:

This is of course pure speculation, but the first two symbols clearly resemble a "p" and a handwritten "a", while the final two resemble a "c" and an "o". The middle one only remotely looks like an "R", but I think the overall resemblance may be too strong for this to be a coincidence.

Take a look at this promotional image, released by Nintendo after Space World 2001, where Super Mario Sunshine was first announced:

This definitely does not look like it is clearly an island, but due to a hill blocking the view, it is not impossible for it to still be separate from the mainland, merely much closer than in the finished release.

This frame from the notoriously low-quality only extant recording of the actual trailer shown at the aforementioned expo only complicates the matter further. Is the thin light line connecting Pinna Park to the mainland a sandbar? A causeway? A bridge? Or is it something else entirely? In the case of a natural connection made at sea level, it would still count as one landmass, however, if it is artificial, it would be an island.

However, we have one piece of evidence that comes directly from Nintendo of Japan's official website that seems to confirm the landmasses are connected:

A clay model of Isle Delfino, made by Yoshiaki Koizumi (the game's director) himself. (The original image is 180 x 135 pixels, so please excuse the quality.) While the connection between the mainland and the fin is very narrow, it appears to be a shoal and not an architectural construction.

Of course, the model depicts a very early version of the island, one predating even the first trailer. If we could find something in the game's actual code about Pinna Park not being an island, that would certainly lend much more credence to the theory.

There are unused messages in the game's files that refer to the "Delfino Express", a scrapped train system that would have connected the game's various locations. The train stations listed include all of the finished game's locations except Delfino Airstrip, plus locations cut from the release: Hotel Lacrima, Eruyt Rock, Warship Island, Fire Shrine, and Lighthouse Island. 

By the way, the distant structure with the dark tower in the background of this beta screenshot is the best candidate for what could have been "Warship Island". 

At first, the Delfino Express list seems to not be relevant to the question of Pinna Park being an island. After all, it lists a station on two places it describes as islands itself! This should mean the train is not impeded by water, and could reach Pinna Park even on Pinna Island. However, the locations "Warship Island" and "Lighthouse Island" are specifically marked with "temporary" - suggesting that the train was not actually supposed to go there, and that it was only used by the developers for testing purposes, to get around the game's world quicker.

The fact that Pinna Park's station is not listed as temporary, then, implies that it was at that point not on an island. While this line of thinking is admittedly reliant on some guesses, together with the clay model and the light sandbar-like line in the trailer it builds a strong enough case for Pinna Park not being intended to be on an island after all.

As a bonus, please take a look at this:

The map images in Super Mario Sunshine are saved at a very low resolution, and no source ever uncovered by dataminers has had the original, uncompressed pictures. Thus, we may only guess what the text in these may have been. I believe that the Yellow Yoshi in the Pinna Park image is saying "Please accept my best wishes for your..." with the last words not being legible. You may need to squint to see it, but once you do, you will find that those words fit the few pixels perfectly. If you have any suggestions on what the full sentence might be, please message me on Patreon and I will add them to this article!

Bossa No-Wah

As is widely known, the WarioWare series shares many elements with the Rhythm Heaven series, both being designed by artist Ko Takeuchi. I plan to have a segment rounding up all known cross-references between the two series in the next issue of this feature; however, for now, here is one that I am certain is one of the least known due to its obscurity.

The title screen of WarioWare: Mega Party Game$ for the GameCube features many different short intro scenes; some appearing more rarely than others. Restarting the game enough times will eventually show a scene of Vampire Wario flying across the screen; but it is not he who is of interest here - it is the background, a sketch of a tree with houses on it:

It seems rather out of place, but then again, the game features so many different, deliberately jarring art styles that it does not stand out too much, and due to only appearing in one of many intro scenes, is easily overlooked.

Now, note that this game was released in 2003 in Japan. The tree with its houses was not seen in any official products until 2011, with the release of Rhythm Heaven Fever. Take a look at the background of the Bossa Nova minigame:

While the background has clearly been redrawn, it is undeniable that this is the same tree, as the same spirals, house design, ladder and general placement of branches indicate. This raises several questions.

With an 8 year wait between the two games, was it possible that this was a deliberate preview by Ko Takeuchi? Note that at the time, not even the first Rhythm Heaven game had been released, with Rhythm Heaven Fever being the third. Or was the tree originally only a random sketch to be used for the WarioWare entry, with him later reusing it for Rhythm Heaven Fever? It is extremely rare that a piece of artwork reappears in this manner between franchises, and even rarer that it happened with such a long span of time between. We, as usual, can only speculate.

A Misplaced Mario Infringes on Yoshi's Eyesight

In Super Mario RPG, Mario can visit a location called Yo'ster Isle, where he can ride Yoshi.

Quick aside: The name "Yo'ster Isle" was an attempt by the Super Mario RPG localization team to translate the Japanese name for Yoshi's Island, "Yoster Island" ("ヨースター島") in a manner close to the original sound. The name "Yoster Island" itself is a reference to "Easter Island". Compare:
ヨースター島 - Yoster Island
イースター島 - Easter Island (The Japanese name for the island is a direct transliteration of the English word "Easter",)
It is peculiar that this pun was never localized directly into English, as the addition of the apostrophe and the word "Isle" instead of "Island" only further obfuscate the source phrase.

At any rate, here is what happens when Mario rides Yoshi and faces the camera:

Where did Yoshi's eyes go? Mario seems to overlap Yoshi in some manner incompatible with 3D space, where his eyes take precedence over Yoshi's. However, the solution is much simpler. Please take a look at Mario's hands. They seem to be cut off, as though his sprite is supposed to be attached to a different part of Yoshi's body. And as it turns out, this is exactly what is happening.

As you can see, this problem is merely an issue of the game improperly overlaying the sprite of Mario riding Yoshi with the Yoshi sprite. The artist drew the sprites correctly - as the fourth picture shows, overlaying them in the intended way causes no gaps between the two - but at some point during development, the sprite was shifted downward 5 pixels and never fixed again. At least now we know the cutting off of Yoshi's eyes was never deliberate.

Wario Introducing a Wario-Less Game

Did you know that a Mario game exists where the first thing you hear when you start it up is Wario's voice, but Wario himself does not appear?

Listen to the first five seconds of this video.

(Note that while the character selection continues if you press Down on this screen, all further options are original human characters and not established Mario series characters.)

Mario Tennis: Power Tour is not only the sole Mario game to feature Waluigi as a playable character while Wario is absent, it is also the only game Wario gets to introduce without being in it. 

Of course, this is merely an artifact of the developers deciding to reuse the sound from the beginning of the intro to Mario Power Tennis without considering that one of the characters from it is not available in the game.

Still, the resulting situation is rather curious.

Cannot Handle the Reflection

This is official artwork of Luigi from Mario Party 5, depicting him during the "Dodge Bomb" minigame:

Let us take a look at the reflections visible in the bodies of the Bob-omb in Luigi's hands as well as the two red Bob-ombs on the bottom:

These look relatively normal. Luigi is being reflected in a way that at least looks consistent, and there are no obvious glitches. However...

...the remaining black Bob-omb has some issues. It is unclear what it is reflecting in the first place, but whatever it is, it seems to be made out of discrete vertical and horizontal stripes.

It appears as though whatever reflection was supposed to appear on the Bob-omb was chopped into slices and then improperly put together. Now, I can only speculate on why this happened, but I believe this has to do with the rendering technique used (most likely ray tracing) not being configured in the modeling software to handle recursive reflections - or at least not properly. 

The other Bob-ombs in the image are positioned in such a way that their visible surfaces reflect only non-reflective objects, while the glitchy Bob-omb is behind another Bob-omb, which would - were the two actual physical objects - lead to a complex optical situation where the two would be mutually reflected several times within the other's body. The software at some point gave up on rendering the reflections properly, which resulted in the image as it was published. Of course, the original intent was to never display the artwork at this high a resolution, which would effectively hide the error - but with the Internet, all it takes is for one journalist to upload the full-sized image from the press kit and all such mistakes are exposed.

The Secret Fandoms of German Kongs

In March of 2018, dkvine.com user "Benju-Katchowee" has made scans of the German guide for Donkey Kong 64 and uploaded them in a gallery here.

The German guide is full of German humour, which is something that famously is humorous only to Germans, but since it is a licensed product of Nintendo of Europe, it does constitute "official" information about the Kong family, so here are my translations of the info sheets provided with the Kongs' biographies, with what I believe are the most likely sources for the references in brackets:

Name: Donkey Kong
Job: Professional Ape
Hobbies: Drumming on bongos, bodybuilding
Favorite Dish: Coconut soufflé
Favorite Movie: Konginator 2 [Terminator 2]
Biggest Role Model: Jean-Claude van Kong [Jean-Claude Van Damme]

Name: Diddy Kong
Job: Racecar driver
Hobbies: Strumming the guitar, car tuning
Favorite Dish: Peanut butter sandwich
Favorite Movie: Banana Jones 2 [Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; note that there is no actual movie called "Indiana Jones 2"]
Biggest Role Model: Monkey Lauda [Niki Lauda]

Name: Tiny Kong
Job: Government finance
Hobbies: Tooting on the saxophone, fashion
Favorite Dish: Watches her figure, only ultra-light dishes
Favorite Movie: Bananic [Titanic]
Biggest Role Model: Kongia Schiffer [Claudia Schiffer]

Name: Lanky Kong
Job: Stand-up comedian
Hobbies: Blowing the trombone, coming up with jokes
Favorite Dish: Raisin cake
Favorite Movie: Kong Gun 64 1/4 [Naked Gun 33 1/3]
Biggest Role Model: Kongo Waalkes [Otto Waalkes; German comedian]

Name: Chunky Kong
Job: Wrestler
Hobbies: Smashing the triangle, eating (a lot!)
Favorite Dish: Pineapple compote
Favorite Movie: Karate Kong 3 [likely Karate Kid Part III]
Biggest Role Model: Kong Hogan [Hulk Hogan]

As you can see, great liberties were taken with the characters, such as classifying Tiny Kong as working in "government finance", but at least the writers did not go as far as the German Club Nintendo comics. If there is sufficient demand, I can translate the rest of the available guide pages, as well.

Stacks of Coins for Your Desktop

A very common imagery in promotional material for New Super Mario Bros. 2 is stacks of coins, which is expected given the game's theme of collecting as many coins as possible. Nintendo released several variations of this wallpaper:

While I find the coins appealing to use as a backdrop, the logo is too high-contrast to be a good fit for a desktop; icons would not be easily visible against it, nor would text be readable in all locations on the screen.

Therefore, I have decided to edit the wallpaper to remove the logo:

You may use it however you wish.

A Hidden Heartbeat

Here is an oddity that you will either have to take my word for, or try for yourself, since there is no way to depict it with images alone.

Start up Super Mario World, get Yoshi, and go to Yoshi's Island 3. Stand in the exact same spot as the picture below, turn left, and activate Yoshi's tongue.

You will hear a heartbeat-like sound, as though Yoshi is trying to eat an inedible object twice. Yoshi is interacting with an invisible, otherwise intangible object somehow.

What makes this more interesting is that looking at that area inside a hacking tool shows absolutely nothing:

There is no object there, invisible or otherwise. The only explanation here is that Yoshi is, due to some idiosyncrasy in the code, interacting with something that is normally somewhere else, but for the purposes of Yoshi's lick, is counted as being in that spot. The closest thing I could find is the Message Box, which is on the same height, but further off to the right; it does make the same sound when licked by Yoshi. Therefore, the logical conclusion here is that Yoshi interacts with the Message Box which is actually a few screens away. 

Another One Counts The Dust

If you have played Luigi's Mansion, you know that in addition to being able to suck thing up in his vacuum, the Poltergust 3000, by using the R button, Luigi can also expel air from it by using the L button. This is not used frequently in the game until Luigi acquires the power to suck up elements like fire, water and ice, whereupon the L button is usually used to discharge those elements at foes and surroundings.

Here is something that is purely cosmetic that you may not have noticed about the L button. Try loading a save file and pressing L immediately upon starting gameplay. 

As you can see, the Poltergust 3000 is expelling a stream of white air puffs. Now, try playing the game regularly for a while and then press L again after some time spent vacuuming up various things around the mansion.

Note that now, in addition to the white puffs of air, there are gray puffs of dust present as well, which behave slightly differently. If you keep the L button held down long enough (sometimes entire minutes), the stream of dust will end and the pure white puffs return.

It turns out that the game actually keeps track of the amount of dust Luigi has vacuumed up over the course of a play session, and stores this number in memory. This has absolutely no effect on gameplay, and it highly unlikely to be noticed by players, but for some reason, this functionality is present.

(Source)

By activating the in-game debug menu, we can see that the first line of the information ends with "mg", milligrams. Holding down L reduces the number every frame until it is 0, upon which the dust animation ends; and vacuuming up dust increases it. Perhaps at some point during development, the Poltergust 3000 would overheat if there was too much dust in it and would have to be emptied; however, this was likely deemed too frustrating of a feature and reduced to an aesthetic addition.

You Got A Pun!

Russia has always been a notoriously difficult market for Nintendo to get a foothold in. In the 90's after the fall of the USSR, the market was dominated by unauthorized NES knock-offs, which were offered at such low prices compared to original NES consoles that competing with them was impossible. Later, the Sega Genesis, and afterwards the Sony PlayStation found an audience with their ostensibly more "mature" titles that Nintendo did not specialize in, and today, the country's population predominantly plays video games on PC instead of consoles.

Nevertheless, starting with the 3DS, Nintendo of Europe began offering official Russian translations of Mario games; with the first "text-heavy" Mario game fully translated into Russian being the 2013 Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Dmitrii Kaloev, the translator working on that game, truly went out of his way to add to the experience; adding rhymes to text originally written in prose, utilizing all manners of jargon and dialects, and drastically cutting down on simplistic speech quirks such as the constant repetition of catchphrases in the Russian localization. This set a high standard for all subsequent translations.

Super Mario Odyssey's Russian translator,  Alexey Nikitin, added a small detail that, when I first saw it, seemed so obvious in hindsight that I was certain other translations must have done it as well. However, I could not find any other localization using this particular pun.

In the English version of Super Mario Odyssey, when you get a Power Moon, a message appears:

"You got a Moon!" A very clear, simple message. However, take a look at the Russian version:

The message, "Новая луна!", translates to "New Moon!" and is a pun on the moon phase of the same name. It is simpler and arguably even clearer than "You got a Moon!" since you can in fact also get "old", transparent Moons in the game, and contains a play on words that can be translated into many different languages, including English. Thus, it is surprising that this pun is found only in the Russian version.

This concludes this week's Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. Thank you once again for your support. You may recall one of the preview topics from last week's issue being "Fire Flowers: Round to Spiky and Back", however, after starting research on it, I found the amount of material to be so great that to contain it inside one of these columns would not do it justice. Therefore, I decided that I will dedicate a separate non-Lost Levels article to the topic, which will be available to all patrons regardless of membership tier. I hope you will understand the decision when the article is released and you see the sheer scope of material that is included.

Please join me next week for Issue 5, featuring such topics as:

• The Undesirable Bananaport
• How To Win at N-Spade Panels Every Time
• Could Super Mario 64 Be the 64th Mario Game?

Thank you very much for reading.