Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels, Issue 7, Week 42/2018 (Patreon)

Welcome, Supper Players, Broth Siblings and Supperstars, to the seventh issue of the Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels feature! Thank you so much for your continued support! I have been trying to catch up to the schedule I have set for myself and this week's article should - barring unexpected emergencies in the future - be the last one to be late. The podcast for Broth Siblings tier subscribers will be published on October 25th at the latest. The offer to issue refunds that I made previously still stands, and will continue to be honored indefinitely, so please do not hesitate to request a refund if you feel you are not getting the expected value for your subscription. 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 bump into a bookshelf and accidentally release a world of obscure Mario content.
This is Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. 

Which Games in the Mario Franchise Have the Fewest Humans?

Mario is human - at least according to Super Mario Odyssey director Yoshiaki Koizumi. And while an in-depth analysis of all available proof of the human status of Mario characters would be a project resulting in useful research - and one I plan to one day tackle myself - the amount of content to be considered here is truly massive, comprising not just in-game dialogue and text, but also merchandise descriptions, developer interviews and even licensed content like comics and manga, and would be better suited for its own article - or more likely, a series of articles. Today we are going to look at humans in a more informal way, using the consensus of which characters are human and which are not.

The source I will consider representative of consensus is the Super Mario Wiki at mariowiki.com. If the article on a certain character mentions that the character is human, I will consider them human for the purposes of this discussion. Of course, as teachers and professors all around the world are so keen on telling us, wikis are not to be used as sources for academical purposes. Therefore, I will make a disclaimer here that this section is not rigorous and relies on unproven claims. Still, I believe many of the characters considered human by the Super Mario Wiki do reflect what the average player would consider human, so it is up to you to decide to accept or reject the consensus of the wiki editors. I will also use the wiki's list of games to answer the question of "what is a Mario game?" 

While I admit that using an external resource in this way is lazy and merely offloading a problem to a different entity, this is only due to me being just one person and the questions to be answered here being of such magnitude that I cannot possibly construct rigorous answers to them in one article. In time, I plan to create my own criteria for what a Mario game is; this is one of the long-term goals of my blog, however, this is a very extensive endeavor and I hope you understand that I will have to settle for consensus before it is complete.

With all this out of the way, let us take a look at which Mario franchise games have the fewest humans. I will not mention games that feature Mario as the main playable character even if he is the only human, as they are too numerous. What I will mention is: a) games that contain only one human that is not one of the most prominent playable characters in the franchise, b) games that feature Mario in a non-playable role and no other humans, and c) games that contain no humans. ("Playable" here means also indirectly playable, while games like Mario Paint do not depict Mario himself painting, the fact that the cursor is his glove means that Mario is intended to be the one interacting with the canvas; and "contain" in this context means simply "depict", although it has to be a clear depiction of a living human; vague human skeletons and Pixel Mario made from brick blocks do not count.)

Donkey Kong Jr. is the first game that may come to mind given these criteria: it contains only Mario, and he is not a playable character. However, this applies only to some versions of the game, as the original arcade release starts with a cutscene depicting two Marios.

The Donkey Kong II Game & Watch is the first game that only contains one non-playable Mario irrespective of version. Donkey Kong Jr. Math for the NES is the first Mario-related game to not contain any humans whatsoever. 

Wario's Woods on the NES presents an interesting dilemma (the SNES version not counting due to the presence of Sarissa, a little witch girl). Wario is the only human that technically appears, however, after a battle against him in Round 69 in Game B mode, he reveals that the Wario Toad just fought was a "fake" and not himself.

Now, depending on what is exactly meant by "fake", Wario could still be the only human in that game - if, say, it was a monster disguised as Wario, a machine or a type of projection. But if it was another human disguised as Wario, this would no longer hold.

Most games in the Donkey Kong franchise also contain no humans, so I will concentrate only on the exceptions. Donkey Kong Country 2 contains two humans (Mario and Link during ending in Cranky's Video Game Heroes screen; in addition, the human character Chief Thunder from Killer Instinct can be seen in the background of Cranky's Monkey Museum) and Donkey Kong Land 2 has one human (Mario in the Video Game Heroes screen; Link is absent in this version). 

Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge is an interesting case due to containing very few living characters whatsoever, as every playable character therein is a wind-up toy, as are most (but not all) of the enemies. There are certainly no actual humans in that game. 

Tetris Attack also contains zero humans, being entirely populated by Yoshi's Island characters but not including Baby Mario. Out of the other Yoshi-centric games, Yoshi's Story, Yoshi Topsy-Turvy and both versions of Yoshi's Woolly World contain no humans, while the rest has Baby Mario. 

The Mario Artist series of games for the Nintendo 64DD is odd since not all of them imply that Mario is the one creating the pictures, but each of the games contains humans as images or premade objects to be inserted into the work, as well as in menus. 

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is also a very interesting case; the Wii U version features no humans during normal gameplay, but the post-credits cutscene is the intro to Super Mario 3D World, which contains Mario, Luigi and Peach. Due to that scene being removed in the 3DS and Switch rereleases, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is the only Mario game that has been "fully dehumanized" with a rerelease.

Alleyway for the Game Boy, a Breakout-type game, would have no humans if not for the fact that Mario is shown jumping inside the paddle in the beginning of the game in a cutscene lasting 3 seconds. 

The DSiWare game "Bird & Beans" contains no humans due to being merely a standalone version of Pyoro, a minigame* from Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega Microgames containing only a bird character and auxiliary angel characters. (Whether angels count as humans is a question of much greater scope than this article, however, I refer to the fantasy role-playing convention of regarding angels as spiritual beings distinct from humans regardless of their connection to the latter.) 

*Despite most of the games in the WarioWare series being "microgames", Pyoro is actually a minigame, the difference being that games only accessible through the main menu instead of inside regular gameplay are referred to as minigames within the series.

The same does not apply to the DSiWare game "Paper Airplane Chase", a standalone version of the minigame "Paper Plane" from the same game, as it contains cameos from the human WarioWare cast:

In the end, no Mario game has "the fewest" humans due to many having zero humans altogether, but special mention goes to the 3DS and Switch versions of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker for excising all humans that were previously featured in an earlier version of the game.

Interpreting Tiny Maps

Maps in Mario games fall overwhelmingly into one of two categories. Some maps depict the game world accurately and with perfect clarity, like this map from Yoshi's Safari:

Some other maps depict almost nothing of use and are almost impossible to decipher, like this map hanging in Mario and Luigi's house at the beginning of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:

(It is only after encountering this map again at Riverside Station that it becomes possible to tell that is it supposed to depict the Excess Express's route, except that Rogueport appears to be in the northeast instead of the northwest. Why this map is hanging in Mario's house when he is stated to have never been on the train before, and why it is in such a deteriorated state, is never explained.)

Today, I would like to talk to you about low-detail title screen maps. Particularly, those seen in Wario Land II and Yoshi's Story.

This is the Wario Land II title screen. As you can see, Wario's castle is visible, but the rest of the map would be much more helpful if it was several times larger, and preferably in color. Luckily, we do have access to a color version, as the game was rereleased for the Game Boy Color over a year after its original Game Boy release.

While this map is not an exact copy of the monochromatic one, it is similar enough that we can ignore the differences. The color really adds a lot of information, for example, now we can tell that there is a forest to the west of the castle, which was previously a vague black shape that could have been dark clouds.

Now, it is time to interpret this map to the best of our ability. Wario Land II has 11 different chapters, spanning ten locations: Wario's castle, the SS Tea Cup, Maze Woods, the Town, Syrup Castle, the underground tunnels, the Ruins at the Bottom of the Sea, Uncanny Mansion, the Mysterious Factory, and Syrup's secret treasure cave. 

Obviously, the castle in the middle of the map is Wario's castle, and the forest to the west is the Maze Woods (with the lake likely being the lake in Chapter 3-2). However, the rest of the features on the map is almost impossible to pinpoint a specific location for. The road network south of the castle could be related to the Town, and the brown details on the eastern coast look like docks, which would make sense with the SS Tea Cup - except the SS Tea Cup is neither accessed through not exited via any docks in this game.

The mountain in the north-east, despite looking like a point of importance, does not match up with any location, unless it is supposed to represent the mountain that the treasure cave is in, except that mountain is shown in-game to be in a forested region. All in all, it is likely that this map was either drawn early in development or was simply supposed to provide flavor without truly showcasing any in-game locations.

Next up, Yoshi's Story.

The map appears at such an oblique angle to the camera that it is very hard to make out anything at all except that there seems to be a green, a blue and a red patch on it. I was able to rip the textures for the map and put them together:

Immediately, it becomes apparent that the island is shaped like a Yoshi head (nose on the left, cheek on the bottom right, spikes on the right), which was not visible at the angle the game displayed the map. 

We can see a light path going through the island, touching all points of interest and ending with a heart, which most likely represents the Super Happy Tree that the Yoshis are out to retrieve in the game's story. Thus, we can assume that if the heart is the end, all other locations must come before it in the same order they do in the story.

Yoshi's Story consists of 6 so-called "Pages": Beginning (a grassland environment), Cavern, Summit (a snowy mountain), Jungle, Ocean and Finale (Baby Bowser's castle). The green spot near the beginning of the path is most likely the Beginning area. The blue spot in the middle of the path could either be the Summit (as the light blue color and white shading could imply a snowy mountain) or the Ocean (although making it a lake inside the island would contradict the name "Ocean"). The final red-purple area before the heart looks nothing like Baby Bowser's castle and actually resembles a volcano, but the Finale area is the only logical explanation for what it could be.

(There is another explanation that is very tenuous but does also match up the colors. It could be that this map is showing only the second half of the journey for whatever reason, which would explain why the path starts not from a point inside the island, but from the shore. Then the green spot could be the Jungle, the blue spot the Ocean, and the red spot the Finale. An advantage of this theory is that it skips no areas, but it leaves unexplained why the first part of the journey would not be depicted.)

In the end, these maps raise more questions than they answer. If you have your own theories about them, feel free to share them in the comments on this article!

Lose Extra Hard to See This Content

Sometimes content in video games is only available to those who work extra hard to beat all challenges the game offers them - in the form of an extra final level like the Champion's Road in Super Mario 3D World which is unlocked only after gathering every collectible in the game and getting all Golden Flags in every stage. Sometimes, however, content is hiding not behind extraordinarily good play, but behind play so bad that the player has to lose on purpose just to see it.

One notorious example of that is the case of the extra Snifits in Super Mario RPG. Booster, an eccentric man who ends up an incidental antagonist of the story, is always accompanied by three gray Snifits - Snifits 1, 2, and 3, respectively. There is a sidequest with no reward outside of some particular dialogue involving additional Snifits being hired by Booster. That sidequest has the peculiar quality of requiring the player to get a Game Over - not just once, but five times - to be completed.

A room in Booster's Tower contains nothing except a large switch on the ground. Pressing that switch gives a vague message about some sound coming from outside. What exactly happens is that a small extra exit is added to the first part of the Booster Pass area, leading to a screen consisting of a thin walkway on top of a rock wall with small gaps containing Spinies (called Spikeys in this game). Attempting to cross the walkway reveals that a blue Snifit is jumping back and forth across it, as well - and touching the Snifit starts the sidequest. 

(All Super Mario RPG images in this segment are taken from this video.)

It turns out that the Snifit is identified as an "Apprentice" and that he is jumping around because he is training to become "Snifit 4", meaning that Booster is hiring additional Snifits for his entourage if they can prove that they can defeat Mario. Strangely, this sidequest can be completed before fighting Booster for the first time, where he would have little reason to give them such a specific request - although it may be that there was no specific instruction and the Apprentice merely assumes that beating Mario is an impressive enough feat to get hired.

Then, a battle against the Apprentice will ensue. The Apprentice is a rather weak enemy, so to lose against him is already a tedious task by the time the button is first pressed - but the longer the player waits before attempting the sidequest and the more leveled-up the party is, the more time it will take for the Apprentice to whittle down the party's health, so at higher levels the only hope of getting it over with quickly is to lose as much HP as possible in a battle against an actually challenging enemy and then walk all the way to the Apprentice. 

Getting a Game Over results not in the game being restarted, but a special cutscene being activated instead where the Apprentice runs off to Booster's Tower. But it is not over yet. There are four more Apprentices to be encountered on this path, and each one must be lost against in the same manner.

Finally, after this task is completed, you may head to Booster's Tower to view your "reward", which is really just four of the Apprentices standing around a door near Booster's private room and offering dialogue about how proud they are of being Snifits 4 through 7 - and one Apprentice being angry at being left out because Booster only wanted seven Snifits. Note that the Apprentices that become official Snifits are wearing grey robes just like the three original Snifits, which confirms that the robes are in fact clothing and not part of the Snifits' bodies (although how Snifits look without robes has never been revealed).

Another example of the same scenario - having to lose for the reward of extra dialogue - can be found in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. The gameplay of Chapter 3 consists mainly of Mario having to fight ranked matches in a prize fighting area, while listening to instructions from the promoter. If the fight is won and the instructions are followed, Mario ranks up and gains the right to challenge the next rank. If the fight is won but the instructions are not followed, Mario does rank up, but is forced to "defend" his rank against the same enemy over and over until he follows the instructions. And finally, if the fight is lost - which would normally result in a Game Over - Mario will either stay the same rank if he challenged a higher-rank enemy, or rank down if he was challenged by a lower-rank enemy.

It is that final scenario that must be exploited many times to see the following content. During one of the story scenes in Chapter 3, a fighter named Sir Swoop, a Swooper, is introduced - but not with the intent of fighting Mario, as by the point where he is introduced, Mario's rank is already too high to be fighting a newcomer at the bottom of the list. In fact, it is easy to assume that Sir Swoop can not be fought at all. However, later in the chapter, KP Pete, a character important to the story, announces his retirement from fighting, and Sir Swoop takes his place on the rankings, at Rank 18, with his team, the "Wings of Night".

Now, note that this happens when Mario is already over Rank 10 himself. To be able to challenge the Wings of Night, over 10 matches must be lost in a row with special care being given to also not fulfill the promoter's instructions (some of them being so easy to fulfill that it is harder to deliberately fail them). 

In fact, these two pieces of dialogue - Grubba's introduction of the team and Sir Swoop's pre-battle quip - are all you get for the effort of losing deliberately so many times in a row. In all other aspects, the fight is entirely ordinary; the Swoopers are regular Creepy Steeple Swoopers, and there is no extra dialogue from anyone else acknowledging the sheer unlikelihood of the scenario. What makes this even more curious is that unlike all other fights in this chapter, the Wings of Night can not be fought during the post-game "second round" of fights that Jolene hosts instead of Grubba - once Grubba is defeated, the chance to fight the Wings of Night is gone forever.

In a way, the rewards discussed in this section match the level of "challenge" the player overcomes to gain them, which is to say, zero - but zero challenge does not mean zero work, as getting both these rewards is a very time-consuming endeavor. When designing a game, the advantages and disadvantages of requiring a player to accomplish work for little reward must be weighed, even if the work is technically not challenging, to avoid causing bad feelings in the player.

A Few Points About Koopas

(The information in this segment has been generously provided by Jonathan Aldrich, author of the Super Mario Files.)

In Super Mario Bros., the famous "infinite 1-Up trick" can be performed by repeatedly stomping on a Koopa shell on a staircase. You've certainly seen it before, and even Nintendo acknowledges how famous it is by including it in other games:

Above: 9-Volt's intro in WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

However, the glitch - which at that point has been elevated to a deliberate feature - behaves differently in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color, at least inside its Challenge Mode. Challenge Mode is a classic "score attack" mode, meaning that each level can be played separately and the goal is to attain the highest score possible.

Since losing in Challenge Mode simply restarts the level, there is little point to 1-Ups, and the game removes all instances of Mario gaining a 1-Up during this mode. Collecting a 1-Up Mushroom results in Mario gaining 2000 points instead. (This is later picked up by New Super Mario Bros. 2, where 1-Up Mushrooms are replaced with Gold Mushrooms in Coin Rush mode, giving Mario 50 coins each.) Although there is one glitch resulting in Mario receiving a 1-Up, which does not count for any points:

If a moving shell is about to earn a 1-Up on the next enemy hit (which would normally result in 10000 points in this mode), kicking another moving shell into it results in a 1-Up gained, likely due to the two interactions (moving shell/enemy and moving shell/moving shell) using different code and only one instance of the code being changed to disallow 1-Ups by the developers.

So, with all that in mind, what happens when the glitch is attempted in that mode?

The shell simply self-destructs after Mario gains 8000 points from it. There is no way to prevent this from happening - successive jumps on the shell always increase the point number to the next amount in the sequence until the shell is discarded at 8000 points. However, a trick exists to circumvent this - "successive jumps" only count when Mario is not touching the floor.

(I use a Buzzy Beetle in World 7-1 here, the trick works in the usual World 3-1 location and all other locations used for the 1-Up glitch as well.)

If the Koopa Troopa or Buzzy Beetle are stomped until the point number is 4000, then left to descend the stairs to the ground level, it becomes possible to stomp it repeatedly while also touching the floor between stomps. Stomping the enemy/moving shell gains 100 points, but stomping the immobile shell gains 5000, the next number in the sequence after 4000, every time while not incrementing the count-up to 8000 due to Mario touching the ground.

(The reason this cannot be used to get 8000 points per stomp by getting the count to 5000 while on the staircase is that the discard event is tied to the 8000 point gain, i.e. the shell would immediately become unusable even if Mario touched the ground.)

(Source)

By placing Mario (or Luigi, in the case of this footage) in a very specific spot may result in him counting as kicking the immobile shell and bouncing off a moving shell simultaneously, leading to 5000 points being earned every stomp (as this is a frame-perfect trick, performing it on a console consistently is near impossible).

These tricks can be used to get the notoriously difficult-to-reach target score to obtain the Toad Award, the final accomplishment in the game.

You're Only Allowed to Look at Half of This Dragon

The Ruined Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey is home to a memorable boss battle against a dragon. The dragon has two names it is referred by: "Lord of Lightning" as seen in the Multi Moon mission involving the boss battle, and "Ruined Dragon" as seen in the Music List entry for the song that plays during the battle. To argue which of these is the "true name" is fruitless as both are equally valid. It is also possible that "Ruined Dragon" is its name and "Lord of Lightning" a title, perhaps one that the population of the Ruined Kingdom used to call the dragon.

The dragon is introduced in a cutscene starting at 1:03 in this video (the next two screenshots are also sourced from that video). During the cutscene, Bowser stands on the dragon's head while the dragon attacks the Odyssey with an electric attack, then jumps off onto his airship as the dragon flies away. Notably, the dragon's body is never shown in full; there are two main shots of it - one from the side:

- and one from the front:

Note that in the first shot, only the dragon's upper body is inside the frame, while in the second shot, it is only the head and a portion of the wings. Now, if years of analyzing objects in 3D video games taught me one thing, it's that if a game locks the camera in such a way than an object is only partially inside the frame, it's most likely because the rest of the object is not modeled at all. In the vast majority of cases, whenever a part of an object is not intended to be seen, it does not exist; 3D modeling software automates this to such an extent that it will remove a single face from a cube just to have two triangles fewer to render if that side of the cube is not meant to be seen. Thus, it is easy to assume after viewing this cutscene that the dragon's lower half simply does not exist.

This is further substantiated by the battle itself. When Mario arrives in the Ruined Kingdom, the dragon is nowhere to be seen. After using a Spark Pylon to transport himself to the top of the highest tower, Mario causes the dragon to appear. During the battle, the dragon is overlooking the tower in such a way that only its head, upper body, wings and front legs are seen - the same as in the cutscene. Attempting to approach the edge of the arena and looking down to see the rest of the dragon's body reveals that there is an impenetrable layer of fog some distance below the arena.

The fog covers the dragon's lower body, and at this point the most logical explanation is that the lower body does not exist - after all, the wall of fog is not originally present when Mario sees the tower from a distance, but appears only when he lands on it, seemingly specifically to mask the absence of the dragon's lower half.

However, revisiting the kingdom later reveals that the dragon does indeed have a full-body model, as it can be seen from the starting platform:

It blends in with the tower due to the kingdom's lighting, but that is the dragon's entire body, including the tail. Due to the lighting and large distance from the starting platform to the tower, it is extremely hard to see any detail on the body; even using the Snapshot Mode and zooming in shows very little except the outline, and even that is unclear due to overlapping with parts of the tower. However, two filters in Snapshot Mode can help us get a slightly clearer picture of it:

The "Line Drawing" filter underscores object edges, allowing us to see the shape of the dragon's hind legs and claws.

The "Coin" filter shows us the texture of the dragon's body, revealing that it is just as fully textured as the parts we can see up close during the cutscene and the battle.

All this raises the question: if the full-body model exists, why does the game seem so hesitant to use it? Perhaps it is a model that is only visible from the starting platform, and visiting the dragon on the tower loads a high-polygon model that does not have a lower half, which is hidden by the fog.

Here is where the "Coin" filter comes in handy again. It is unique among the filters in the game due to ignoring a wide variety of objects and substances, among them fog, water, ice and fire, as well as impenetrable layers of light or darkness. Using the "Coin" filter, it is often possible to view objects that would not be visible under any other circumstances, such as ceilings of areas normally shrouded in darkness. 

After the battle, it is possible to walk on the dragon's body - or at least on the parts of it that are above the fog. Mario will slip if he touches the dragon's arms, but there is one spot on them that he can stand on safely, which you can see in the above picture.

Turning the camera downward (you can still see Mario in the upper right corner of the above picture) reveals that beneath the fog, the rest of the dragon's body is still present, and has the same texture detail as the visible part of its body, meaning that it is not merely a low-polygon model. Thus, I cannot find a good explanation for why the game insists on hiding it using camera tricks and fog. 

Finally, a remark about the fog. When Mario arrives at the tower, the camera is locked in such a way that the fog can not be seen as it appears, being entirely blocked by scenery. However, when Mario leaves the tower, there are brief moments when the fog is seen receding. I attempted to pause the game during this and discovered something unique about the fog:

The animation for the fog receding cannot be paused by any means, as it continues receding even in Snapshot Mode, where all objects are usually completely immobile. While I have encountered very slight animation in Snapshot Mode before (some lights continue flickering etc.), this is the first case I have seen of an object continuing to move within that mode. 

Unabbreviated

Like any long-running franchise is expected to have, the Mario franchise contains many games with acronyms or abbreviations in their titles. (For reference, even though these words are used interchangeably in normal speech, they have different formal definitions. An abbreviation is something like "Dr." for "Doctor", which simply shortens the written form of a word but is pronounced the same. An acronym is taking the first letters of a phrase and making a new word with its own pronunciation out of it, i.e. "laser" or "scuba", which stand for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" and "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus", respectively. Something like "RPG", where each letter stands for its own word and is pronounced like the alphabet entry for that letter, is technically called an "initialism", though most people would also call it an acronym.)

When I looked at the name of a Japan-only game for the Satellaview, "BS Super Mario USA", I thought about how the name technically stood for a much longer name: "Broadcast Satellite Super Mario United States of America", but it would be very unlikely to ever see anyone refer to it as such. I decided that it would be curious to see what other Mario game titles would look like when expanded to not include any abbreviations in this manner. This is, of course, of no practical value whatsoever, but it may still be entertaining to see titles you may have known for years or decades presented in a new, but still technically accurate way.

For this list, I will expand everything except numbers into its long form. Here we have a partial list of unabbreviated Mario game titles:

• Donkey Kong Junior (this was actually the name under which the game was published in Japan and Europe)
• Mario Brothers
• Super Mario Brothers
• Doctor Mario
• Nintendo Entertainment System Open Tournament Golf
• Family Computer Golf: United States Course (Japan-only golf game for the Famicom Disk System)
• Family Computer Grand Prix II: Three-Dimensional Hot Rally (Japan-only racing game for the Famicom Disk System, also the source of the Mechanic outfit in Super Mario Odyssey)
• Super Mario Role Playing Game: Legend of the Seven Stars
• Broadcast Satellite Super Mario United States of America (see above)
• Super Smash Brothers
• Mario Versus Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong: King of Swing
• WarioWare, Incorporated: Mega Microgame$
• National Basketball Association Street Volume 3 (GameCube basketball game featuring Mario, Luigi and Peach as playable characters)
• Mario Kart Dual Screen (and any other game ending with DS)
• WarioWare: Do It Yourself
• Nintendo Entertainment System Remix
• Doctor Mario Online Prescription
• Super Mario Three-Dimensional Land
• Mario Kart Arcade Grand Prix Deluxe
• Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story Plus Bowser Junior's Journey

Some of these names are quite clunky, at least to me, they demonstrate how convenient the concept of abbreviations truly is. Perhaps you can find similar cases from other media you enjoy, as well.

Don't Like Kersti? Throw Her Out!

In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Mario's only companion is Kersti, a "sticker fairy" resembling a silver crown with eyes. Due to Kersti supplanting the usual variety of partner characters Mario interacts with in the series, she is not a very popular character; many players admit to disliking her. For those players, there is a way to punish Kersti due to a technical oversight on part of the developers, by literally tossing her in the trash.

During the game's final battle, Bowser uses a Royal Sticker to transform himself into a large cardboard version which can only be dealt 1 damage at a time, and has 500 HP. Kersti then transforms herself into a usable sticker that Mario applies to gain enough power to deal normal damage to Bowser in his powered-up form... at least during a normal playthrough.

Since it is possible to damage Bowser, it is also possible to defeat him without using Kersti. The game provides the player the means to deal 100 damage in one attack by performing 100 successful action commands in a row while using a Flashy Infinijump sticker. These can be used to bring down Bowser's health from 500 to 0, 1 HP at a time. If Bowser is defeated this way and Kersti's sticker has not been used, there will be a short window after Bowser's defeat cutscene where Mario can move around the room. During this scene, if the menu is opened, Kersti's sticker can be interacted with like any other sticker, including a "Toss" option.

(Source)

Of course, being an oversight, this does not affect the ending, but the concept of being given an item that is seemingly required to complete the story and then being able to throw it out after not needing it is entertaining nevertheless.

Static Goop

The Goop from Super Mario Sunshine (also known as "Icky Paint-Like Goop" or "Graffiti") is a substance that appears throughout the game as an obstacle to be eliminated through the use of the FLUDD water pack. 

Normally, the Goop is animated; the texture within it shifts in the following manner:

The Goop does not use a texture with different animation frames, however: all animation is simply a result of distortion effects applied to the same base texture:

There is one instance in the game where due to some oversight during development, the effects for the Goop were not activated in a scene, resulting in the Goop being static rather than animated. 

The specific instance can be found in Episode 1 of Noki Bay. 

Note that while the bubbles are rising from the Goop and Goobles (the blob enemies) are being spawned as usual, the Goop is not animated. 

Even more curious is the fact that this applies only to Goop found on the ground, not that found on walls; as the latter is still animated normally. 

Irregular behaviors like these, where one object out of many identical ones acts differently for seemingly no reason, always raise the question of how this was even possible to achieve during programming. There are two typical scenarios for reusing the same object: the first is to spawn an instance of a object that only has one description in the code, leading to all instances being identical unless special instructions are added when they spawn; and copying and pasting code. Neither of these should result in behavior like this. Of course, knowing exactly what happened in this case is nigh impossible, as the source code is protected by Nintendo and the programmers working on the game would be astronomically unlikely to remember what the exact reason for it could be. Thus, we can only hypothesize.

This concludes this week's Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. Thank you once again for your support. I must again point out that you are entitled to a refund. Please join me next week for Issue 8, featuring such topics as:

• Frozen Map Screens in Super Mario Bros. 3
• The Mystery of Kug
• Mario's Hex Colors Through the Years

Thank you very much for reading.