Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 22 (Patreon)

Welcome, everyone, to the 22nd issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.  

Today, I will take a look at the pictures used in the map screens in Super Mario Odyssey, extracted from the game's data.

Crazy Cap Brochures

Pressing the Minus button while playing Super Mario Odyssey brings up a map screen where Mario's current location can be checked and a warp to any of the previously activated checkpoints or the Odyssey can be initiated. However, what makes this game's map screen special is that it is presented as a travel brochure:

To the left and right of the map are fold-out pages with information about the kingdom Mario is currently in. The brochures are published by Crazy Cap, the game's ubiquitous chain of clothing stores, as can be seen by their logo in the bottom right of each brochure. 

Although the back side of the brochures (what should be the "front", as in, the side visible if they are in their folded form) is never seen in-game, the Hint Toad is seen holding what appears to be one of those brochures, and the front (although a very low-resolution texture) seems to depict the game's planet from space, with the Odyssey flying away from it:

The same brochure can be found inside the Odyssey itself, using the same texture. 

Today, I will present the photos used in the brochures in the highest available quality, extracted from the game's files by spriters-resource.com users Random Talking Bush and SciresM. However, before I start, I will briefly discuss the in-universe feasibility of the maps and any continuity errors that arise when the images depicted in them are taken into account. This is all speculation, of course, and it is more than likely that the continuity errors are oversights.

First off, Mario appears to already own at least two brochures before finding the Odyssey: the Cap Kingdom and Cascade Kingdom ones, which he can access from the very start of the game. If this is taken at face value, this means the brochures are something Mario neither is given by Cappy nor finds inside the Odyssey (despite them being visible inside the Odyssey). 

The Odyssey itself - in a working condition - seems to be depicted on the cover of the brochures and in one of the photos (see below, under the Lost Kingdom entry). Of course, since the brochures clearly exist before the Odyssey is repaired during the game's events (especially due to the broken-down Odyssey actually being featured in one of the entries in the Cascade Kingdom), there is only one explanation: there are many Odyssey-like airships in the game's world, and Crazy Cap has used one that was very similar to the Odyssey to take the photos. Still, this leaves the small plot hole of why the Cascade Kingdom entry describes the broken Odyssey as "odd" - surely the author would recognize it as a broken-down version of the ship they use themselves? Although, even with this, I am unable to find any other satisfactory in-universe explanation that would allow both the broken Odyssey and the intact Odyssey to exist in the guide simultaneously.

Of course, the only way to know this for sure is to ask the designers themselves, which may happen in an interview in the future.

With this out of the way, let us take a look at the photographs, starting with the Cap Kingdom. In the top left corner of each guide is a photograph that, at the in-game magnification, appears to be filtered; however, looking at the high-resolution version, it is apparent that it is actually drawn over with colored pencils:

You may want to right-click the image and select "open image in a new tab" or the equivalent for your browser or device to better see the lines. From what I can tell, the base of the image is an in-game screenshot, which is then filtered, a paper texture is added, then the edges are colored white to create a "children's book illustration" feel, with the last step being the addition of the pencil lines. The lines do not follow the picture perfectly, and sometimes are made to look like sketch lines. Note the top of Top-Hat Tower in this image, where the pencil is drawn in an oval to give the illusion of the entire tower being drawn from scratch.

There is, on the whole, a very high level of effort put into these images that is not possible to see in-game due to the brochure not allowing the player to zoom in to the maximum resolution of the photos. 

The photos in the guides are nearly all very well-thought-out in terms of not depicting a)gameplay-relevant objects like coins, and b)objects that would logically only have appeared as a result of Mario's adventure, like enemies that are affiliated with Bowser (native enemies, such as Tropical Wigglers that can be assumed to have been there before the adventure, are still present).

Of course, even then there are some elements that slip through. In the case of this photo, there is a scarecrow between the two lampposts in front of the entrance to the tower, obscured by the railing of the bridge. The scarecrows are a gameplay-relevant object that has no particular story-based reason to exist everywhere, so this was likely unintentional; however, in-game, due to not being able to zoom in this much on the photo, it is almost entirely impossible to see.

Checkpoints are another object that is completely absent; also for a very obvious reason. Every checkpoint displays either a Bowser symbol or a Mario symbol, and as the guide was published before either of the two had any reason to be in those kingdoms, they are removed. In this photo, there should be a checkpoint in front of the leftmost airship in-game.

The  intro image for the Cascade Kingdom also pays attention to continuity, showing the bridge that comes down upon collecting the first Power Moon as being still upright. In most other kingdoms, the "peaceful" state shown in the photos is the state after beating the game (i.e. even though the photos purport to show the past, they were taken by the developers on a save file where the story was already beaten); however, here, due to Mario's actions having a unique effect on the environment, the photos show the state of the kingdom before Mario arrives.

Of particular interest is this wall, which in-game is destroyed by the player almost immediately after reaching it. I personally am curious about how the enemies were removed from the images; this one is supposed to have a Chain Chomp in front of the wall. With regular enemies, it is possible to simply defeat them; but the Chain Chomp can only be defeated by smashing it against the wall, which also destroys the wall itself. Thus, I imagine the developers either used a special tool that allowed them to unload objects in-game, or, at least for some of the photos, simply used photo manipulation. I would personally have suggested photo manipulation for most of these scenes if not for the hatless Toads below, in the Mushroom Kingdom section.

The Sand Kingdom's intro image has very sketchy lines for the distant objects such as the Inverted Pyramid and the ruins. 

One thing you will notice is that Power Moons are also among the removed objects fom the photos, however, there are still objects that are related to Power Moons. In this image, to the right of the Inverted Pyramid, you can see a bright spot. This is one of the shining birds that release a Power Moon upon touching them.

The Sand Kingdom brochure contains two instances of the designers forgetting to remove very difficult-to-see Goombas that should not be there:

Can you see the Goombas? This is impossible to see in the in-game brochure due to the extremely small size, but here are the relevant sections zoomed in:

The first one is a Goomba wearing a sombrero, while the second one is two 2D Goombas at an extremely oblique angle. They are not even recognizable as Goombas, with only the colors and the in-game location of a Goomba spawner near that place giving it away.

For the Wooded Kingdom intro, most of the effort went toward tracing the individual panels on the biodome in the background, making them more noticeable.

This photo, to me, is very strange. I could not recreate it myself in-game. It is taken from the direction of the exit of the first area (where the Sphynx is), and these three Steam Gardeners are in the same spots as they are in-game, but the distance between the middle one and the other two is too great to make them look this close in size. Note the road on the ground; the middle robot is in front of it while the others are behind it. The in-game camera will, no matter what mode, show the middle robot to be much larger from this position due to perspective; only some sort of perspective-negating "telephoto lens" mode, exclusive to the developers, could result in this framing. Alternatively, this could have been taken at above-in-game resolution from far away and then cropped; which would also only be possible with developer tools.

In the Lake Kingdom photos, we can see first-hand evidence for the designers removing some objects for some photos but leaving the same objects in for others. Note the space in front of the main entrance to the Water Plaza. There are no NPCs there. However...

In this photo, there a Lochlady to the right of the entrance. What is odd to me is that in both cases, most of the NPCs normally visible were removed. There would normally be two more Lochladies inside the dome; however, those are missing in both photos while the one at the entrance is present in one of them. In addition, it is unclear why some NPCs would need to be removed at all seeing how all Tostarenans are still present in the Sand Kingdom images.

Going back to the intro image, here is another thing that was clearly not intentional:

The boulder blocking the entrance in the left dome is present even though the Lochlady in-game stating it fell in front of the door recently, possibly as a result of the Broodals attacking.

This is a very interesting photo as it depicts a Zipper half-open without being captured (i.e. without the Mario cap and mustache), which is only possible in-game if Mario were able to  exit the Zipper mid-move - however, that is not actually possible for the player. Thus, some sort of developer tool was used to bring the Zipper into this position manually, or to make Mario able to exit it outside of the usual restrictions.

The Cloud Kingdom's two large contrail clouds have some creative pencil strokes in this intro image.

This has less to do with the guide per se, but the two towers here are never explained. They are far outside the field of play, and the Coin filter in Snapshot Mode shows them to be flat textures instead of 3D objects. Although the guide goes on at length about clouds, and finishes with this image, it does not mention the towers and they are not relevant to gameplay. In other kingdoms, objects that are part of the skybox are usually generic enough to clearly communicate that they are not objects of interest; thus, they do not contain any structures like these. 

The Lost Kingdom is the first of the three kingdoms where the Crazy Cap shop is the Starshroom spaceship, first seen in Super Mario Galaxy. In all instances of the location of the Starshroom being in the photos in the guide, it is missing (such as on the mountaintop here). I find this personally to be one of the biggest efforts to maintain continuity on part of the developers; as the Starshroom is not likely to be a permanent fixture in any of those locations, it makes little sense for it to be in the photos.

This brochure also contains the biggest oversight (assuming it is an oversight): the Odyssey is visible on the very right edge of this photo. I had previously made a post about this on my Twitter account, however, that one was taken in-game; this image is higher-resolution. If not for this photo and the Odyssey on the cover, there would have been perfect continuity in the guide. Even the cover can be explained due to the resolution being so low that the ship could look rather different from the Odyssey in practice; however, here it clearly is Mario's Odyssey, so if this is not supposed to be an oversight, then the guide was created by someone flying a ship that looks exactly the same, which they landed in the exact same spot Mario did.

The Metro Kingdom intro photo is so busy the developers simply did not bother to remove all gameplay-relevant objects, counting on no one noticing them. Of course, everything can be noticed if enough time is spent looking at it, and so I was able to find 3 Power Moons and 7 purple coins in this image:

This photo was taken from extremely high up, higher than the player can get:

Note that the large Empire State-like building, which in-game is taller than the New Donk City Hall, is almost at eye level. Looking very closely at the space on the bottom behind the buildings, there is a clear horizontal divide in color between what I presume is the cut-off of the modeled area and the start of the skybox texture, which is not possible to see in-game either.

This photo also has purple coins visible (to the left of the taxi on the leftmost edge of the screen, plus some more on top of the poster on the building to the left of the Crazy Cap building). In addition, Talkatoo is on a bench in the middle of the photo, making this the only time he is visible in the photos, as well.

The Snow Kingdom intro image has very pronounced pencil lines due to being very empty otherwise, leading to the artist filling up the space with more lines than in other photos.

This brochure also contains a photo of something that cannot be seen in person by the player:

Although it is possible to catch a glimpse of the Frost-Frosted Cake during Bowser's wedding ceremony, it does not return to the pedestal in Shiveria upon completing the story, leaving it oddly empty. Thus, this photo is the only instance of it being shown in its proper place. I personally believe the cake was intended to return at some point but due to the low priority of programming this, it was overlooked or regarded as unimportant to implement.

The Seaside Kingdom's intro picture is taken from a spot that makes the kingdom appear more empty than is really is: the rock on which one of the four switches for the fountains can be found is aligned in precisely such a manner as to cover up the lighthouse, obscuring one of the kingdom's landmarks. (Although of course this could be a deliberate decision to draw more attention to the Glass Palace on the right.)

Due to the very angular nature of the produce in the Luncheon Kingdom, this has lent itself well to being emphasized with pencil lines.

One of the most noticeable oversights in the guide is this: a stack of coins in the lower left corner of this photo. As regular coins have been fastidiously removed from all other photos, this was definitely not intended.

Although the Cooking Carnival doesn't start in-game until Mario defeats the Cookatiel, the recurring nature of it allowed the developers to still put a picture of it in the guide. The brochure says it happens once a year, so there has had to be at least one year between the printing of the brochure and Mario's adventure.

The artist actually added a significant amount of detail that is otherwise completely invisible to the intro image of the Ruined Kingdom, by having the pencil lines emphasize parts of the tower's architecture. Compare this to how it appears in-game:

Note that due to the atmospheric fog effect, the tower appears almost a solid color; the pencil lines show the stories and windows much better.

This is another photo taken from a vantage point impossible to reach in-game without some sort of developer tool; somewhere above where the dragon's head would be. 

As the swords depict Bowser's face on them, they must be Bowser's. This, to me, indicates Bowser has taken control of the dragon at least a year before the events of the game, if not much earlier, and was just waiting for the proper moment to use his power.

Here, the developers waited for the clouds in the skybox to align perfectly to get all the cloud colors into the frame and have each of them take up roughly the same amount of space.

After destroying the two golden Bowser statues in the game's story, this guide becomes the only place where the player can see them again, as they are not restored.

The Moon Kingdom intro image has a lot less pencil lines than others, likely due to the artist not being able to add them to the lens flares from the sun without looking off.

On the topic of the sun:

The glare on the right side of the planet visible in the skybox of the Moon Kingdom is supposed to be just that - a glare from the sun - however, not just I but many other players I have asked and seen play that level first took it to be the sun itself rising from behind the planet, which led to confusion when they saw the actual sun in the sky. The glare is designed in such a way that I believe at some point it was in fact intended to be the sun; but the ensuing need to make the lighting in the level conform to a flat angle was probably too complex to implement or too distracting for players, so another sun was added in a more conventional position in the sky.

The Mushroom Kingdom intro image also does not have too many obvious pencil lines. I must commend the framing that completely removes all other points of interest from the image, as well as hides the extent of the moat, making the castle appear to be on flat ground not unlike its depiction in many earlier Mario games.

Note how not only is the Odyssey missing, so is the Starshroom. There is also no one around the fountain, presumably due to no airships being there, either. Funnily, despite removing so many NPCs and structures, the boom box on top of the rock is still present. 

In the lower right corner, there is a Toad without a hat. You can see three more of these in another image:

In-game, Toads without hats do not exist, as they would have had to be capturable, which no generic NPCs outside of hatless Volbonans, RC car drivers, and the Shiverian racer are. This means the designers consciously decided to create a hatless Toad model and put in into the scene just to show Toads as they would have looked before the events of the game (since in-game, they all wear hats after Peach brings them back from the moon, meaning they would not have worn hats earlier).

Here, the shading used for the underside of the topmost platform looks like a continuation of the skybox, making it appear transparent. 

This photo implies that the Robo-Brood has existed for a while and was not made to Bowser's order, since the photo is, as already established, at least one year old. This raises the question, do the Broodals often get into such scenarios where they would need to deploy a giant bomb-spitting robot to protect someone's wedding? In that case, whose weddings would that have been? I am certain some very interesting stories could be told about the Broodals' work history before being hired by Bowser.

The final intro image. Again, there was not much for the author to work with in the first place.

This photo contains the largest NPC removal in the entire guide. All the people cheering Mario on, the Dorrie, and even the loudspeakers for the New Donk City band, are removed, in addition to the Odyssey itself. If you look very closely at some of these spots, they seem slightly too smooth; which makes me believe that instead of unloading the objects, they were removed with photo manipulation. Unfortunately, even at this maximum resolution, the camera is still zoomed out too far to be able to tell for certain.

I hope that this extremely close-up look was informative.

This concludes today's issue. Thank you very much for reading.