Donkey Kong 64 has a large number of collectibles, but the Internet is full of misinformation on what exactly that number is. I present an accurate count based on comprehensive datamining, aiming to answer this question once and for all: Donkey Kong 64 has 2142 collectibles.

An obscure functionality of Donkey Kong Country Returns is that if Donkey Kong spends 3 full attack cycles of a boss not damaging it, Professor Chops will pop up telling him what to do, e.g. "BOP NOW!" In the Mole Miner Max battle, the tip is particularly condescending, being simply "TRY HARDER".

Extremely rare officially licensed 1992 "Mariovania" mug. While appearing to be a regular Super Mario Bros. mug, the background is actually the starting area of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. What Mario is doing in this location is not explained.

In Super Mario Odyssey, many Goombas can be stacked. The limit for a legitimate Goomba stack is 30, as they will stop spawning afterwards. Manually spawning more Goombas reveals that the limit for an illegitimate Goomba stack is 200. At 201 Goombas, the game crashes.

In Mario Kart Wii, crashing the game and activating the crash handler will eventually start playing back the contents of the Wii's RAM as sound. Since the data was never intended to be interpreted like this, it ends up sounding like experimental harsh noise music.

A boat in New Super Mario Bros. Wii is called "NICE_BOAT" internally. While the developers may have simply believed it to be a particularly nice boat, there is reason to assume this is a reference to the "Nice Boat" broadcast incident where an anime episode was cancelled due to a murder.

"Classic NES Series Trivia" was a Flash game available on Nintendo's site in 2004. The questions were loaded remotely, and could not be archived. Playing the game now results in no questions loading and a purgatory-like experience with blank choices, all of which are declared wrong.

In the selection screen of Super Smash Bros. Melee, characters are represented by artwork instead of 3D models. However, unused "selected" animations for the fighters' models exist in the files for a scrapped 3D selection screen. Some of these are broken due to being unfinished.

"60 Second Challenge! Save Luigi!" was an interactive train quiz held on some Japan Railways trains from 2020-2022. The player had 2 chances to select 1 correct answer out of 3 to save Luigi being dropped in lava. Getting both guesses wrong would result in Luigi almost dying.

Warning: profanity A photo in the booklet for the official 1993 Super Mario Compact Disco album contains a profane shirt in a photo that likely slipped through due to be being printed so small that it requires extreme zooming in to view the swear.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey contains an unused "Toads ramming each other rapidly" test room, containing Peach and three pairs of Toads. Talking to Peach causes the Toads to ram each other rapidly.

In Super Mario 64, if a shell-less Koopa bumps into Mario while he is asleep, he will enter a "sleepwalking" state, where all of his voice sounds are replaced by snoring. He will continue snoring even when being shot out of a cannon; the only way to wake him up is to harm him.

In the original GameCube version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Glitz Pit greeter Toad always bites his tongue after Chapter 3 is over. In the Switch version, this was made into an Easter egg, whereby he always has a small chance of biting his tongue instead.

Animation posted for MAR10 Day 2016 on Nintendo of America's official social media accounts.

The 1998 official site for Nintendo Australia had a deliberately silly aesthetic with small animations and edits to official renders. For the "HELP" button, Yoshi's pupils were made smaller than usual to give him a "concerned" expression, as though in need of help.

Nomura no Famicom Trade was a stock trading application for the Japan-only dial-up modem add-on for the Famicom. Through a Nintendo collaboration, the game featured Mario on the information screen, doing a unique little dance.

Certain models of the 2003 Motorola MPx200 clamshell phone contained a ringtone that was blatantly just the "Fever" theme from Dr. Mario with different notes.

In WarioWare: Twisted, Jimmy's boss microgame can be won instantly if the console is tilted 720° in less than half a second. In practice, this is achieved by literally physically throwing the console.

In Mario Kart Wii, the statues on Daisy Circuit are simple, but achieve detail through textures. A stylistic change in Mario Kart Tour/8 Deluxe eschews the textures and attempts to model the details instead, resulting in a much rougher look despite having more polygons.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team contains various unused test rooms in its files. One of these is the "two dead Luigis" test room, which is identical to the Mushrise Park entrance from the finished game, except there are two Luigis lying on the ground. The Luigis are unresponsive.

Most of the footage of the famous 2000 "Super Mario 128" tech demo was recorded with handheld cameras by the audience, with the presenter drowning out the game sound. Only 10 seconds of direct feed footage exist, which reveal that the sound was a cacophony of Marios screaming.

In Super Mario Sunshine, whenever Mario is wet, he will drip small droplets of water. This is not cosmetic; in fact, Wet Mario is so powerful he can defeat the game's first boss entirely by dripping on it, skipping obtaining FLUDD altogether.

In Mario Party 3, the message debug mode features Peach walking in a white void while messages are displayed, except all portraits are replaced by Boo. This creates the impression of a bizarre scenario where Boo is showing off his wide repertoire of character impressions to Peach.

In Super Mario Odyssey, the Odyssey can only hold 999 Power Moons. However, it is possible to deposit over 1500 moons into it at once by buying the maximum amount of moons from each Crazy Cap store beforehand, so that it takes ca. 2 and a half minutes just to deposit them.

"Mushrooms are drugs" jokes are a staple of Mario humor on the Internet. Not even Nintendo themselves are strangers to this, with a comic in the official Japanese Super Mario World guide using "Luigi is consuming mushrooms secretly in the bathroom" as a setup.

According to internal files and interviews, Luigi has been part of Super Mario 64 for 85% of its development time. New insights from development data allow us to narrow down when exactly he was abandoned, being the two weeks between February 6, 1996 and February 20, 1996.

Shigeru Miyamoto was very impressed by Banjo-Kazooie during its development, even expressing that it surpasses Super Mario 64 in some ways: "If Super Mario 64 is a makunouchi bento, then Banjo-Kazooie is a deluxe makunouchi bento."

When a Spiny Shell is about to hit a racer in Mario Kart World, it aims for the center of their model before exploding. For small racers, e.g. Goomba, this results in a single frame where it fully envelops them, giving off the appearance of the shell itself driving the vehicle.

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, a starving family and a Bob-omb sailor ask Mario for "anything edible". When offered explosives, the family will decline, but the Bob-omb will happily eat them. This may either be a deliberate Easter egg, or a serendipitous coincidence.

A 2023 German psychiatric study found that playing Super Mario Odyssey significantly improved depressive symptoms in clinically depressed individuals compared to regular psychotherapeutic treatment, reducing depression by 43%.

BS Super Mario Collection was a version of Super Mario All-Stars for the Satellaview, released in 4 episodes. Luigi does not appear in it. However, near the end of the final episode, before the final battle, a letter arrives in which he explains he was sitting out the adventure on a tropical island.

In 1991, Shigeru Miyamoto claimed that the reason Yoshi did not appear on the NES was that it was not technically possible. A 1995 unauthorized port of Super Mario World to the NES shows it is very much possible, suggesting the real reason could have been more complex.

In Super Mario 64, it is actually possible to escape from the grasp of King Bob-omb or a Chuckya after they grab Mario, by whipping the Control Stick back and forth and mashing the A button a combined total of 11 times before they throw him.

In Donkey Kong 64, the Giant Spider miniboss can only be fought once. Modifying the game to fight it a second time makes it unceremoniously explode. While this appears to be a glitch, examining the code reveals it was actually deliberately added for the developers' own amusement.

Super Mario World was shown in early screenshots to have a mushroom-shaped overworld. However, development files show that this concept went much further. The mushroom island eventually connected to a large mainland. It is unknown why such an elaborate overworld was completely scrapped.

In Super Paper Mario, entering 3D mode during the Brobot battle reveals a synthwave-style vector background. Since it can only be seen during the battle, it is impossible to enjoy it by itself, undisturbed by enemy attacks, without external tools.

Super Mario 64 DS contains a "Surf or Die" glitch. If Yoshi lands on a Koopa shell in a specific way, he will be fine for as long as he keeps surfing. However, the moment he stops surfing, the game will freeze.

"Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" is a meme started with a fan video in 2009, which got so popular Nintendo themselves referenced it repeatedly. However, the earliest instance of Luigi winning by doing nothing actually comes from a game and predates the meme by 5 years.

In Luigi's Mansion, revisiting the Bottom of the Well after watching the cutscene with King Boo causes Mario to be very faintly heard yelling "Eh Luigi! What's the hold-up-a?!" in the background, which is easy to miss unless playing the game on maximum volume.

I FOUND THE MARIO KNIFE! I have finally negotiated the purchase of the rare officially licensed Super Mario World Knife. Once I receive it, I will test on stream just how dangerous an official Mario item can be. Thank you so much to my supporters for making this possible!

A Zelda II: Adventure of Link feature in the Japanese Family Computer Magazine featured 51 tips, with one of them being fake as a challenge to readers. The fake trick claimed that drinking from a fountain 5 times would turn it into Mario, and that he must be destroyed to get a 1-Up.

A 1994 Japanese Nintendo catalog included a sample image to illustrate the capabilities of Mario Paint that depicts "KOOPA'S WIFE BIBINBA". While the character is likely not canon, her name is based on a discarded name for Bowser, so it may have been drawn by a Nintendo employee.

In Super Mario Odyssey, the inside of Mario's model is normally protected from prying eyes through a dithering effect, activated when the camera gets too close. However, by strategically placing him on specific slopes, the effect fails to activate, allowing a clear look at Mario's insides.

In Mario Party, landing on a Bowser Space while having no coins or stars normally results in Bowser taking pity on the players' bad fortune and giving them free coins instead. However, there has sadly been a trend of Bowser becoming steadily less compassionate over time, as shown by this graph.

In 2023, I posted about a bizarre Dolce & Gabbana shirt featuring Mario standing in a beam of light alongside text praising him. I have tracked down the source of the image, which was a splash page in the E3 2000 brochure. Now the venerated Mario can be seen in high quality.

The ending to the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels will become corrupted simply by Mario being too close to the right edge of the screen. While Mario will remain normal, Peach will become an uncanny jumble of corrupted graphics.

According to Motoi Okamoto, Mini-Game Director for Super Mario 64 DS, Shigeru Miyamoto would start midnight crunch sessions for the game's development by walking into the office and announcing "It's Mario time."

In Paper Mario, Mario normally jumps onto Lakilester's cloud to use the Cloud Nine move. However, a small cute detail occurs if Mario is asleep or otherwise unable to jump onto the cloud, which causes Lakilester to gingerly pick him up from the ground himself instead.

In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, Starlow bizarrely claims herself to be "an eight-headed beauty". This is actually a mistranslation. She actually refers to eight-head body proportions, used traditionally for fashion illustrations, instead of literally claiming to have 8 heads.

In Super Mario World, Mario can use lava to create life from nothing. Throwing an empty Koopa shell upward on the frame it would sink into lava will make it turn into a living Koopa. It can then be extracted from the shell and the process repeated indefinitely for infinite life.