Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels, Issue 2, Week 37/2018

Welcome, Supper Players, Broth Siblings and Supperstars, to the second issue of the Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels feature! Thank you again so much for your support! I hope this issue will be as full of surprises for you as it was for me while I was writing it (details below)!

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 take a Warp Pipe to a world below the surface of the Mario franchise.
This is Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels.

The Life and Times of Spikeless Thwomp

(Topic suggested by Supperstar patron Kit Sovereign)

In 1988, Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced Thwomps. They have appeared in more than half of all Mario titles released since then, and in most of these appearances, they are just as spiky as they were in their first. Sometimes, the spikes are sharp and hurt Mario when he jumps on them, often, they are dull and merely there for decoration. However, a special breed of Thwomp, most associated with Super Mario 64, has begun cropping up all across the series years later: the spikeless Thwomp. I will now detail every known appearance of a spikeless Thwomp, up until the seeming current retirement of the concept. 

Note: due to the large amount of images necessary to illustrate all appearances, they will be presented as collages.

Although the blue Thwomp design from Super Mario 64 is the one most would think of to be the original spikeless Thwomp, the concept dates back to Super Mario Kart, where cylindrical Thwomps without spikes appear in the Bowser Castle tracks, as well as a special, more hurtful variant called Super Thwomps in the Rainbow Road track. This design decision is called back in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, which has a rare combination of regular grey Thwomp coloring and Super Mario 64 "blue Thwomp" design.

A Japanese Super Mario Kart trading card provides official art of the Thwomps, as well as confirmation that these are in fact Thwomps (Dossun in Japanese) and not a differently-named subspecies. Unfortunately, these Thwomps have been retroactively changed into regular spiky Thwomps in the remakes of the game's courses; a fate that befell many of the Thwomps detailed in this section.

In 1996, the iconic blue spikeless Thwomp made its debut in Super Mario 64. This design was reused for the vast majority - but not all - subsequent spikeless Thwomp appearances. I have added a beta design and a peculiar design from a licensed Kellogg's Super Mario 64 collectible card (possibly based on the beta design) for comparison. Note that the shape of the Thwomps in this game is not nearly cubical; while they appear roughly square with rounded corners from the front, a side view reveals that they are more "house-shaped" with a roof-like top. Just like the Super Mario Kart Thwomps, these were standardized to regular Thwomps in the Super Mario 64 DS remake.

While many other Thwomp subspecies without spikes exist, some of them like Bomps or Grindels also first appearing in Super Mario 64, this analysis focuses only on Thwomps, i.e. enemies identified by the game, manual, code, etc. as Thwomps - or Dossun in absence of an English name - and not a different word. This becomes relevant when considering "Thwomps" from the Zelda series. 

While all of them are named some variation of "Thwomp" in English, only the Spiked Thwomp is called anything close to "Dossun" in Japanese - "Dosun", which while similar, is written with a different number of katakana. All other enemies here have unique names not related to Thwomps in Japanese, which is fortunate, as it is quite difficult to place the "Thwomp" and "Mega Thwomp" designs as "spiked" or "spikeless" given how the protrusions are so short, and harmless to Link, that calling them spikes would be a stretch.

Mario Kart 64 is our last excursion into Mario Kart territory, as it is the only remaining Mario Kart game to use a spikeless Thwomp and the only one to use the Super Mario 64 design. Note that starting with this game, the Thwomps of this type have six flat sides with rounded edges, as opposed to the house shape of Super Mario 64. There is a famous "green" Thwomp in a cage that figures in many hoaxes about unlocking content in the game; however, it is not actually green. No green Thwomp textures exist in the code of Mario Kart 64, and this Thwomp is merely lit by very strong yellow lighting inside the cage, making it appear green.

The Mario Party games on the Nintendo 64 all feature the Super Mario 64-inspired design. The Mario Party 2 "Thwomp Car" Thwomp model (upper right) is the lowest-polygon Thwomp model in existence, however, it still has beveled edges. No Thwomp model has ever been a pure 6-sided cube (the "Platonic hexahedron").

Mario Party Advance and Mario Party DS are two of the only games where the Super Mario 64 design appears only as a 2D sprite. The inclusion of the blue Thwomp in Mario Party DS is only due to its Puzzle Mode taking one puzzle game from each preceding game in the series, and the relevant Mario Party 3 game featuring Thwomps of this kind.

Mario Party Advance also features a touching sidequest where a Thwomp pretends to have been robbed just so he could get visitors because he has no friends: 

Note that Thwomp's personality and accent in this game are a reference to Mario Party 4.

Speaking of which, Mario Party 4, 5 and 6 all use the exact same Thwomp model. Starting with Mario Party 7, all blue spikeless Thwomps are phased out to be replaced with regular Thwomps. However, after many years, one instance of a spikeless Thwomps could withstand the change:

Despite all other Thwomps in Mario Party: The Top 100 being changed to a spiky design, the inflatable Thwomp from Mario Party 4's "The Great Deflate" minigame is left spikeless (although its face is still updated). 

Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour reuses the same Mario Party 4-6 model, while Mario Golf: Advance Tour uses that model to make prerendered sprites.

Surprisingly, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time is the only Mario RPG to feature any kind of spikeless Thwomp, but it makes up for that by having the largest amount and variety of those in any Mario game. The entire Thwomp Volcano area is constructed out of inert spikeless Thwomps, and the characters Mrs. Thwomp (top left) and Thwomp Elevator (top middle) are important to the plot. While Mrs. Thwomp looks completely unlike any other Thwomps and in fact is not identified as one in Japanese, she deserves special mention for being the only explicitly female member of any Thwomp-related species shown in the Mario series so far. Perhaps if female Thwomps were ever to appear again, they too, could be spikeless.

In Mario Pinball Land, spikeless Thwomps are given the very important role of helping Mario defeat Bowser. When they are raised by letting Mario roll past wheels on the wall, they can be made to fall by hitting a switch, shaking the ground and making Bowser trip. In that state, he is vulnerable. Unfortunately, Bowser destroys the Thwomps halfway through the battle.

Kirby's Down+B move in the Super Smash Bros. series lets him transform into some manner of heavy object. What the objects can be depends on the specific game, but in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of the forms is a Super Mario 64-style spikeless Thwomp. The latter marks the only appearance of that Thwomp form on the Wii. As usual, the Thwomp was retconned to the regular form in later entries. Thus, Super Smash Bros. Brawl marks the last physical appearance of a spikeless Thwomp, not counting the inflatable one in Mario Party: The Top 100. 

However, there is one more instance of spikeless Thwomps. An instance not many know of, as it requires playing a game really well to see.

This is Stage 3 of the Helmet game in Game & Watch Gallery 2. To get to Stage 3, you must earn 1000 points - which is not trivial - but that is not the only requirement. You must also continue playing. The Game & Watch Gallery series stops awarding Stars that unlock features after 1000 points, so players are conditioned to immediately quit a game after reaching 1000 points. In addition, no games except Helmet offer anything truly new so late into the game. Helmet, however, breaks this rule and offers a completely new stage with new obstacles, a new background based on Baby Bowser's castle from Yoshi's Island, and original music to all who earn 1000 points and then wait for Toad to appear in the doorway to take them to Stage 3. 

This concludes the history of spikeless Thwomps. Will we ever see them again? Given the retconning initiative going on since 2010, probably not. But if we do, you can be certain that I will make another article about it.

Bowser's Disappointment

The Shroom City mode in Mario Party Advance is the game's main attraction. The player must explore a sprawling board and complete 50 quests with a great amount of variety. Nine of these quests involve Bowser, and his multiple lairs he built around Shroom City.

One thing to note about quests in Shroom City is that the player must spend Mushrooms, a precious resource that results in a Game Over once depleted, to reach them. As such, the chances of a player entering a quest destination and then declining to start the quest are near zero, as there is only punishment for wasting resources as a consequence.

As it turns out, however, punishment may be the only mechanical aspect of it, but a player may still be interested in declining a quest due to often humorous dialogue that follows. Here are the "decline" scenes of all Bowser quests in Shroom City:

A Ghostly Connection

This fact may seem obvious to some, but I have experienced people being surprised by it enough times that I feel this can be useful to at least a fraction of those reading this. 

Please take a look at the four Passage bosses from Wario Land 4.

They all have so-called "ghost tails", a cartoony indication that they are supposed to be spirits. Now look at these characters:

Hoggus, the pig artist, and Yūrei, the skeleton pirate, are also ghosts, as is Keyzer, the key Wario needs to collect to proceed to the next stage. There's something of a common theme here. And finally:

Not only is the final boss, the Golden Diva, a ghost, but so is Princess Shokora, as clearly shown by her gaining a halo and ascending to the afterlife upon being rescued. What might this all mean? What is clear is that every single character important to the game that did not originate outside of the Pyramid (read: Wario and the bald scientist appearing in the bonus rooms) are dead. The nature of the magic binding them to the material world is never explained, although it seems as though it is dispelled once the Golden Diva is defeated. 

Again, I apologize if this was all clear to some readers the very first time they played the game; however, as the game never explicitly points this out, this can easily be missed.

Heaven on Earth?

Speaking of the afterlife, Super Paper Mario heavily features two aspects of it (called the "aftergame" in the game as a nod to "game over" meaning "death" in that game's vocabulary), the Underwhere based on the Greek underworld, and the Overthere based on the Christian image of Heaven. 

Crucial to Super Paper Mario's plot is the concept that the different worlds visited in the game are located in different dimensions, i.e. they do not inhabit the same space and it is impossible to walk, fly or otherwise simply move from one to another. The game underscores that to transport between dimensions, some manner of magic is necessary, be it special doors, Warp Pipes or some characters' inherent dimension-hopping abilities. This also means that no location could possibly be visible from a location inside another dimension, as that would mean it would be possible to move there through space. (The Void is an exception because it is said to be a magical phenomenon invading every dimension simultaneously.)

With this established, let us look at the dimension containing Chapter 7. The Underwhere and the Overthere are in the same dimension, so it is possible - and necessary in the game - to walk from one to another. What is strange is that there doesn't seem to be a transitional area - the final room of the Underwhere simply has rays of light shining into it, and is followed by the fluffy clouds of the Overthere.

In short, we are never shown the surface of that world, as we are taken directly from a cave into the sky. Although, "never" may not be the right word.

In Chapter 7-3, a cloud named Cyrrus asks the party to give him a Red Apple, whereupon he grows large and invites them to jump on him. Doing so results in the player character using Cyrrus as a trampoline and being shot so high up that this scene plays:

It turns out the surface of that world was Earth-like all along. And as we established earlier, this cannot be a planet containing all the other locations from the game, as they would not coexist within the same space.

This raises many questions. Who lives on that surface? Is it empty, since the only "points of interest" the game decides to show the players are underground and in the sky? Or is it perhaps full of the people who end up in the respective afterlives when they die? Could it be that it is intended to be the "default dimension", i.e. the one the Mushroom Kingdom is in, the planet explored in Super Mario Odyssey? Or could it be an allusion to the real Earth, the one we inhabit? I am not someone who makes theories about video games, so I will stop at verifiable facts and only raise questions instead of attempting to make claims; however, you are free to make your own theories about the material presented.

It is very curious how a single scene shown for less than 10 seconds, mostly for the comedic value of watching the player character's arms flail, can result in so many questions upon closer analysis.

The Forgotten Elements of DKJR

If you have played Donkey Kong Jr. in only one form, it is more likely to have been the console version on the NES than the arcade version. While the NES version does a very good job of recreating the gameplay of the arcade version, it does so at the cost of the cutscenes.

At the beginning of the arcade version, we are treated to this scene:

Two Marios are hoisting Donkey Kong in a cage onto a platform. These are in fact two Marios, and not Mario and Luigi, as Luigi did not exist for at least one year at the time the arcade version was released. The side of the cabinet, the flyer, and the myriad other promotional material never reference the second Mario. 

Junior himself is not exempt from having duplicates - in Donkey Kong Jr. Math for the NES, the second player controls a pink Donkey Kong Jr. However, this is at least acknowledged in the manual and he is given a name: Junior (II).

Unfortunately, no such information exists for the second Mario.

Another cutscene unused in the NES version of Donkey Kong Jr. is this:

Mario flies a helicopter to a place known as his "hideout", which is the only time his place of residence has been referred to in tones usually reserved for villains. 

While it is clearly not the same helicopter, it is noteworthy to mention that in one other case where Mario has had an antagonistic role, being Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, he also appears in a helicopter to snatch the giant Princess Peach statue away from Wario.

There is definitely a connection between Mario having an antagonist role and using a helicopter. Also note that whenever Mario has been playable in a single-player game, he has never used a helicopter to fly, instead opting for an airplane (the Sky Pop in Super Mario Land) or airship (the Odyssey in Super Mario Odyssey).

Not Enough Dark Land? No Problem

Have you ever wondered, while playing Super Mario Bros. 3, whether there is a way to replay completed levels without restarting the game? Sadly, the answer in general is "no". However, there is one case under which you can replay one specific world.

If you reach World 8, Dark Land, with a Warp Whistle in your inventory, and use it after beating some of the levels in World 8, you will find that once you are transported to the Warp Zone and reenter World 8, the levels - and locks on the world map - are restored to an unbeaten state. 

If you want to create a challenge for yourself, try the following: collect all 3 Warp Whistles from Worlds 1 and 2, then beat the game without warping almost all the way through. When you reach Bowser's castle, use one of the Warp Whistles to replay World 8, and repeat this three times. This way, you will have to beat World 8 four times, the maximum possible amount for one playthrough.

Luigi's Country-Dependent, Color-Changing Hat

Super Mario Bros., released in 1985, was the first game to feature Mario and Luigi's iconic initials on their caps. Since unlike the colors of their shirts and overalls, the caps never changed, neither did the colors of the letters on them. For 33 years, Mario has had a red M on his hat, and Luigi a green L. 

Still, even something this simple and consistent cannot be expected to be followed 100% of the time over the decades, especially with the vast number of companies tasked with drawing Mario content.

In the German Club Nintendo magazine, a span of years between 1992 and 1995 saw Luigi's L emblem be drawn in a red font. In all artwork commissioned during that time directly for the magazine (as opposed to official art from the games, created by Nintendo of Japan), Luigi's emblem was inexplicably red.

(You may find this familiar since I have recently covered this part on my main blog. The rest of this section, however, has not been addressed by the publicly available post.)

Not only did the singular illustrations exhibit the peculiar coloring, the famous German Club Nintendo comics produced during that time did, as well.

In fact, even Luigi's nonstandard outfits like the police uniform were designed to incorporate the red "L". This is all especially mystifying due to all other characters being drawn as closely to their official model as possible.

As I first investigated this, I believed such an oddity must be unique. Certainly, there are media that recolor Luigi entirely, like this Super Mario Bros Detective Adventure manga:

(Note that this rendition of Luigi is only a different emblem away from being the Mario clone from the above section.)

However, recoloring only the letter while keeping the rest of the design intact cannot happen more than once, I thought. Then I recalled seeing a certain illustration advertising a Game Boy battery pack. Finally, I found it - in the British Club Nintendo magazine.

It appears that Club Nintendo offices all around the world had the same idea of recoloring Luigi's emblem, but whereas Germany chose red, Britain chose blue. As there is a multitude of regional Club Nintendo variations for over 30 countries and only a small fraction of them have been scanned and archived, it is entirely possible that if more material is made public, more Luigi designs with differently-colored emblems may be revealed.

Finally, upon closely examining thousands of in-game Luigi sprites, I found that even Nintendo's own artwork is not exempt from this phenomenon:

Luigi's sprite in the title screen of Game & Watch Gallery 4 has a light blue emblem. Note that this is not a lighting issue or a "mood coloring", as all other characters in the image are evenly lit and correctly colored, nor is it an issue of limited palette, as several shades of green are already used on Luigi's sprite. Furthermore, all other Luigi sprites in the game have a green emblem, so the precise reason to use a blue one exclusively for the title screen is unclear.

Provisions for Total Failure

It is comparatively rare that a video game would create unique assets for the scenario of a player failing its tutorial stage enough times to get a Game Over. However, Super Mario Advance 3 (also known as Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3) does just that. 

The "World 0" save file icon with Baby Mario seen at the end of this footage can only be viewed upon losing three lives in the extremely short tutorial stage, and then not selecting to continue. When the title screen loads, the icon will display to indicate that the game was saved after the intro cutscene, but before entering the world map proper. The low likelihood of a player not only losing three times on the tutorial but also quitting results in this icon almost never being seen.

Note that this is only possible in the Super Mario Advance 3 remake of Yoshi's Island, and not in the SNES original, as that game changes two things about the life/continue system specifically for the tutorial level. Although it appears that you are given 3 lives, they do not actually decrement upon dying in that level; and selecting "No" when asked to continue simply skips the tutorial instead.

Not Plumbers After All

As I have detailed in last week's Transparency Report, I have browsed the entire atarimania.com catalog for Mario content. While doing so, I stumbled upon several pieces of promotional content for the Atari 2600 version of Mario Bros. that seem peculiar:

This ad copy seems to still refer to Mario and Luigi as carpenters despite them becoming plumbers in this game. However, it does say "[...] would make any normal plumber turn tail and run [...]", so it is not clear whether it is calling the brothers plumbers in addition to carpenters. This one, however, is definitely missing the information:

This advertisement states that Mario and Luigi are not performing some kind of job at their workplace as plumbers, but rather are battling monsters emerging from pipes inside their own home, and are in danger of losing their ability to take a bath if they do not succeed. 

Finally, this manual does not even mention plumbing at all, instead referring to the sewer in which the game takes place as "a house", presumably to keep up the "carpenter" thematic. 

While these misunderstandings are obviously nothing more than a curiosity in retrospect, this raises the question of how little information Nintendo gave to its licensees at the time if such errors were not merely possible, but common. 

What is Big Yoshi's Real Name? (Solved)

If you have read last week's Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels feature, you may remember a line in the preview section at the end of the article: "What is Big Yoshi's Real Name?" 

Sometimes fate throws you a curveball. I had planned a large section here, detailing exactly how I had decided on the name "Big Yoshi" for the Yoshi in question, where the name came from, how I have searched for an official name, and so forth.

However, in the last day before publishing this article, a previously unknown instance of Big Yoshi artwork was found by Twitter user @PieMehker on an extremely rare Super Mario RPG trading card.

It had a name. The thing I have been looking for all along, an official name for Big Yoshi. However, as great as my excitement was my disappointment when I realized that name was... "Yoshi". The card made no attempt to differentiate Big Yoshi from regular Yoshi, and called him simply "ヨッシー", Yoshi's name in Japanese.

I do not know how to proceed. Obviously, his official name, according to this licensed card, is Yoshi. However, it does not do a good job of identifying him, as it applies to all other Yoshis as well. My chosen name, "Big Yoshi", no longer has any merit to its continued usage, but some way of referring to this character that is more descriptive than "Yoshi" must be found. Therefore, I must ask you for your suggestions. If you think you have an idea of what to call this character going forward, please leave a comment on this post or contact me over the Tumblr or Twitter messaging systems.

This concludes this week's Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. Thank you again for your support - I hope you can see the increasing output resulting from the Patreon campaign already. Please consider leaving feedback - I read and reply to all comments.

Please join me next week for Issue 3, featuring such topics as:

• The Natural State of the Super Mario World Map
• Battle of the Giant Coins: Which is Bigger?
• An in-depth look at the development of Luigi's Mansion suggested by Supperstar patron Callumbuddy

Thank you very much for reading.