The Game Display tells us of an interesting kind of secret in Super Mario World that few know about. Once in a while in that game, a 1-up Mushroom just randomly seems to appear, flung into the air, sometimes in such a way as to seem to encourage you to leap off a cliff to go after it. Here is their video explaining what’s going on with those (9½ minutes):
There are some locations in a few levels that have four invisible spots in the background that can detect your presence. If you touch the four in order, the extra life appears. They’re found throughout the game, and they’re supported in code to the extent that, if you find one in a level, the game sets a flag for that level so it won’t appear again in that play session. You have to exit your game and load it back up again before you can get another extra life by this means from that level.
Many of these locations are arranged so that to trigger them in order, you’ll have to move in a loop around some location. This is similar in concept to the stakes in Super Mario 64 that, if you run around them a few times, cause them to generate coins to collect. Another kind of weird secret in a Mario game. I feel like Shigeru Miyamoto must have been lying awake at night brainstorming ever more obscure things to put into them.
It is April 1st, but I already made my silly fake post for the year a month ago. Here it is. Are we good then? Let’s move on.
I’m not happy with the clickbait title The Game Display chose for this video, claiming they found a “golden mushroom” in Super Mario Bros. 3 like it’s some actual thing. What it is is a 1-Up mushroom with a weird palette. But it’s still a video worth linking (11 minutes), and seeing, because to find it you have to learn about an unlikely secret mechanic in Mario 3 involving the map screen and the wandering Hammer Bros. You can watch it, but I’ll give you the gist down below.
Remember those map Hammer Bros. in Mario 3? They walk around after you finish a level or lose a life, adding a bit of extra uncertainty to the map screen, and giving you a stored powerup if you beat them.
But did you ever notice that sometimes the blocks in the battle arena where you fight the Hammer Bros. have powerups in them too, but only sometimes? And it isn’t something to do with the Hammer Bros. themselves, the same fight might have a powerup one time, but no powerup another. What determines whether it’ll be there or not? Is it random?
The diabolical thing is that it turns out the map intersection spaces, the little coin-like locations that Mario/Luigi can stand on but don’t contain levels, Toad Houses or anything that can normally be entered, are actually valid gameplay locations! They’re only loaded as battle arenas when you fight enemies encountered on the map screen on that spot. Although most of those locations look the same on each world, some of them have powerups in a specific block, and some don’t. The qualification for whether you can find it or not is where you fight the Hammer Bros., not which one you fight.
In the sky portion of World 5, there is one specific map screen spot where, if you can lure that area’s lone Hammer Bros. onto it and fight it there, you can find that 1-Up mushroom with the weird palette. It requires a lot of tricky actions to find it, since the Hammer Bros. icon can’t travel up one of the only two ways to that spot, and you also have to avoid clearing a couple of levels using Jugem’s Cloud, because if you clear a level normally, the M or L space that is produced blocks the movement of map screen enemies. You also have to avoid fighting and defeating the Hammer Bros. early of course, and you have to avoid turning the enemy into a Treasure Ship. That might seem like an unlikely thing to have to watch for, but it is a issue encountered in the video. Watch it and you’ll see.
It’s so cryptic and precise that it seems like it must be an intentional secret, the one non-level map screen spot with a 1-Up in it. Given how many infinite life tricks Super Mario Bros. 3 has, I can’t say that it’s particularly useful, but that isn’t the point. It’s a little nod by the developers to the obsessed player, a way of saying, we see what you did there.
