it's snowing somewhere

obscure M&L information (posts may be infrequent / sporadic)

[bowletta]

new art!

[bowletta]

On this day, 20 years ago, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga released on the Gameboy Advance.

In celebration of such an important milestone, I would like to introduce you all to beanbeankingdom.net!

I wanted a place where fans could easily find information on these games... This website is dedicated to the past 7 years I have spent compiling and researching merchandise and media from this series. 

I hope you all enjoy!

[snawful]

check this out!!

[bowletta]

here's my first batch of sprite sheets!

wanted to show how radically different bowletta is from the prototype compared to the final game

more to come : )

sprites found by @snawful

[snawful]

thank you so much for assembling this sprite sheet!

[snawful]

Two unused beanish NPCs have been found in the prototype - both of which having an unusual animation not seen for any other beanish people.

The first looks very similar to beanish people from the final game, while the second appears to have a bean mustache.

It is unknown what the animation may have been intended for, though it appears the characters are blushing and something is happening to their hair.

These sprites also appear to be connected to the animation.

[snawful]

Some unused sprites for Queen Bean were discovered from the prototype. These were her original sprites for being worried, and were very likely scrapped due to appearing inappropriate. The sprites for this finding have been put under a Read More due to the inappropriate behavior depicted.

[snawful]

There was an earlier design for Bowletta found in the prototype! She looks a lot more like Bowser, but has sunken-in eyes and more of a mohawk. She has quite a few early animations, and you can kind of see how these eventually became her final design.

Laughing

Angry (I could only find the side sprite)

Shocked

Shocked & pointing

& Clown Car sprites

[snawful]

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Cut Enemies

I have already made a few posts about a couple enemies I found (a beanish Hammer Bro and Pea-pod Goomba) and Jinx from SMRPG being hidden in the prototype build, but I just recently discovered several more (pretty bizarre) scrapped enemies.

First there's a two-headed Chain Chomp with the body of a regular dog. It, like a lot of these scrapped enemies, don't have any animations.

An enemy that resembles Diskun (Famicom mascot) but with angry eyebrows.

A Lakitu being whipped by its cloud.

A bizarre enemy made of shells.

A flounder enemy with a boot print on its side.

A regular Chain Chomp that slightly resembles how they look in Paper Mario.

A potted Piranha Plant (these weren't much of a thing in the Mario series until 2005 with Mario Kart Arcade GP and later Super Mario 3D World).

[snawful]

Jinx from Super Mario RPG was going to be in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

(If you want to replicate this, use VBAdvance's Memory Viewer, go to 081E0E30, and change 11 40 to 67 40 (this basically replaces Bowser's battle sprite with Jinx's. It has to be the prototype version of Superstar Saga.)

[snawful]

A new unused enemy has been discovered for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga! I was checking through enemy sprites in the recently found prototype and found this enemy. They appear to be similar to Troopeas and other beanish Koopa Bro species.

(Here's a Hammer Bro sprite from the same game for comparison)

[snawful]

Just found another one after this: a Goomba-like species who are peas

[snawful]

A new unused enemy has been discovered for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga! I was checking through enemy sprites in the recently found prototype and found this enemy. They appear to be similar to Troopeas and other beanish Koopa Bro species.

(Here's a Hammer Bro sprite from the same game for comparison)

[smallmariofindings]

Early Mario & Luigi: Dream Team concept artwork, featuring a design for the Pi'illos where their face was not on the pillow itself, but rather on a star-shaped stalk attacked to it.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source

[snawful]

According to a Nintendo Online Magazine interview with the developers of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Lady Lima and Toadsworth were intended to have a romance, but the team did not have the time to implement it. There is a hint of this within the game, where Toadsworth and Lady Lima hug at the ending scene.

The above roughly translates to “Kubota: I like Lady Lima. She has a tongue-in-cheek way about her... If we had more time to work on it, I wanted to include a romance between Toadsworth and Lady Lima (laughs).” Hiroyuki Kubota, the Scenario Lead (similar to a writer) had answered this in response to who his favorite character was.

[snawful]

During the events of Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, Fawful’s age is never explicitly mentioned in the English version, as is common with many Mario characters. However, in the original Japanese version, as well as in German and French Canadian translations, Fawful is referred to as a man by multiple characters.

Translations have been provided below:

Japanese: “According to eyewitness accounts, the salesman seems to be a man wearing a cloak.”

German: “The vendor is said to be a man in a cloak.”

French Canadian (Kamek): “Your scaliness! That man is STRANGE. You should not eat that thing…”

French Canadian (Bowser): “Hmm… Wait! I ate a strange mushroom that a bizarre sir gave me…”

[snawful]

When Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga was released in the US, it was commemorated with a knock-knock joke contest where entries would be judged by Kathy Griffin. The winner earned a Gamecube, Gamecube & GBA games, Gamecube peripherals, as well as a year’s worth of comedy-writing classes at Writers’ Village University.

The site is archived here for anyone who’d like to check it out: https://web.archive.org/web/20031204042721/http://marioandluigi.gameboy.com:80/contest/home.jsp

[snawful]

I think these are unused Midbus voice clips?

[snawful]

An update on this: I’ve been replaying BIS, and realized these actually are used for Sniffle Thwomp.

[snawful]

While I’m active for a moment, I want to show that Blockhopper was scrapped from Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story! It may have been scrapped early or was only intended to be an NPC that you talk to. It seems to be missing its bricks it usually has on its head for some reason.

Credit to CreativelyNamedUser on Spriter’s Resource for the sprites!

[bowletta]

saw that my original (poor quality) bowletta scan from 2018 is still going around online, so heres a much nicer version!