Super Mario Bros.: Why all the floating money?

[tepples]

The Super Mario Bros. manual explains that Koopa Troop turned most Toads into [?] blocks and imprisoned those who could work to reverse the damage (Princess Peach and her seven retainers). Its description of Goomba ("a mushroom who betrayed the Mushroom Kingdom") vaguely implies what brought in Koopa Troop in the first place. But is there anything in-universe that tells us why are there so many coins floating in mid-air?

(And does it cost 100 coins in medical bills to revive a fainted Mario?)

[calima]

Well obviously, the Federal Reserve of Mushroom Kingdom noticed a drop in GDP and decided printing money is the solution.

[Nikku4211]

Bruh moment.

The 100 coins probably isn't to revive a fainted Mario as much as it is to hire another guy in Italy named Mario or Luigi to continue where the previous Mario left off. Though how many Euros or Liras is a Kinopio Kingdom coin worth?

You thought there was only 1 Mario and 1 Luigi? Think again.

Maybe there are so many coins floating in mid air because some dumbarse at the Kinopio Kingdom Mint thought it would be a good idea to give each coin its own jetpack. As for why they're out there. I guess everyone just dropped the coins and the coins' jetpacks activated. It happens.

How much of this thread is just going to be Wild Mass Guessing?

If so, I'll ask my own Mario canon questions.

How are the blocks floating? If they're on a wall, why is Mario jumping in front of a wall? Did Mario actually jump over the Kinopio Kingdom border, but then ended up having to prove his heroism before moving out of the border? Why would Mario even want to go to the Kinopio Kingdom in the first place? Is he that addicted to a fungus? And I'm sure everyone has asked if this entire game is a drug trip.

How does the conversion of Kinopios into question blocks work? The more details, the better.

How does the conversion of enemies into Daimao clones work? And why does the real Daimao fight Mario on a bridge over lava just like his imposters? And why did he put his axe anywhere near the bridge? Why didn't he use the axe in his fight with Mario?

Why doesn't Peach and her Retainers leave the place when they clearly aren't even restrained in the NES version? And why do the Retainers flip you off? How ungrateful!

How does Mario's instant human development work? How does his reverse instant human development work when he gets hit? Why does his reverse instant human development work when he gets touched by any enemy? How does Mario fall down from a tall height and not feel any injuries, and yet he dies from falling down a pit? If the pit's bottomless, how does that work? Is that evidence that points to each Mario being a different person named Mario who wears the same uniform?

How can Mario break bricks when large? Not even the tallest man on Earth can break bricks with his bare hands.

If Mario's a plumber, why doesn't he wear gloves in the NES version? In fact, why doesn't he use any plumbing tools at all as a makeshift weapon? Why is the Kinopio Kingdom getting plumbers to stop the Koopa Troop? Why are they doing it one-at-a-time? Are they that cheap?

What beef did the Kuribos have against the Kinopios and/or their kingdom? Are the Kuribos treated like crap because they're poison mushrooms?
What beef did the Turtle Tribe have against the Kinopios and/or their kingdom? Did the Kinopios massacre them using plastic straws? Save... *tap tap* the motherfucking... *tap tap tap tap* turtles!
Why did the Kuribos decide to unite with the Turtle Tribe in the resistance against the Kinopio Kingdom?

Why is all the dirt separated into blocks from top to bottom? Does the Kinopio Kingdom really need to make their roads that deep?

Why are the hills so small? Why is the land the hills are on otherwise very flat? Is that because they filled the entire land with extremely thick roads? If so, they didn't do a good job if there are cracks deep enough for fat men to fall into and either die or otherwise never come back.

How do Lakitus stand on clouds? How does anybody stand on clouds? Aren't clouds just water? We all know that the clouds are not snow because they appear in non-snowy levels without melting. And how are people still floating on them anyway? Wouldn't they weigh down the 'cloud'? Unless it's some more jetpack shenanigans.

How do the Lakitus carry so many Spinies? Wouldn't it hurt to throw them because of their spikes?

Speaking of carrying things, how does Mario carry so many coins if they're as big as he is? Do they just get transferred to his debit card?

Are green mushrooms actually rare enough to be worth 100 coins?

Where does Mario eat? What foods does he eat? Is it just red mushrooms and flowers? Are fire flower plants edible? How do they give you pyrokinesis? How do they give you new clothes? Do clothing shops sell fire plants instead of actual clothes?

How do fire flower plants and/or mushrooms grow on floating blocks? Wouldn't it be really painful if a plant and/or mushroom grew on you, using you for minerals?

How do Starmen make you invincible? How do Starmen make you instantly kill everything in your path? Why doesn't it affect Kuribos, Turtles, plants, squids or fish?

Why isn't the Kinopio Kingdom doing anything about the plants infesting their pipes? How does Mario go inside a pipe with a carnivorous plant in it and not get hurt? Why are the carnivorous plants' leaves so big? Why are their hairs so thick?

It doesn't seem like the Kinopios take care of their pipes at all, as the pipes have lots of natural patina on them. At least the Turtle Tribe can build better pipes, since they actually use steel instead of copper. What are the pipes built for if they're always abandoned before they're even finished? If they're transportation, why not use something more efficient like, oh I don't know, an elevator? How does Mario stand in the middle of a pipe and not automatically go down it, even when it's not clogged? If he's standing on the edge, how does he not trip?

How does jumping on enough enemies give you a 1-up? Are the enemies so scared they're paying you 100 coins to try to get you to stop?

How does Mario control his jumps in mid-air? If he's using jet shoes, are they not good enough to fly with? Is that why Mario jumps so high in the first place? Probably also explains why Mario doesn't take damage from long falls, too.

There. I have already exhausted this entire thread in only 1 post.

[93143]

And I'm sure everyone has asked if this entire game is a drug trip.

instant human development

Consumption of amanita muscaria (commonly the "fly agaric" mushroom) may result in micropsia, with the associated sensation of being larger than normal. The opposite condition may also occur.

How does Mario go inside a pipe with a carnivorous plant in it and not get hurt?

I've been wondering that for over 30 years. It still feels unsafe...

[Bregalad]

Consumption of amanita muscaria (commonly the "fly agaric" mushroom) may result in micropsia, with the associated sensation of being larger than normal. The opposite condition may also occur.

I always tought those mushrooms were highly toxic.

[Pokun]

They are highly toxic.


Topic question:
Miyamoto has said in interviews that he had problems with floating platforms, and like to imagine that they are just attached to a wall in the background. This works well in games like Metroid, but not so well in Mario games which usually has a sky backdrop. And since they do float in 3D-games it's already canon since long ago.
He must have even more problems with floating coins in SMB.
Besides, coins were affected by gravity in Mario Bros. And before that, Mario would be hurt by a long fall. The games became more and more unrealistic, and I think Miyamoto said sometime that he realized that this isn't a bad thing.

100 coins could be the going prize for a 1UP mushroom? It's a good thing to keep in your pocket in case you need another life.

Kinopio Kingdom

I think you are looking for the word Kinoko Oukoku (Mushroom Kingdom). Kinopio is the Japanese name of the 7 mushroom retainers and that of Toad (although I'm not entierly sure if there is a single Toad named Toad like SMUSA and SMRPG suggests).

How does the conversion of Kinopios into question blocks work? The more details, the better.

Black koopa magic.

How does the conversion of enemies into Daimao clones work? And why does the real Daimao fight Mario on a bridge over lava just like his imposters? And why did he put his axe anywhere near the bridge? Why didn't he use the axe in his fight with Mario?

1) More magic.
2) I assume the axe is an ornamental one hanging on the wall as often found in castles, and Mario is quick enough to grab this and cut the chain holding the bridge.
3) Koopa is a turtle demon king that fights well enough without a weapon.

Why doesn't Peach and her Retainers leave the place when they clearly aren't even restrained in the NES version? And why do the Retainers flip you off? How ungrateful!

1) The turtle tribe aren't that dumb. The door is obviously locked.
2) The retainers properly thanks Mario but then tells him that the Princess, which he is on a quest to save, is not there.

How does Mario's instant human development work? How does his reverse instant human development work when he gets hit? Why does his reverse instant human development work when he gets touched by any enemy? How does Mario fall down from a tall height and not feel any injuries, and yet he dies from falling down a pit? If the pit's bottomless, how does that work? Is that evidence that points to each Mario being a different person named Mario who wears the same uniform?

How can Mario break bricks when large? Not even the tallest man on Earth can break bricks with his bare hands.

He gets super powers from a super mushroom making it possible to break bricks. This wears off if he takes too much damage. Though this is probably the original intention (normal Mario vs Super Mario), DRW showed in a previous discussion good evidence that Mario the large form is Mario's true form and the small Mario is a squished form.

Bottomless pits are not literary bottomless (I think), but rather just bottomless on the screen. Although Mario can take quite a fall, there is a limit even for him.

If Mario's a plumber, why doesn't he wear gloves in the NES version? In fact, why doesn't he use any plumbing tools at all as a makeshift weapon?
Why is the Kinopio Kingdom getting plumbers to stop the Koopa Troop? Why are they doing it one-at-a-time? Are they that cheap?

Mario does wears gloves on the boxart. He took them off after you pressed START only because the NES palette wouldn't allow enough colors for the gloves.

I really don't think there is more than one Mario. And though Mario's job is a plumber in Mario Bros, but he has tried a lot of other jobs in many different games (carpenter, circus animal trainer, wrecking crew member, doctor, bottle factory worker, cement factory worker, boxing and tennis referee, toy factory owner and he has his own land and castle in the Super Mario Land series).
And they didn't hire him. They pleaded for help and he showed up. He is also possibly a citizen of the mushroom kingdom as can be seen in Yoshi's Island. Though games aren't terribly consistent in the background story of Mario, and then we have Nintendo of America's own view (the whole Italian-plumber-from-Brooklyn thing) which have affected the western view on Mario heavily. I'm not saying it's entirely wrong though as NOA has played a part of shaping Mario, and they are the ones that gave him, Luigi and Lady/Pauline their names, but it doesn't always match up with the games.

Why are the hills so small?

What? Hills are pretty large in most Mario games and not flat.

How do Lakitus stand on clouds? Aren't clouds just water? We all know that the clouds are not snow because they appear in non-snowy levels without melting. And how are Lakitus still floating anyway? Wouldn't the Lakitus weigh down the 'cloud'? Unless it's some more jetpack shenanigans.

Anyone can walk on clouds and there are entire lands in the sky. I guess this is inspired from kintoun from The Journy to the West. Mario was even supposed to ride a cloud and shoot in an early version of the game IIRC.

How do the Lakitus carry so many Spinies? Wouldn't it hurt to throw them because of their spikes?

He carries their eggs in the cloud trunk.

Speaking of carrying things, how does Mario carry so many coins if they're as big as he is?

In his pocket.

Are green mushrooms actually rare enough to be worth 100 coins?

I think 100 coins sounds extremely cheap for an extra life.

Where does Mario eat? What foods does he eat? Is it just red mushrooms and flowers? Are fire flower plants edible? How do they give you pyrokinesis? How do they give you new clothes? Do clothing shops sell fire plants instead of actual clothes?

1) Wherever he is hungry, as anyone else.
2) I assume he likes Italian food and he dreams about this in Super Mario 64 in Charles Martinet's impression of him. Otherwise the local specialty in Mushroom Kingdom is of course various types of mushrooms as indicated in the RPG games. They are both food, medicine, super power items, buildings, enemies and citizens.
3) Possibly, it's not clear how he uses them to get their powers.
4) They are magic.
5) It's part of the transformation process. Have you never seen hero transformation spells?
6) Probably not.

How do fire flower plants and/or mushrooms grow on floating blocks? Wouldn't it be really painful if a plant and/or mushroom grew on you, using you for minerals?

I assume you refer to the fact that blocks are Mushroom Kingdom citizens in SMB1? I understood it as that they give you the powerup as thanks for breaking the spell. But the games aren't consistent and never mentions this again in later games. I assume that not all blocks are turned into from citizens, most are actual architectural objects that don't mind things growing on them.

How do Starmen make you invincible? How do Starmen make you instantly kill everything in your path? Why doesn't it affect Kuribos, Turtles, plants, squids or fish?

They are magic and gives you extreme super powers for a limited time. It would probably affect others than Mario if they used it, but they generally don't in the games.

Why isn't the Kinopio Kingdom doing anything about the plants infesting their pipes? How does Mario go inside a pipe with a carnivorous plant in it and not get hurt? Why are the carnivorous plants' leaves so big? Why are their hairs so thick?

1) Possibly they are caused by King Koopa's magic. "Doing the plumbing" includes beating up creatures crawling in the pipes, so I assume removing the plants too is part of this job.
2) Mario is a professional plumber and knows how to use a warp pipe.
3) They are proportionally big to their overall size.
4) Ditto.

It doesn't seem like the Kinopios take care of their pipes at all, as the pipes have lots of natural patina on them. At least the Turtle Tribe can build better pipes, since they actually use silver instead of bronze. What are the pipes built for if they're always abandoned before they're even finished? If they're transportation, why not use something more efficient like, oh I don't know, an elevator? How does Mario stand in the middle of a pipe and not automatically go down it, even when it's not clogged? If he's standing on the edge, how does he not trip?

1) See the previous answer #1.
2) Are they really bronze? Since they are green maybe they are copper? I don't think you would waste silver for pipes anyhow. The grey ones might be steel. Remember that the Koopa tribe invaded the Mushroom Kingdom, so everything you see in SMB1 might be the Mushroom Kingdom (though there's no clear evidence).
3) Warp-pipes appears very efficient for transportation to me. At least when used by a professional Italian plumber.
4) See the previous answer #2.
5) Ditto.

How does jumping on enough enemies give you a 1-up? Are the enemies so scared they're paying you 100 coins to try to get you to stop?

This is a hard one. It's obviously a point reward from the game mechanics, but I'm not sure if it can be explained in-universe. Besides Mario games are not so much about logic and tends to blend in-universe things with game mechanics.

How does Mario control his jumps in mid-air? If he's using jet shoes, are they not good enough to fly with? Is that why Mario jumps so high in the first place? Probably also explains why Mario doesn't take damage from long falls, too.

Mario and Luigi are master athletes. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to beat up a whole turtle army on their own.



And now a question of my own:
How does Koopa keep lava pools in his castles? It would be very expensive to maintain unless maybe if they are built in a volcano. The walls must be well made to not melt.

[Fisher]

Well, I think this trailer show a hilariously good example of how Super Mario Bros. could be on real life. LOL!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVY7HDMg9zs

[Gilbert]

I think in SMB3, the art style (the drop shadows of the platforms/hills/etc. and when you walk into a black background at the end of a stage) suggested that the sky backdrop was just painted onto a wall like a... errr.. stage, so we may assume all those floating stuff were all attached to the wall.

But then the suspension was broken in SMB4/SMW (and remakes of the earlier games), when they threw in parallax scrolling of the backdrop. I think they just thought, "Screw this! We just HAVE to add the parallax to show it's a 16-bit game! Otherwise we'll be laughed by Sega fanboys who call out PC-Engine games as inferior because it has no scroll and too may colours!"

[Nikku4211]

Kinopio Kingdom

I think you are looking for the word Kinoko Oukoku (Mushroom Kingdom). Kinopio is the Japanese name of the 7 mushroom retainers and that of Toad (although I'm not entierly sure if there is a single Toad named Toad like SMUSA and SMRPG suggests).

Kinopio Kingdom gets more points for alliteration. If you were to refer to a tribe, you might use the English word 'Kingdom', but you probably wouldn't translate their actual name.

{...} And why does the real Daimao fight Mario on a bridge over lava just like his imposters? And why did he put his axe anywhere near the bridge? Why didn't he use the axe in his fight with Mario?

[...]
2) I assume the axe is an ornamental one hanging on the wall as often found in castles, and Mario is quick enough to grab this and cut the chain holding the bridge.
3) Koopa is a turtle demon king that fights well enough without a weapon.

An ornamental one that works? And it's not hanging on the wall, it's standing on the floor. Right near the bridge like they're playing a sport where the losing team has to be thrown into lava.

Also, Daimao does use hammers in battle. A tonne of hammers. In fact, how does he hold so many hammers if he's not even wearing any clothes that have pockets? And don't tell me it's 'black Koopa magic'.

Why does he throw hammers but yet keep the axe if he's just going to use hammers?

Why doesn't Peach and her Retainers leave the place when they clearly aren't even restrained in the NES version? And why do the Retainers flip you off? How ungrateful!

1) The turtle tribe aren't that dumb. The door is obviously locked.
2) The retainers properly thanks Mario but then tells him that the Princess, which he is on a quest to save, is not there.

And yet they're dumb enough to put an axe right next to the bridge that Daimao is on.

Also, there isn't even a door in the NES version. You can't lock air, can you?

If they're thanking Mario, why are they flipping the bird? Search 'toad middle finger' for more info.
Perhaps they're being sarcastic.

(Yes, I know about sprite size limits. Everyone here knows about sprite size limits. Some people here had to work with these same sprite size limits.)

How does Mario's instant human development work? How does his reverse instant human development work when he gets hit? Why does his reverse instant human development work when he gets touched by any enemy? How does Mario fall down from a tall height and not feel any injuries, and yet he dies from falling down a pit? If the pit's bottomless, how does that work? Is that evidence that points to each Mario being a different person named Mario who wears the same uniform?

How can Mario break bricks when large? Not even the tallest man on Earth can break bricks with his bare hands.

He gets super powers from a super mushroom making it possible to break bricks. This wears off if he takes too much damage. Though this is probably the original intention (normal Mario vs Super Mario), DRW showed in a previous discussion good evidence that Mario the large form is Mario's true form and the small Mario is a squished form.

Bottomless pits are not literary bottomless (I think), but rather just bottomless on the screen. Although Mario can take quite a fall, there is a limit even for him.

Previous discussion? Where they at tho?

How tall does something have to be before he splats and dies from jumping off of it?

If Mario's a plumber, why doesn't he wear gloves in the NES version? In fact, why doesn't he use any plumbing tools at all as a makeshift weapon?
Why is the Kinopio Kingdom getting plumbers to stop the Koopa Troop? Why are they doing it one-at-a-time? Are they that cheap?

Mario does wears gloves on the boxart. He took them off after you pressed START only because the NES palette wouldn't allow enough colors for the gloves.

I really don't think there is more than one Mario. And though Mario's job is a plumber in Mario Bros, but he has tried a lot of other jobs in many different games (carpenter, circus animal trainer, wrecking crew member, doctor, bottle factory worker, cement factory worker, boxing and tennis referee, toy factory owner and he has his own land and castle in the Super Mario Land series).
And they didn't hire him. They pleaded for help and he showed up. He is also possibly a citizen of the mushroom kingdom as can be seen in Yoshi's Island. Though games aren't terribly consistent in the background story of Mario, and then we have Nintendo of America's own view (the whole Italian-plumber-from-Brooklyn thing) which have affected the western view on Mario heavily. I'm not saying it's entirely wrong though as NOA has played a part of shaping Mario, and they are the ones that gave him, Luigi and Lady/Pauline their names, but it doesn't always match up with the games.

I'm not taking the other games into consideration, see above.

Why are the hills so small?

What? Hills are pretty large in most Mario games and not flat.

Not in SMB1 on NES. If we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, then the hills must be tiny. Or just a painting on the wall.
If it's a painting on the wall, does it symbolise something?

How do Lakitus stand on clouds? Aren't clouds just water? We all know that the clouds are not snow because they appear in non-snowy levels without melting. And how are Lakitus still floating anyway? Wouldn't the Lakitus weigh down the 'cloud'? Unless it's some more jetpack shenanigans.

Anyone can walk on clouds and there are entire lands in the sky. I guess this is inspired from kintoun from The Journy to the West. Mario was even supposed to ride a cloud and shoot in an early version of the game IIRC.

Okay, I have since revised my question. How can anybody stand on clouds? How are the clouds still floating if someone is on them? Wouldn't they weigh the cloud down?

How do the Lakitus carry so many Spinies? Wouldn't it hurt to throw them because of their spikes?

He carries their eggs in the cloud trunk.

Look at the size of those things. How does he carry them in the cloud if they're so big?

Speaking of carrying things, how does Mario carry so many coins if they're as big as he is?

In his pocket.

Okay, how does Mario carry so many coins in his pocket if they're as big as he is?

Are green mushrooms actually rare enough to be worth 100 coins?

I think 100 coins sounds extremely cheap for an extra life.

We're not talking about your regular old cents or pence, we're talking about Kinopio currency. We don't know how much each Kinopio coin is worth.

There may be a lot, but we're not talking Dinosaur Island amounts, we're talking 1980s Nintendo game amounts.

Where does Mario eat? What foods does he eat? Is it just red mushrooms and flowers? Are fire flower plants edible? How do they give you pyrokinesis? How do they give you new clothes? Do clothing shops sell fire plants instead of actual clothes?

1) Wherever he is hungry, as anyone else.
2) I assume he likes Italian food and he dreams about this in Super Mario 64 in Charles Martinet's impression of him. Otherwise the local specialty in Mushroom Kingdom is of course various types of mushrooms as indicated in the RPG games. They are both food, medicine, super power items, buildings, enemies and citizens.
3) Possibly, it's not clear how he uses them to get their powers.
[...]
5) It's part of the transformation process. Have you never seen hero transformation spells?
6) Probably not.

Okay, where is he hungry in the game? We don't see him eat aside from powerups. I guess the big mushrooms and big fire plants might be enough, though.

Great, now you made me think of Mario becoming Sailor Moon. GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!!1!1!!!

I guess they wouldn't sell fire plants. While they give you new clothes, they also give you pyrokinesis. If fire plants were in stores, arson would become even easier and there'd be a huge flame war, both in the streets and in Peach's Castle.

How do fire flower plants and/or mushrooms grow on floating blocks? Wouldn't it be really painful if a plant and/or mushroom grew on you, using you for minerals?

I assume you refer to the fact that blocks are Mushroom Kingdom citizens in SMB1? I understood it as that they give you the powerup as thanks for breaking the spell. But the games aren't consistent and never mentions this again in later games. I assume that not all blocks are turned into from citizens, most are actual architectural objects that don't mind things growing on them.

Breaking the spell? When you hit them, you don't see a citizen, you see a used block.
So if anything, they're thanking you for putting them out of their misery in general.

Why isn't the Kinopio Kingdom doing anything about the plants infesting their pipes? How does Mario go inside a pipe with a carnivorous plant in it and not get hurt? Why are the carnivorous plants' leaves so big? Why are their hairs so thick?

1) [...] "Doing the plumbing" includes beating up creatures crawling in the pipes, so I assume removing the plants too is part of this job.
2) Mario is a professional plumber and knows how to use a warp pipe.
3) They are proportionally big to their overall size.
4) Ditto.
[/quotes]

And do they only have 2 plumbers to take care of this? Bruh moment.

If Mario is a professional plumber, and we took NoA's '80s bollocks about him being Italian(he IS named Mario, after all), then he wouldn't be used to giant Venus flytraps. Maybe he might be used to some weeds, but certainly not the giant ones that look straight out of an '80s musical.

I guess I should have said mouths, but it feels weird to use that word even on a carnivorous plant, because real Venus flytraps use their leaves to catch prey.

It doesn't seem like the Kinopios take care of their pipes at all, as the pipes have lots of natural patina on them. At least the Turtle Tribe can build better pipes, since they actually use silver instead of bronze. What are the pipes built for if they're always abandoned before they're even finished? If they're transportation, why not use something more efficient like, oh I don't know, an elevator? How does Mario stand in the middle of a pipe and not automatically go down it, even when it's not clogged? If he's standing on the edge, how does he not trip?

[...]
2) Are they really bronze? Since they are green maybe they are copper? I don't think you would waste silver for pipes anyhow. The grey ones might be steel. Remember that the Koopa tribe invaded the Mushroom Kingdom, so everything you see in SMB1 might be the Mushroom Kingdom (though there's no clear evidence).
3) Warp-pipes appears very efficient for transportation to me. At least when used by a professional Italian plumber.
4) See the previous answer #2.
5) Ditto.

I got the metals confused, sorry!!! (´・ω・`)

Eh, but you have to jump on them, and if you don't have what Mario and Luigi have, you can't use them. Elevators are still more convenient.

I guess it doesn't make sense for turtles to build any place. I mean, most SMB1 (not SMW or anything later) Nokonokos don't even have arms. Then again, the hammer turtles do have a really good throw. Too good of a throw.

I'm not a plumber, but I don't know any place that trains their plumbers to do advanced parkour. The Kinopio Kingdom may, though.

How does jumping on enough enemies give you a 1-up? Are the enemies so scared they're paying you 100 coins to try to get you to stop?

This is a hard one. It's obviously a point reward from the game mechanics, but I'm not sure if it can be explained in-universe. Besides Mario games are not so much about logic and tends to blend in-universe things with game mechanics.

Yes. You have reached the point of my post. This thread is probably just going to devolve into baseless Wild Mass Guessing anyway, so I might as well go big.

How does Mario control his jumps in mid-air? If he's using jet shoes, are they not good enough to fly with? Is that why Mario jumps so high in the first place? Probably also explains why Mario doesn't take damage from long falls, too.

Mario and Luigi are master athletes. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to beat up a whole turtle army on their own.

Ayyyy yoooooo where my master athlete plumbas at? REPRESENT!!!!

Though where did they learn this Jump Karate? If the Kinopio Kingdom taught them, where did this masterful low-gravity anime-style martial art come from?

And now a question of my own:
How does Koopa keep lava pools in his castles? It would be very expensive to maintain unless maybe if they are built in a volcano. The walls must be well made to not melt.

I think in SMB3, the art style (the drop shadows of the platforms/hills/etc. and when you walk into a black background at the end of a stage) suggested that the sky backdrop was just painted onto a wall like a... errr.. stage, so we may assume all those floating stuff were all attached to the wall.

But then the suspension was broken in SMB4/SMW (and remakes of the earlier games), when they threw in parallax scrolling of the backdrop. I think they just thought, "Screw this! We just HAVE to add the parallax to show it's a 16-bit game! Otherwise we'll be laughed by Sega fanboys who call out PC-Engine games as inferior because it has no scroll and too may colours!"

Oh, and by the way, with the way SMW did parallax scrolling, the background still looks like it's painted on a wall. Like, they didn't even think about using layer 3 as an additional background layer. And yes, as SMW hacks show, it's possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[Pokun]

Kinopio Kingdom

I think you are looking for the word Kinoko Oukoku (Mushroom Kingdom). Kinopio is the Japanese name of the 7 mushroom retainers and that of Toad (although I'm not entierly sure if there is a single Toad named Toad like SMUSA and SMRPG suggests).

Kinopio Kingdom gets more points for alliteration. If you were to refer to a tribe, you might use the English word 'Kingdom', but you probably wouldn't translate their actual name.

It's officially Kinoko Oukoku or Mushroom Kingdom, a kingdom with many tribes. The species may also be called the mushroom-tribe (kinoko-ichizoku).
Kinopio just means Toad, just like Kinopiko is Toadette.

An ornamental one that works? And it's not hanging on the wall, it's standing on the floor. Right near the bridge like they're playing a sport where the losing team has to be thrown into lava.

Also, Daimao does use hammers in battle. A tonne of hammers. In fact, how does he hold so many hammers if he's not even wearing any clothes that have pockets? And don't tell me it's 'black Koopa magic'.

Why does he throw hammers but yet keep the axe if he's just going to use hammers?

Ornamental but still a real sharp axe. If scaling up the scene I imagine it would be on the wall. You need more imagination.
But that's a good theory I think. King Koopa could have put it there to give Mario a fair chance, and challenge him to try and get it. I'm not sure Koopa is into such chivalry though.
In more recent Mario games, the axe is more like a mechanism for cutting the bridge chain that Mario activates. In some games it's even just a switch that opens the draw-bridge.
Good point about hammers though. As for why he uses hammers but not the axe? Why would he use the axe if he already got hammers? It's a question of weapon preference.

there isn't even a door in the NES version. You can't lock air, can you?

What do you mean? Just because it's not within view of the screen it doesn't exist?

(Yes, I know about sprite size limits. Everyone here knows about sprite size limits. Some people here had to work with these same sprite size limits.)

Then why are you asking?

Previous discussion? Where they at tho?

How tall does something have to be before he splats and dies from jumping off of it?

Tall as a pit.

Not in SMB1 on NES. If we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, then the hills must be tiny. Or just a painting on the wall.
If it's a painting on the wall, does it symbolise something?

Hills in SMB1 can only be seen in the background. I don't see what you think is small about them? They are far away so it's very hard to tell what size they are, they could be mountains. They are not painted on a coulisse like in SMB3 either, blocks are floating in the air as canonized by later games.
Blocks are of course just an extension of the jump-punch mechanic from Mario Bros (where they are just ceilings in an underground structure), and probably not intended to float in the air to begin with. But that's what it ended up looking like and now taken for granted.

Okay, I have since revised my question. How can anybody stand on clouds? How are the clouds still floating if someone is on them? Wouldn't they weigh the cloud down?

Depends on how tough the cloud is. In many games such as SM64 there are clearly both thin clouds that has gas-properties, and solid clouds that you can walk on. There are apparently clouds solid enough to build entire kingdoms on them as seen in SMB2j, SMB3, SMRPG and some other Mario games.

Look at the size of those things. How does he carry them in the cloud if they're so big?

Thankfully his cloud got a large trunk.

Okay, how does Mario carry so many coins in his pocket if they're as big as he is?

He got deep pockets.

We're not talking about your regular old cents or pence, we're talking about Kinopio currency. We don't know how much each Kinopio coin is worth.

There may be a lot, but we're not talking Dinosaur Island amounts, we're talking 1980s Nintendo game amounts.

By judging how easy it is to get coins in SMB1, an extralife is quite cheap I think.

Okay, where is he hungry in the game? We don't see him eat aside from powerups. I guess the big mushrooms and big fire plants might be enough, though.

He must probably eat after conquering a castle. All that jumping action requires a lot of energy so he would need to eat a lot between levels.

Great, now you made me think of Mario becoming Sailor Moon. GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!!1!1!!!

Don't forget that the heroes often gets nude in those transformation scenes before the new clothes materializes.

Breaking the spell? When you hit them, you don't see a citizen, you see a used block.

Yeah but that's what it says in the manual. Personally I think it feels very forced, like someone on the team thought it was necessary to explain what all those blocks are in the game. But since no other game ever mentions this again, I think it might've been retconned away, and blocks are no longer transformed mushroom people.

If Mario is a professional plumber, and we took NoA's '80s bollocks about him being Italian(he IS named Mario, after all), then he wouldn't be used to giant Venus flytraps.

I've never been a fan of the Italian plumber from Brooklyn thing, and none of the games ever mentions it. Yoshi's Island also pretty much clears up his background story a bit in this regard.

I guess I should have said mouths, but it feels weird to use that word even on a carnivorous plant, because real Venus flytraps use their leaves to catch prey.

Ah you meant their heads/mouths. I guess anatomically it would be petals not leaves.
They are just big enough to be able to swallow the prey they are preying on. Just like a venus flytrap is.

Eh, but you have to jump on them, and if you don't have what Mario and Luigi have, you can't use them. Elevators are still more convenient.

Yeah they seem to be dangerous for a non-plumber. They might just be a trick that Mario and Luigi can pull off, and gives them an advantage when fighting the turtle-tribe.
I think pipes are used quite a bit by other characters as well in other games though, so it could be a kind of general transportation system.

I guess it doesn't make sense for turtles to build any place. I mean, most SMB1 (not SMW or anything later) Nokonokos don't even have arms. Then again, the hammer turtles do have a really good throw. Too good of a throw.

The turtle-tribe includes Shellcreeper, Nokonoko, Patapata, Hammer Bros, Jugemu, Togezoo, Gabon, Bunbun, Kuppa himself and his kids. There are plenty of them that seems to have hands. Also I'm not convinced that Nokonoko/Patapata doesn't have hands, since they have hands in most later games and can do about anything a human can.

Though where did they learn this Jump Karate? If the Kinopio Kingdom taught them, where did this masterful low-gravity anime-style martial art come from?

That's a good question. Part of Mario's power certianly comes from the mushrooms and other powerups, but the bros are very strong regardless of powerups. Mario's background story isn't explained anywhere in detail.

I think in SMB3, the art style (the drop shadows of the platforms/hills/etc. and when you walk into a black background at the end of a stage) suggested that the sky backdrop was just painted onto a wall like a... errr.. stage, so we may assume all those floating stuff were all attached to the wall.

But then the suspension was broken in SMB4/SMW (and remakes of the earlier games), when they threw in parallax scrolling of the backdrop. I think they just thought, "Screw this! We just HAVE to add the parallax to show it's a 16-bit game! Otherwise we'll be laughed by Sega fanboys who call out PC-Engine games as inferior because it has no scroll and too may colours!"

Oh, and by the way, with the way SMW did parallax scrolling, the background still looks like it's painted on a wall. Like, they didn't even think about using layer 3 as an additional background layer. And yes, as SMW hacks show, it's possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Yeah SMB3 has this neat theater stage-look, but I don't think this is any different from the pastel crayon-look of Yoshi's Island and some Kirby games, the paper-craft-look of the Paper Mario series or the wooly look of some Kirby and Yoshi games (though I guess some of that is actually part of the story). It's mainly just a visual theme. SMB1 was definitely supposed to look like real things and was one of few early games using a blue sky instead of black.

[Nikku4211]

I think you are looking for the word Kinoko Oukoku (Mushroom Kingdom). Kinopio is the Japanese name of the 7 mushroom retainers and that of Toad (although I'm not entierly sure if there is a single Toad named Toad like SMUSA and SMRPG suggests).

Kinopio Kingdom gets more points for alliteration. If you were to refer to a tribe, you might use the English word 'Kingdom', but you probably wouldn't translate their actual name.

It's officially Kinoko Oukoku or Mushroom Kingdom, a kingdom with many tribes. The species may also be called the mushroom-tribe (kinoko-ichizoku).
Kinopio just means Toad, just like Kinopiko is Toadette.

I don't care about that 2nd word. I'd call it Kinoko Kingdom regardless for the alliteration points.

An ornamental one that works? And it's not hanging on the wall, it's standing on the floor. Right near the bridge like they're playing a sport where the losing team has to be thrown into lava.

Also, Daimao does use hammers in battle. A tonne of hammers. In fact, how does he hold so many hammers if he's not even wearing any clothes that have pockets? And don't tell me it's 'black Koopa magic'.

Why does he throw hammers but yet keep the axe if he's just going to use hammers?

Ornamental but still a real sharp axe. If scaling up the scene I imagine it would be on the wall. You need more imagination.
But that's a good theory I think. King Koopa could have put it there to give Mario a fair chance, and challenge him to try and get it. I'm not sure Koopa is into such chivalry though.
In more recent Mario games, the axe is more like a mechanism for cutting the bridge chain that Mario activates. In some games it's even just a switch that opens the draw-bridge.
Good point about hammers though. As for why he uses hammers but not the axe? Why would he use the axe if he already got hammers? It's a question of weapon preference.

IMAJINAESHUN!1!!!

What is this, an Atari VCS game?
I know NES games in 1985 aren't anything like NES games in 1990, but still.

I don't think turtles know what chivalry is.

there isn't even a door in the NES version. You can't lock air, can you?

What do you mean? Just because it's not within view of the screen it doesn't exist?

We see the screen scroll. There is no door when the screen is scrolling. We don't even hear the door get opened/broken. There is no indication there is a door in the NES version. I won't care about later games for the sake of this thread so that I can keep it focused on SMB1 on NES.

(Yes, I know about sprite size limits. Everyone here knows about sprite size limits. Some people here had to work with these same sprite size limits.)

Then why are you asking?

Because even within the sprite size limits, you can at least make it not look like the Retainers are flipping you off while sarcastically thanking you. 1 pixel was all they had to remove. 1 single pixel. 1 single rectangular element.

Previous discussion? Where they at tho?

How tall does something have to be before he splats and dies from jumping off of it?

Tall as a pit.

How tall is a pit in SMB1?

Not in SMB1 on NES. If we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, then the hills must be tiny. Or just a painting on the wall.
If it's a painting on the wall, does it symbolise something?

Hills in SMB1 can only be seen in the background. I don't see what you think is small about them? They are far away so it's very hard to tell what size they are, they could be mountains. They are not painted on a coulisse like in SMB3 either, blocks are floating in the air as canonized by later games.
Blocks are of course just an extension of the jump-punch mechanic from Mario Bros (where they are just ceilings in an underground structure), and probably not intended to float in the air to begin with. But that's what it ended up looking like and now taken for granted.

I said if we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, which he thought even before SMB3.

At least, that's what I swore I remember reading somewhere(I don't remember where), because I can't find it on Google.

Okay, I have since revised my question. How can anybody stand on clouds? How are the clouds still floating if someone is on them? Wouldn't they weigh the cloud down?

Depends on how tough the cloud is. In many games such as SM64 there are clearly both thin clouds that has gas-properties, and solid clouds that you can walk on. There are apparently clouds solid enough to build entire kingdoms on them as seen in SMB2j, SMB3, SMRPG and some other Mario games.

If gas clouds are made of water, what are the solid clouds made of, since they don't melt?

Look at the size of those things. How does he carry them in the cloud if they're so big?

Thankfully his cloud got a large trunk.

The cloud is just as large as the spinies and their eggs. We don't see a trunk that can hold the eggs.

Okay, how does Mario carry so many coins in his pocket if they're as big as he is?

He got deep pockets.

They don't look deep enough to be Mario's own size, big or small. We can't even see them at all in SMB1 on NES.

Okay, where is he hungry in the game? We don't see him eat aside from powerups. I guess the big mushrooms and big fire plants might be enough, though.

He must probably eat after conquering a castle. All that jumping action requires a lot of energy so he would need to eat a lot between levels.

That's a fast eater. He doesn't even take half an hour to eat a meal that would be enough for him between levels.

Breaking the spell? When you hit them, you don't see a citizen, you see a used block.

Yeah but that's what it says in the manual. Personally I think it feels very forced, like someone on the team thought it was necessary to explain what all those blocks are in the game. But since no other game ever mentions this again, I think it might've been retconned away, and blocks are no longer transformed mushroom people.

Yup, very forced. Japanintendo didn't care about explaining this at all, so it's just unnecessary.

If Mario is a professional plumber, and we took NoA's '80s bollocks about him being Italian(he IS named Mario, after all), then he wouldn't be used to giant Venus flytraps.

I've never been a fan of the Italian plumber from Brooklyn thing, and none of the games ever mentions it. Yoshi's Island also pretty much clears up his background story a bit in this regard.

Yeah, though I'm only focusing on SMB1 on NES for the sake of this thread. The Mario of 1985 is different from the Mario of today, or even the Mario of 1995. I personally think it feels better to explain 1985 Mario, back when things were less defined and any potential 'lore' was less regulated.

I guess I should have said mouths, but it feels weird to use that word even on a carnivorous plant, because real Venus flytraps use their leaves to catch prey.

Ah you meant their heads/mouths. I guess anatomically it would be petals not leaves.
They are just big enough to be able to swallow the prey they are preying on. Just like a venus flytrap is.

When a plant evolves to feast on humans. That is so '80s.

Eh, but you have to jump on them, and if you don't have what Mario and Luigi have, you can't use them. Elevators are still more convenient.

Yeah they seem to be dangerous for a non-plumber. They might just be a trick that Mario and Luigi can pull off, and gives them an advantage when fighting the turtle-tribe.
I think pipes are used quite a bit by other characters as well in other games though, so it could be a kind of general transportation system.

That's heck of a trick. Also, see above on how I won't use other games for this thread.

I guess it doesn't make sense for turtles to build any place. I mean, most SMB1 (not SMW or anything later) Nokonokos don't even have arms. Then again, the hammer turtles do have a really good throw. Too good of a throw.

The turtle-tribe includes Shellcreeper, Nokonoko, Patapata, Hammer Bros, Jugemu, Togezoo, Gabon, Bunbun, Kuppa himself and his kids. There are plenty of them that seems to have hands. Also I'm not convinced that Nokonoko/Patapata doesn't have hands, since they have hands in most later games and can do about anything a human can.

See above. I literally said '(not SMW or anything later)', because in SMW is when most of the regular Nokonokos/Patapatas started to have visible arms in the gameplay itself.

I think in SMB3, the art style (the drop shadows of the platforms/hills/etc. and when you walk into a black background at the end of a stage) suggested that the sky backdrop was just painted onto a wall like a... errr.. stage, so we may assume all those floating stuff were all attached to the wall.

But then the suspension was broken in SMB4/SMW (and remakes of the earlier games), when they threw in parallax scrolling of the backdrop. I think they just thought, "Screw this! We just HAVE to add the parallax to show it's a 16-bit game! Otherwise we'll be laughed by Sega fanboys who call out PC-Engine games as inferior because it has no scroll and too may colours!"

Oh, and by the way, with the way SMW did parallax scrolling, the background still looks like it's painted on a wall. Like, they didn't even think about using layer 3 as an additional background layer. And yes, as SMW hacks show, it's possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Yeah SMB3 has this neat theater stage-look, but I don't think this is any different from the pastel crayon-look of Yoshi's Island and some Kirby games, the paper-craft-look of the Paper Mario series or the wooly look of some Kirby and Yoshi games (though I guess some of that is actually part of the story). It's mainly just a visual theme. SMB1 was definitely supposed to look like real things and was one of few early games using a blue sky instead of black.

Supposed to look like real things? Because we definitely have a kingdom based on a fungus in real life. And a giant land turtle taking over them.

1985 NES graphics, sure, but I still think you can't say they were going for a 'real things' look if it's meant to be cartoonish. I know it's relative.

[Pokun]

What is this, an Atari VCS game?
I know NES games in 1985 aren't anything like NES games in 1990, but still.

You start to sound like DRW and take everything at face-value. *Grandpa talk* In the old days we always had imagination when playing games instead of relying on the games to do all the work for you. It's not that different from reading a book.

We see the screen scroll. There is no door when the screen is scrolling. We don't even hear the door get opened/broken. There is no indication there is a door in the NES version. I won't care about later games for the sake of this thread so that I can keep it focused on SMB1 on NES.

Now I'm seriously confused. Are you talking about the opening to the left that leads to the draw-bridge lava pool that Koopa (or his clones) is guarding? There's clearly no way the princess could escape that way. Besides I'm not convinced there isn't a door there as there is clearly an archway (the ceiling lowers there indicating that there is indeed a door there).

Then why are you asking?

Because even within the sprite size limits, you can at least make it not look like the Retainers are flipping you off while sarcastically thanking you. 1 pixel was all they had to remove. 1 single pixel. 1 single rectangular element.

It never looked like that to me, CRT or not. Now I think you have too much imagination, and of the wrong kind.

Previous discussion? Where they at tho?

How tall does something have to be before he splats and dies from jumping off of it?

Tall as a pit.

How tall is a pit in SMB1?

They are bottomless.

Not in SMB1 on NES. If we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, then the hills must be tiny. Or just a painting on the wall.
If it's a painting on the wall, does it symbolise something?

Hills in SMB1 can only be seen in the background. I don't see what you think is small about them? They are far away so it's very hard to tell what size they are, they could be mountains. They are not painted on a coulisse like in SMB3 either, blocks are floating in the air as canonized by later games.
Blocks are of course just an extension of the jump-punch mechanic from Mario Bros (where they are just ceilings in an underground structure), and probably not intended to float in the air to begin with. But that's what it ended up looking like and now taken for granted.

I said if we're taking Shigeru's view on the blocks being in front of a wall, which he thought even before SMB3.

At least, that's what I swore I remember reading somewhere(I don't remember where), because I can't find it on Google.

It still doesn't add up. Even if the blue background was just a painted coulisse, the background hills are of as a natural size as you could expect a background coulisse to have. They could be in about any size depending on how the landscape looks like.
I'm not sure Miyamoto meant that there is a wall there in this game though as it's clearly a blue sky there (underground levels is a different matter). I guess there could be a see-through wall in the foreground that the blocks are attached to.

Okay, I have since revised my question. How can anybody stand on clouds? How are the clouds still floating if someone is on them? Wouldn't they weigh the cloud down?

Depends on how tough the cloud is. In many games such as SM64 there are clearly both thin clouds that has gas-properties, and solid clouds that you can walk on. There are apparently clouds solid enough to build entire kingdoms on them as seen in SMB2j, SMB3, SMRPG and some other Mario games.

If gas clouds are made of water, what are the solid clouds made of, since they don't melt?

Clouds in the sky are generally water in gas form. The solid clouds must be extra fluffy ones.
This trope from The Journy to the West comes from the monkey demon king (Son-Gokuu in Japanese) using a technique (kintoun in Japanese) where he is able to jump on clouds. It's supposedly a unique technique that few knows, but many depictions just gives him an solid cloud called kintoun that he can use to fly with instead. I guess this is where it comes from, as both Mario and Zelda were developed at the same time, and were supposed to be based on that fairy tail (at least Zelda was). Koopa is also based on the ox demon king probably for the same reason (although eventually turned into a turtle demon king to fit into the turtle-tribe), and similarly Ganon is a boar demon king possibly also a result from that.

Look at the size of those things. How does he carry them in the cloud if they're so big?

Thankfully his cloud got a large trunk.

The cloud is just as large as the spinies and their eggs. We don't see a trunk that can hold the eggs.

Yeah we don't, and why would we? There is no need to enter the trunk in the game. Plus it's probably full of spiny eggs anyway.

Okay, how does Mario carry so many coins in his pocket if they're as big as he is?

He got deep pockets.

They don't look deep enough to be Mario's own size, big or small. We can't even see them at all in SMB1 on NES.

They are deep on the inside.

Okay, where is he hungry in the game? We don't see him eat aside from powerups. I guess the big mushrooms and big fire plants might be enough, though.

He must probably eat after conquering a castle. All that jumping action requires a lot of energy so he would need to eat a lot between levels.

That's a fast eater. He doesn't even take half an hour to eat a meal that would be enough for him between levels.

How do you know that? There is no time indication in the game, so you can't possibly know how much time is spent off-camera between transitions.

Breaking the spell? When you hit them, you don't see a citizen, you see a used block.

Yeah but that's what it says in the manual. Personally I think it feels very forced, like someone on the team thought it was necessary to explain what all those blocks are in the game. But since no other game ever mentions this again, I think it might've been retconned away, and blocks are no longer transformed mushroom people.

Yup, very forced. Japanintendo didn't care about explaining this at all, so it's just unnecessary.

Actually the Japanese manual is no different from the English one in this regard. Someone on the Japanese team must have felt it necessary to explain it. Then they seemingly just forgot about it.

I guess it doesn't make sense for turtles to build any place. I mean, most SMB1 (not SMW or anything later) Nokonokos don't even have arms. Then again, the hammer turtles do have a really good throw. Too good of a throw.

The turtle-tribe includes Shellcreeper, Nokonoko, Patapata, Hammer Bros, Jugemu, Togezoo, Gabon, Bunbun, Kuppa himself and his kids. There are plenty of them that seems to have hands. Also I'm not convinced that Nokonoko/Patapata doesn't have hands, since they have hands in most later games and can do about anything a human can.

See above. I literally said '(not SMW or anything later)', because in SMW is when most of the regular Nokonokos/Patapatas started to have visible arms in the gameplay itself.

If we pretend that SMB1 was released recently, I guess we might think Nokonoko are just dumb animal-like grunts, not capable of delicate hand-craft. It's not clear if they have hands or not in the artwork. But there are still the other members of the turtle tribe that clearly has hands though.

Super Mario Bros boxart

Oh, and by the way, with the way SMW did parallax scrolling, the background still looks like it's painted on a wall. Like, they didn't even think about using layer 3 as an additional background layer. And yes, as SMW hacks show, it's possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Yeah SMB3 has this neat theater stage-look, but I don't think this is any different from the pastel crayon-look of Yoshi's Island and some Kirby games, the paper-craft-look of the Paper Mario series or the wooly look of some Kirby and Yoshi games (though I guess some of that is actually part of the story). It's mainly just a visual theme. SMB1 was definitely supposed to look like real things and was one of few early games using a blue sky instead of black.

Supposed to look like real things? Because we definitely have a kingdom based on a fungus in real life. And a giant land turtle taking over them.

1985 NES graphics, sure, but I still think you can't say they were going for a 'real things' look if it's meant to be cartoonish. I know it's relative.

Yeah well I meant cartoonish real. Not stylized like SMB3 or Yoshi's Island.



I can't really find where DRW showed any proof that Super Mario is Mario's normal form. It might just have been speculation.
Anyway the thread is here if you feel like going through it... The discussion about the super mushroom form is closer to the end of it.

[tepples]

The sense of time I got when playing SMB1 during the commercial era is that each world must take one-third of a day to run, as WORLD 3 and WORLD 6 have a black background above ground. Presumably after Mario undoes the fetters on the retainer's feet, he gets a chance to eat and rest for the next world.

[93143]

The sense of time I got when playing SMB1 during the commercial era is that each world must take one-third of a day to run, as WORLD 3 and WORLD 6 have a black background above ground. Presumably after Mario undoes the fetters on the retainer's feet, he gets a chance to eat and rest for the next world.

World 6-3 has a funny palette, almost like it's an unusually dark night. An impending storm perhaps? Or am I reading it wrong, and it's just a frost? Either way, the next morning (7-1) we find that the trees are white.

[Nikku4211]

The sense of time I got when playing SMB1 during the commercial era is that each world must take one-third of a day to run, as WORLD 3 and WORLD 6 have a black background above ground. Presumably after Mario undoes the fetters on the retainer's feet, he gets a chance to eat and rest for the next world.

Mario meeting a Retainer for the 1st time: CANIEATYOU?

Retainer: Teehee, you don't know me THAT much!