Mario & Wario

Mario & Wario
Also known as: Mario to Wario Developer: Game Freak Publisher: Nintendo Platform: SNES Released in JP: August 27, 1993 This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has a hidden level select. This game has anti-piracy features.

Mario & Wario is that game with Mario and a bucket. It was planned to be released outside of Japan, getting box art and a Nintendo Power preview, but was probably cancelled due to the poor sales of the SNES Mouse games that weren't Mario Paint.

The bucket (which also appeared in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3) later made a cameo in Kirby Super Star as a Great Cave Offensive treasure, while Game Freak included a reference to the game in Pokémon Red and Blue (which likely went over most English-speaking players' heads).

Unused Graphics

Fairy

(Source: vervalkon)

Compressed graphics for an early design for Wanda exist at 0xB147E.

Unused Title Screen

Graphics and a tilemap exist for a Japanese-language title screen, which matches the one seen on the game's box art. This logo also contains the only Japanese text in the entire game. To see this in-game, change the bytes at B9A8 to 76 AE 10 00 96 AB 10 00 and the bytes at BA24 to D2 AF 12 00 C2 A1 12 00.

Given that there's not much reason for them to have used the final logo over this unused one (Nintendo games' in-game logos very rarely differ from their box art counterparts), and that the final logo appears on the game's tentative US boxart, it's possible that Nintendo accidentally shipped the version intended for the west in Japan as opposed to the Japanese version.

(Source: vervalkon)

Debug Mode

Pro Action Replay (PAR) code 7E1C0305 enables a few debugging buttons on Controller 2. Press any of these during gameplay:

• X - Go to the "Hit Wario" bonus game.
• Select - View the ending and credits.
• Start - Access a level select and sound test.

Pressing X or Select at the title screen will stop the music, but nothing else. Pressing Start at the title screen will still pull up the level select and sound test, but only the latter will work correctly.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Anti-Piracy

On startup, the game will attempt to write to SRAM to detect if it's running on a cartridge copier. An official cartridge contains no SRAM, so nothing will happen and the game will boot up normally. Cartridge copiers always have SRAM present, so the write will be successful and the game will display the above message.

(Source: Original TCRF research)