Game Breaker/Super Mario Bros

Game Breakers in the Super Mario Brothers series.

---

• Luigi in Super Mario 64 DS. The game was made for Mario's abilities, and most definitely not with the exaggerated jumping skill of Luigi in mind. Since his backflip allows for infinite gliding, and the Vanish ability is usable from all ? blocks, you can use it to literally get all the stars in Hazy Maze Cave without going through the poisonous maze, get most of the stars in Rainbow Ride without tricky platforming and completely skip having to ground pound the pillars in Shifting Sand Land.
  • Hell, Luigi in general is broken (as far as platformers are concerned). In a platforming series known for its technical jumps and obstacles, being more floaty, having greater control over your movements in the air, and being able to jump higher and farther than your redder counterpart goes a long way in curving the actual difficulty of the game in your favor.
• Super Mario World was proven to be very broken in its initial release:
  • The Cape earned its Game Breaker status with flying colors. It not only allowed Mario to perform sustained flight (which, given a few minutes practice, allows you to bypass most levels by taking a running jump and hitting the left directional button every few seconds), but it also gives him a spin attack powerful enough to kill most enemies. Even more broken is when he is flying, it is the only instance where Mario does not lose his power if he gets hit by an enemy. It also allows you to fall much more slowly than you normally would, so you can control where you'll land.
  • The Blue Yoshi (which lets you fly when he eats a Koopa shell of any color). You can find this variant in two ways: A) Hatch one in 'Star World 2' (the water stage) and feed him 5 enemies or 1 powerup to make him mature; or B) Use any breed of Yoshi and catch the pair of Magic Wings on the Cheese Bridge stage, which turns him into the blue variant. Once you have one, you can then bypass entire stages easily: Simply slurp up a Koopa, hold up and right, and wait. It's the easiest way to pass the hardest level in the game, the Special World's "Tubular" level. It's that broken.
    • Powerups in general are broken in Super Mario World. Whereas there are a finite number of Hammer Suits, P-Wings and Tanooki Suits in Super Mario Bros 3 (and are a hassle to farm in remakes where they are infinite since you still have to play the levels in that World all the way back to the vendor), you can just backtrack and get another Blue Yoshi or Cape with much greater ease.
    • The Advance version made this even more broken, by making Yoshi's of a certain color available from any Eggs spawned from ?-Blocks (once fully grown in the Star World, of course), and also dependent on what powerup you currently have. Basically, having the cape guarantees that any eggs spawned from ?-Blocks will always hatch a Blue Yoshi.
  • There are several opportunities to get tons of extra lives. By the time you finish the Forest of Illusion, you'll have maxed out your lives to 99 easily. Notable examples include:
    • The earliest example was in Donut Plains 1. A training area exists (that is accessible right beside the midway goal) where players can use the Cape (with sustained flight) to glide through a massive block of coins spread out across a long distance. Experienced players could hit the midway goal, go into the area and fly back and forth through the coins, racking up two or three lives in the span of a minute-and-a-half, then exit out to the level screen. Wash, rinse and repeat.
    • The Top Secret Area is a secret level accessed through the Donut Ghost House (right at the beginning of the level, fly up). The accessible level included full item pickups (mushroom/flower/cape), a Yoshi, and a single 1-up every time the level is accessed. This led to the player being able to grab extra lives whenever they wanted.
    • In the Forest of Illusion, a glitch can be exploited (float back and forth using the Cape between a set of three Wigglers) that would max out your lives and score in three minutes. The game can't even properly describe what happens when you start receiving 6 or more lives per successive hit (and resorts to illegible programming language to show it on the screen).
    • There's also Vanilla Secret 1. The first half of the stage is filled with dozens of hopping Koopas, but directly after the mid-point is one of the grey P Switches. These switches turn all enemies into gray coins, which add up during collecting like successive stomps on enemies without landing. All you have to do is carry the P Switch over to where the Koopas start, stomp it, and haul plumber ass towards the right side of the stage. This method takes awhile to rack up the lives though....mostly because you get so many in that twenty seconds or so that the game needs a couple minutes to catch up.
• Unlike the overpowered cape, the 'Super Leaf' in Super Mario Bros 3, which turns Mario into 'Raccoon Mario', only allowed him to fly for a few seconds, and its spin attack is much slower and much shorter in range. However, the 'Tanooki Suit', which is basically a suped-up version of the 'Super Leaf', simply dominates over that and the other flying powerups for one simple reason: its statue mode. Sure, it renders you immobile and it only lasts a few seconds, but you can slide under gaps that are too narrow for even small Mario if you're on a conveyor belt, and you can kill nearly any enemy by statue-stomping them from above, including the otherwise-invulnerable Rotodisk.
  • The Hammer Suit from the same game has Hammer Bros-style hammers that go through structures and enemies and have hilariously high damage output; one hit will defeat Boom-Boom and any of the seven Koopalings, and six hammers will take down Bowser himself. Hammers are also capable of killing Boos and even Thwomps.
• Super Mario Advance breaks itself with the Giant Mooks. Every time you toss a big Shy Guy or Ninji to the ground, they spit out hearts every single time.
  • The 4th and final Advance game in the series (based on SMB3) can be broken if you have the e-Reader and the cards that go with the game. You can easily get many power ups and extra lives by swiping the same cards into the game over and over. And yes, you can even get the Cape from Super Mario World this way.
    • There's a card which gives you ONE HUNDRED extra lives every time you use it. Just one use will completely break the game's difficulty to zero.
• New Super Mario Bros. has the 'Mini Mushroom'. It shrinks Mario down to half his un-powered up forms size, and while it makes him a One-Hit-Point Wonder who can't even kill enemies without a ground pound, it makes you more floaty, gives you greater control over your movements in the air, lets you jump higher, further, faster, and makes you far harder to hit, in addition to being able to run across water. In short, it essentially trivializes all the platforming in the game; even most bosses are far easier once you get the timing of butt pound down.^[1]
  • The 'Mega Mushroom' can be had as a secondary item in the bonus stage houses. Use it against Bowser in the final battle, and you just have to walk over him in the easiest final boss battle ever!
  • In fact with the 'Mega Mushroom', you can beat all but one boss in one hit. Also you can easily beat some levels with the 'Mega Mushroom'. However because you're so big, there are lots of areas you cannot access and most times you have to get by those areas to beat the level. The game seems to realize this as it only gives you a 'Mega Mushroom' in level a few times (such as the first level). The rest of the time, you get then in the world map which means you can save them for those bosses.
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii gives us the 'Propeller Mushroom'. It acts like a mega jump, it allows you to glide, and then you can fall on enemies at high speed to kill them. Basically, it's the power of flight all over again!
  • Also, having the Propeller Mushroom guarantees getting a 1Up at the flag, unless you seriously botch it.
  • The game's own playthrough videos frequently abuses the 'Mini Mushroom' power-up's inability to Goomba Stomp enemies with the standard jumps to ride Bullet Bills across entire levels for extra lives and profit.
• In Super Paper Mario, Bowser seems very powerful at first, given the fact that he is twice as powerful as any other character and is capable of killing enemies at range with his fire breath...until you realize he is slow, a big target, and only capable of firing his Breath Weapon from the ground. Reasonably balanced enough, but by combining Bowser with the Pixl Carrie, who increases movement speed (and note well that Carrie's speed is the same for all characters), we have a Lightning Bruiser on our hands who gives us little reason to use anyone else unless the platforming requires it, and this is before we even factor in the thing that really makes Carrie Bowser broken: Carrie is a platform under the character's feet, which means whoever uses Carrie is treated as on the ground even while jumping. To reiterate, Bowser is capable of firing his Breath Weapon only while he is on the ground. The game was very clearly not designed around the possibility of Bowser jumping and killing enemies at range, and it allows Bowser to kill nearly any enemy before they can even get close. The fact that Carrie allows Bowser to jump on most examples of The Spiny and not take damage is just the icing on the cake.
  • Luigi as well, despite his late entrance to being playable. He has the speed of Mario, even greater agility than the other characters, and his spring jump does double damage from below, while none of the other characters can attack from below at all. Note that charging the spring jump only increases its height, it will do double damage no matter how little you charge it.
  • While the Pixl Dottie is fairly mediocre in the main game, in the Pit of 100 Trials, she doesn't so much break the game as destroy it. In a Multi Mook Melee, the ability to keep enemies from noticing you're there at all is more than a little overpowered.
• MarioParty3 had the 'Reverse Mushroom'. An item that when used, forces the target to move backwards on their next roll. The brokenness comes from the fact that going backwards is actually quite handy more often than not: it can be used on yourself, it can spend people off into undesired areas, it allows the "afflicted" person to go in any direction at most junctions -- and could thus "backtrack" to the Star Space you might have missed or have been unlucky enough to be at another area or path when it respawned, it can also let you go to areas that are normally impossible to enter without a Skeleton Key -- which tend to have Chance Spaces and Item Spaces littered there. Oh, and a random Boswer event can inflict everyone with this status. Simply put, it was not a coincidence that it was one of the very few items did not ever reappear in any future titles(that wasn't tied to the gameplay that is), even in other form.
• Super Mario 3D Land has the Statue Leaf. The normal Tanooki Suit is already rather useful because of how you can glide, but the statue form lets you kill/stop ANYTHING you fall on/in the path of. Thwomps get smashed to pieces, flames do nothing, enemies ignore you or die in one hit and even giant Pillars just stop dead on contact.
• Collectable items in Yoshi's Island. Not really any particular ones, just any you can store in the inventory. Sure they're blocked from being used in boss battles, but being able to breathe fire/freeze enemies/shoot bullet like seeds at any point in the game? Broken to the point you can often just blast the spike pits to pieces and stroll through. Getting 20+ stars is basically an instant max health refill, and the items to change enemies to clouds or stars make tough areas a breeze, as does the ability to turn all red coins red and be able to tell them apart from the normal ones.

1. ↑ (Which is good, considering you need to beat two bosses in mini form to unlock two of the worlds.)