Mario Maker: The Skinny Mushroom Power-Up Is Now a Part of Mario History
Super Mario Maker is a gloriously addictive game that lets you finally live out every retro gamer’s biggest Mario-related fantasy — the ability to simply draw Mario levels and bring them to life on your TV screen. Buried deep within its code is a delicious treat, a new type of mushroom that turns little Mario into a tall, lanky Mario. Just look at this guy:
People have dubbed this the “Weird Mushroom” (according to the Super Mario Wiki), but it’s not uncommon to hear it referred to as the skinny mushroom or the Luigi mushroom. (I like the term “lanky mushroom” myself.) It grants you powers typically associated with Luigi, like an extra high jump and less traction on surfaces. (It also gives you terribly bad posture.)
This power-up apparently has a 1 in 10 chance of showing up wherever a Super Mushroom is placed in a level, but you can also unlock it for permanent use by clearing all of the game’s Nintendo World Championships courses, which might take a bit of time. I promise you, though, it’s well worth it. I love this lanky little dude!
Takashi Tezuka of Nintendo explained in a Nintendo Treehouse video (recorded at E3 2014) that the item was originally a product of a development bug, but we can all be thankful that it was left in the final product. What a cool feature, right?
If you want more information on how to unlock the Lanky Mushroom, here’s a video by GameXplain that shows you how: