30 years later, a lost Mario game has been found – in blood-red screenshots extracted from an old AOL file library

A Nintendo fan has spotted unreleased screenshots of Mario's lost Virtual Boy adventure, with the title Mario Smash attached.

The Virtual Boy was an outright failure in terms of standalone Nintendo platforms, and it was discontinued within five months in Japan and after about a year in the US (and it never even released in Europe). So much so that the likes of Zelda, Metroid, and Donkey Kong never arrived on the platform; hell, even Mario never bothered to make an appearance outside of a couple of spinoff titles (those being Mario's Tennis and Mario Clash).

However, the red plumber was supposed to arrive on the red-and-black eyesore with a standard platformer; it even got so far that the possible Mario title made an appearance at CES 1995 and got a mention in Nintendo Power magazine (spotted by Time Extension). But until now, not much has been known about the mythical VB Mario Land.

As it turns out, part of it was hanging out online for anyone to find.

Bluesky user Rabidrodent has been digging into old AOL multimedia libraries and uncovered tons of interesting things like old wallpapers, old promotional game screenshots (including Mario 64 with an earlier HUD), and even some random photos of Cartoon Network staff.

But hidden away in all that information were high-res screenshots of the fabled VB Mario Land. These bizarre looking screens show Mario walking around the Virtual Boy hellscape with giant Wario heads haunting him like a 2D Silent Hill. We can also see a top-down segment that looks closer to Zelda, with a weird 3D Mario participating in dungeon crawling. While some of the screens had been seen before, they were in 90s magazines and mostly low quality.

What's more interesting is that these screenshots were labeled "Mario Smash" when uploaded by Nintendo, potentially giving us the final title for the fabled VB Mario Land. Sadly, we may never know how the game was, but considering that VB Wario Land is far and away the best game on the doomed system, Mario Smash could've been the second good game on the platform… when it wasn't giving you migraines.

From a Mario game that never was to the next Mario game to arrive, why not check out everything announced at the Mario Kart World Direct?