For moments related to the cartoon, go
here.
Video Game
- Teaming up with Yoshi for the first time. What, don't you think it would be awesome to ride a dinosaur around and devour all of your enemies in a single gulp?
- One for the developers, too. Word of God states that they'd wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur ever since the first NES game, but the NES was too primitive at the time to make this dream a reality. With this game coming out 5 years later, they finally got to.
- Special World. It's arguably a Nintendo Hard ROM Hack of itself, and it rewards you for completing That One Level, Tubular. The final level introduces a special fruit that increases your time if Yoshi eats it. Then, at the very end, all the Mooks are gone, and in their place is a giant message that says "YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER", written entirely in Coins. Then, the entire game becomes a Halloween Episode.
- Upon beating each of the Koopalings' fortresses, a humorous cutscene is shown of Mario destroying the fortress he's just spent hell getting through. Normally he just blows it up, but after beating Larry's fortress (the seventh and final fortress), Mario picks the fortress out of the ground and drop-kicks it. No wonder we didn't hear from the Koopalings for so long... note Actually, their last appearance would be in Yoshi's Safari, but that's another story...
- Fortress #2 is also awesomely destroyed, namely by Mario simply repeatedly kicking it until it crumbles to the ground.
- After finishing the Sunken Ship (itself a Call-Back to the airships of Super Mario 3 and, apparently, the ship used by Bowser and the Koopalings to get to Dinosaur Land), the entire screen starts to shake while a unique fanfare plays and the entrance to the Valley of Bowser emerges from the depths of the ocean.
- Bowser's entrance in this game. To put this into perspective, his first confrontations with Mario were a bit of an anticlimax. Come to this boss, and for the first time in his long career, Bowser drops the act and introduces the Koopa Clown Car, which itself makes a grand entrance by slowly entering the screen until it's in full view, and Bowser pokes his head out in all the game's 16 bit glory. And then came the fight itself. This was when Bowser first earned his mantle as the King of the Koopas, and he hasn't let that title go ever since.
