New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe Features a Secret Character

Players have discovered a hidden playable character in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (which is still the most unnecessarily long title in quite some time). 

The story behind this hidden character is a bit strange. See, the original version of the game on Wii U allowed you play as Yellow and Blue Toad characters. Granted, these characters were typically given to whichever players weren’t lucky enough to pick Mario and Luigi in time, but they were part of the game nonetheless. 

As you may recall, Nintendo announced that the Switch version of the game would feature a new character, Toadette. Indeed, it was Toadette’s ability to become Peachette that kicked off that incredibly weird era of Bowsette fetishizing that Nintendo had to pretty much denounce. What wasn’t necessarily known as the time of Toadette’s reveal, though, was that she would seemingly replace Blue Toad on the character selection screen. Blue Toad doesn’t even appear as a playable character when you launch the game. 

However, it seems that Blue Toad is playable in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe after all. If you hold the L or ZL button when hovering over Yellow Toad on the character select screen, they will become Blue Toad instead. It’s a pretty simple color swap that we’ve seen many times in many games. It’s easy to believe that Nintendo simply elected to offer players the option of playing as either original character even if they don’t inform you of how to make this swap on the screen.

Here’s where things get a bit weird. While you can play as Blue Toad instead of Yellow Toad, it seems that the game might not have been programmed to fully account for Blue Toad’s presence. In fact, Blue Toad doesn’t even appear in the opening cutscene even if you pick him. Blue Toad is instead replaced by Yellow Toad who sits alongside Mario, Luigi, Toadette, and Peach during the opening cutscene. 

Do we sense some kind of Blue Toad conspiracy possibly tied to the Bowsette controversy? No, we don’t. Sorry for the unnecessary tease. 

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.