Top: extremely early world map screen found within a recently surfaced prototype version of Hotel Mario. Note that the map shows eight Koopa hotels, not seven as famously stated in Bowser's letter in the finished game.
Bottom: this plays into the "Iggy's Cheese Hotel Theory" I have previously presented on the Supper Mario Broth twitter.com account, where various factors all seem to point towards an eighth deleted hotel, likely belonging to Iggy Koopa and possibly cheese-themed.
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While in most Mario games that feature extra lives, the object that grants them is a 1-Up Mushroom, in Hotel Mario, this object is supposed to be a Toad instead.
Top: the entry about Toad from the game's manual.
Middle: how Toad appears during gameplay (left side of image).
Bottom: all of Toad's sprites, extracted from the files.
The item appears as a cross between a regular type of mushroom as seen in Mario games, and a Blue Toad's head, which results in it resembling a faceless, severed Blue Toad head hopping around.
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It's so funny that, in the Hotel Mario prototype, the "toasters" cutscene has had its audio completely obliterated by a stereo test that isn't even stereo.