Beach Ball
Beach Balls[1] are items primarily found in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. In this game, Tamanoripū enemies are always found riding atop these balls, rolling them slowly with their tiny feet. However, even when Mario stomps on Tamanoripū and defeats it, the ball will continue to bounce and roll at the same speed, changing orientation when bumping into wall. Not even the plumber hero can stop the ball; when he himself mounts it, the ball will do the same action and work as a platform that moves him, technically speaking. This actually helps Mario when he has to pass large, spiky areas, whose roughness does not seem to affect the bouncy ball. This can be mainly seen in stage 2 of the Mario Zone. Note that objects found in the game's prequel, Super Mario Land, carry Mario the the same way Beach Balls do.
Beach Balls are not different from the classic, real life beach balls, in terms of design. They feature wide stripes, which alternate from blue to pink, as seen in the artwork shown here. Despite this, the in-game sprite of the balls rather have white and black stripes, most probably because of the chromatical limitations the Game Boy shows off with.
Losing their usage described earlier, beach balls return in the much more recent game Mario Party: Island Tour. The minigame under the name Pool Buoy has the players controlling the balls from inside. With the aid of the buoyancy on the water, the characters can move freely within their "capsule" on the surface of the fluid and even bump into other players. Although their design pattern is not changed at all so as to get more recognized as beach balls, these are now translucent in order for the characters to be seen by the human player. Their color is differing from player to player, much like the colorition of the mechanical crickets from the same game.
