This page explains in detail the interactions between the Mario series and the Play Action Football series.
Super Play Action Football[]
The choice of the coin's side, with "Heads" selected.
Agosto 1992
Mario
Play Action Football
Before each game, a coin is tossed to chose wich team gets first use of the ball. Before the toss the player has to chose either the coin's "heads" or "tails". The coin toss is only shown in the game trough a televesion.
What is worth noting is that the coin's Heads side has an image of Mario's face, while the Tails side has the Raccoon Mario's tail from Super Mario Bros. 3. While this obviously is a reference to Nintendo's mascot Mario, this may also reference the coin as one of Mario's recurring items.
This graphic version of the coin toss replaces a bland screen in Play Action Football where the two team's logos where shown rapidly alternating, to then stop to a random one.
License[]
Copyrights for both series are held by Nintendo.