Nintendo embraces the mercenary world of DLC with New Super Luigi U

By Anthony John Agnello February 14, 2013

New Super Luigi U

During the summer of 2012, Nintendo made great strides to modernize its digital gaming business. By offering Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games like New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U as downloadable titles on the same day, Nintendo tried to show that it has learned the error of its ways in neglecting the downloadable space. To date, though, downloadable add-on content for Nintendo’s games hasn’t lit the game industry ablaze. The Coin Rush add-ons for New Super Mario Bros. 2, for example, are an example of the most basic game additions. Challenge Mode add-ons have been released for everything from Dishonored to the original Metal Gear Solid. But with Nintendo being known for its unique games, the expectation has been that it would do something more grand.

New Super Luigi U, announced during the Thursday Nintendo Direct event, fits that bill. The downloadable add-on to New Super Mario Bros. U will – according to Nintendo President Satoru Iwata – completely re-imagine all 80 levels of the game to be played by Luigi alone.

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This marks a departure from Nintendo’s past DLC content, which tends to focus on basic add-ons and social elements. New Super Luigi U instead completely overhauls the single player experience of the platformer, and extends the longevity of the game for those early Wii U adopters that picked it up.

It also shows that Nintendo doesn’t quite have the DLC development cycle locked into its operations yet. Downloadable content usually lands within a few months of a game’s release. Nintendo said that this New Super Mario Bros. U DLC is so substantial that it will take as much time to develop as a full game, and it won’t be out until later this year.

There is a troubling aspect to the announcement as well. For all of Nintendo’s unfriendly consumer practices—locking downloaded games to individual consoles, friend codes, etc.—it has rarely skimped on content. A common feature of recent Mario games, including Super Mario 3D Land, Super Mario Galaxy, and others, is unlocking Luigi for a second, more difficult campaign. That campaign was offered for free in those games, and included on the disc. New Super Luigi U is not the sort of content Nintendo would have charged extra for in the past.

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Entertainment

Bowser attacks in The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s first trailer

super mario bros movie first trailer bowser

Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment finally gave us our first glimpse at the animated Mario movie, which is officially titled The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The trailer reveal came during New York Comic Con and got a special Nintendo Direct of its own.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie Nintendo Direct kicks off with an introduction from Shigeru Miyamoto, Chris Meledandri, Chris Pratt, and Jack Black, who confirmed that the animation will be complete next week, although there are still other things to do, and hyped up the trailer. The trailer itself begins with Bowser attacking a city of Penguins before cutting to Mario finding himself in the Mushroom Kingdom and going on an adventure with Toad. We even see a little bit of Luigi at the end.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie | Official Teaser Trailer
Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment -- the Universal Pictures animation studio known for creating Despicable Me, Sing, and The Secret Life of Pets -- first announced a movie based on the iconic Super Mario Bros. video game series in 2018. While series creator Shigeru Miyamoto was a producer on the film from the start and Nintendo acquired a film studio during this movie's production, the announcement that really turned heads was the September 2021 Nintendo Direct, where its shocking all-star cast was revealed.
During its segment in that Direct, we learned that Chris Pratt is Mario, Anya Taylor-Joy is Princess Peach, Charlie Day is Luigi, Keegan-Michael Key is Toad, Seth Rogan is Donkey Kong, Fred Armisen is Cranky Kong, Kevin Michael Richardson is Kamek, Sebastian Maniscalco is Foreman Spike, and Jack Black is Bowser. They all felt like odd choices at the time of the announcement, and from this trailer, we learned what Kamek, Bowser, Mario, Toad, and Luigi will all sound like.
While The Super Mario Bros. Movie was originally going to come out this year, you can now expect the animated feature to hit theaters on April 7, 2023 in the United States and April 28, 2023 in Japan.

Gaming

You can play a fan-made Super Mario Bros. 5 in Mario Maker 2 right now

Photo of Mario surrounded by coins in Super Mario Bros 5

It's been a bit since we've had a brand-new 2D Mario title, but one fan has taken it upon himself to provide that to those pining for a new entry in the classic platformer franchise. After seven years of hard work, Twitter user Metroid Mike 64 has finished his unofficial Super Mario Bros. 5 using Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch -- and you can play through the entire thing right now.

Metroid Mike 64 shared the news with his followers on Sunday, pointing out that he's been working on the project since 2015 with the goal of creating "a classic Mario game that plays as if Nintendo created it themselves." This, he points out, means a complete lack of the kinds of masochistic and troll levels that are commonly seen in Mario Maker 2, instead providing players with something focused on nostalgia and old-school charm.

Gaming

Nintendo’s mobile games are more influential than you might think

Alear and Marth open a door in Fire Emblem Engage.

Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts fairly underwhelming and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company of Nintendo’s stature. While nothing ever quite reached the high bar Pokémon Go set in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are a bit more influential than they get credit for.
Over the past few years, games like Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have built upon their mobile counterparts. Then, during the September 13 Nintendo Direct, Fire Emblem Engage’s announcement and main gimmick cemented that Nintendo isn’t just viewing mobile games as a mostly failed side experiment. While they might not be the most successful games out there, their DNA is creeping into the Nintendo Switch’s bestselling titles.
Mediocre mobile returns
Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts kicked off in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which quickly became a smashing success in 2016. In the six years since, the game has generated around 678 million installs and $6 billion in player spending, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While working with Niantic proved fruitful for The Pokemon Company, Nintendo partnered with DeNA for most of its initial mobile games. Unfortunately, none of these quite reached the heights analysts and Nintendo expected. Super Mario Run was a smash hit at launch but failed to sustain much interest and consistent revenue, so it’s considered a disappointment by Nintendo.
Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they’ve still made lots of money for Nintendo, most haven't matched the success of the most popular mobile titles. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. It’s had over $1 billion in player spending alone as of June 2022 and is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the [mobile} platform,” according to Sensor Tower.
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokemon Go with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, although that game has reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people are surprised to see only a couple of surefire mobile hits from a company with the pedigree of Nintendo and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. If you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo put out since, though, it isn’t ignoring everything learned while making mobile games.
Mobile's monumental impact
Nintendo has the masterful ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, draw those out, and then expand upon them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this time and time again with subsequent entries of its flagship series, but it’s a mindset it has applied to its mobile games upon closer inspection.
As far back as 2018, Pokemon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle a Pokemon to capture it, and incorporated that into a traditional RPG experience. More recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was able to revive its live service offerings by repurposing the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour.
Fire Emblem Engage – Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch
The legacy of Nintendo’s mobile games could also be felt in the September 13 Nintendo Direct. The showcase’s first announcement was Fire Emblem Engage, which is turn-based strategy game where the main gimmick is being able to summon classic Fire Emblem characters with a ring. While it doesn’t look like Fire Emblem Engage goes full gacha, it’s clear that Nintendo recognized how people liked collecting and using classic Fire Emblem characters in a new adventure, so the developers drew and expanded upon that idea for Fire Emblem Engage.
Before the announcement of Pikmin 4, Shigeru Miyamoto also took a lot of time to highlight Pikmin Bloom. While we don’t know much about Pikmin 4’s gameplay, Nintendo could find some aspects of that game’s exploratory experience, weekly challenges, or something I’m not even thinking of to freshen up the next mainline game. The same could even happen with Super Mario Run the next time Nintendo decides to make a 2D Mario game.
While watching Fire Emblem Engage’s reveal during the latest Nintendo Direct, it became clear that Nintendo’s mobile games have quietly become influential forces in the company's console games. Nintendo has slowly plucked the best ideas out of them and brought them into Switch games without extra monetization. While the future is cloudy for Nintendo's seemingly stalled mobile push, I hope the company can still find a place for its games on mobile, using the platform as a space to experiment with its beloved series.