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New games and products unveiled for Mario’s 35th anniversary

Tom Caswell
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Nintendo, in a Mario-themed direct, announced a litany of games, products, and in-game rewards around the company’s mascot for his 35th anniversary. The biggest announcement was Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which packages Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy into one game. The titles will receive a makeover with improved HD resolutions and 16:9 aspect ratios. The package will release on September 18, but will only be available in physical and digital formats until April 2021. It seems Nintendo will no longer make the game available for purchase after that date.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nintendo is getting in on the battle royale craze with Super Mario Bros. 35, coming from the team that put together Tetris 99. Thirty-five players will compete in a never-ending, procedurally generated Super Mario Bros. level. Enemies defeated in one person’s game will spawn in another, and players can use special items to try and get a leg up on the competition. The game will be available for free via for Nintendo Online members starting on October 1, but will only be playable until April 2021.

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Super Mario All-Stars, packaging the Super Mario Bros. trilogy and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, is available now for free for Nintendo Online members and comes with no such limited release stipulation.

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One of the last Wii U holdouts, Super Mario 3D World, is finally getting ported to the Nintendo Switch as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. It adds online multiplayer, as well as a new expansion, Bowser’s Fury, although details on that were not provided. The game will be available on February 21, 2021.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nintendo also announced two physical products. Mario Kart: Home Circuit comes in either a Mario or Luigi variation and is a small kart remote-controlled by a Nintendo Switch. The players will place gates on the floor to create a track. Using a camera built into the kart, they will be able to view its perspective via their Switch, which produces an augmented reality track with other racers and items to pick up, the kart reacting to the virtual elements. It will include local multiplayer with other physical karts and will be available on October 16 for $100.

The other physical product is a new Game & Watch, which was Nintendo’s first handheld console, predating the Game Boy. It comes with Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels installed, and will only be available for Nintendo Online members to order, releasing on November 13 for $50.

In addition to all the new products, Mario themed in-game events and rewards such as furniture in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and a tournament in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will be releasing over the coming months.

Knowing how much Nintendo has struggled with working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s very possible the above Mario titles will be the company’s big holiday release, especially as 3D All-Stars will only be available through the first quarter of 2021.

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Tom Caswell
Tom Caswell
Professional video producer and writer, gaming enthusiast, and streamer! twitch.tv/greatbritom
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.
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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.

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Super Nintendo World is set to open at Universal Studios Hollywood in early 2023. Universal announced the opening date for the Nintendo-themed attraction on Thursday, which is a more firm launch window than has been previously given.

To commemorate the announcement of Super Nintendo World's stateside opening date, Universal Studios posted a few pictures and a video of the signature ride, Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge. The ride is an AR-on-rails experience where guests put on AR glasses shaped like Mario's hat and ride in a four-seat Mario Kart-style go-kart in a race to beat Team Bowser.

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Mario Kart 9 shouldn’t turn the series into ‘Nintendo Kart’
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Following a report that Mario Kart 9 is in the works, fans have been sharing their hypothetical visions of what the game could be. While the game is still a rumor, it's assumed that there will eventually be a sequel to the sales juggernaut that is Mario Kart 8, which released nearly a decade ago in 2014. Based on the continued sales this game still rakes in on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo is obviously in no rush to get a sequel made and out the door, but that hasn't stopped fans from making some ambitious predictions.

Almost any time a conversation about a potential Mario Kart 9 comes up, there's one common request: Crossover characters. A vocal group of people out there want Mario Kart to be the new Super Smash Bros. with tons of guest characters filling in the roster. Some are content with it sticking to Nintendo properties, dubbing it Nintendo Kart, while others want characters from all gaming properties in the driver's seat.

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