Mario Run . . . to catch up with all the unlicensed ones that already exist

I don't know if that was a deliberate gag or a Freudian typo but I love it.

An uncle Maurice, or mr T, saying

Out 15th December, full game costs £7.99. It feels a bit steep for an auto runner but then again some of Square Enix's FF and DQ games cost more than a tenner on iOS. We'll see how it goes - I'm going for it at that price.

I assume that date is for the iOS release? As soon as it comes our for android I'll be all over it at that price. Even with an auto runner you can assume a certain amount of value from a Nintendo platformer.

Yup, just iOS - it's one of those 'timed exclusives' I keep hearing about. I'll let you know how it is but you're bang on - Nintendo will not be messing up Mario.

I'd say that was pretty steep for some of the FF games though, but perhaps that's just because we're used to iOS games being worth so little. I'll probably pick it up at some point regardless, but I don't know if I'd get £8 worth out of it.

The sad thing is here the game will be about $12 going from the rest of the worlds pricing

For everyone who says that Nintendo's mobile games are unquestionably a good thing and we should stop moaning... yeah.

Miyamoto wrote:

If people like something we'll probably do it again.

Like . . . yeah? Pokémon Go obviously influenced Sun and Moon but it's one of the best Pokémon games ever, so I'm not panicking just yet. 2D Mario needs a big shakeup anyway.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Miyamoto wrote:

If people like something we'll probably do it again.

Like . . . yeah? Pokémon Go obviously influenced Sun and Moon but it's one of the best Pokémon games ever, so I'm not panicking just yet. 2D Mario needs a big shakeup anyway.

The marketing campaign

Also the prevalence of generation one characters and monsters, the bits where you use the Pokédex as a camera, the

Spoiler:

which is in the code but not revealed yet

How many of those things were actually good though? The spoilered wotsit's not in the game at this point, the PokéFinder bits were mince, you suggested (I'm not sure I agree) that the tutorials were more onerous for the sake of Go! players. Alolan 'mons are a positive, but with there still only being 81 new monsters this generation, I'm wondering whether there was an opportunity cost. Like there seemed to be with Megas in Gen. 6.

There's no doubt that more people buying the best games in the series is good, and we have Go! to thank for that. But I can't help feeling that most of the reasons SM are such good games were unrelated to, or possibly in spite of, Go!


You do make a good point about 2D Mario needing a shake-up though. I must admit, I was thinking of and worrying about its influence on 3D Mario games. But I don't mind it hitting the 2D games. (Not having another NSMB would be a start!)

My opinion would be... Nintendo will admit that it's highly doubtful they can get people who don't play 3D Mario games to play them, based on exposure to Super Mario Run; I wouldn't worry about that. We saw 0.27 seconds of that concept on Switch, and I've already got a good feeling

I think Jimbob's right there. The evidence all points to a bigger, more exploration-based 3D Mario. Nintendo seem to have finally accepted they're two different things.

I'll agree with you both, on second thought, and here's hoping.

In the meantime, as Nintendo finally embraces modern gaming industry convention in some aspects, it's also taken on board some of the BLOODY STUPID aspects.

It is a real pain when games do that, but I can understand why Nintendo have. They're charging a fair whack for this game, and piracy is rampant on phones.

Just beat 1-1 of Super Mario Run. It's refreshing/odd not to have the fine control over Mario that I would normally (try to) have, but a neat enough start. Has anyone else jumped on the Super Mario Runaway Hype Train?

Alas, my phone is Android
Yet another reason to be excited for 2016 to bugger off.

I've just played the 3 levels that are free and done all 3 coin challenges on each. I think that'll do me to be honest, I'm not loving it and I really don't think I'll get £8 out of it, I just don't think it's fun enough and the coins are just trial and error to get them.

Well, I paid the £8 entry fee and am halfway through the game. Of those twelve levels, I did the pink coin challenge first time on two of them.

Can't decide if I'm not the audience for the game or I'm just not that keen on auto runners, but I'm certainly not having huge fun. It's probably that I need to untrain my brain from having that aforementioned precise control over Mario to the 'he just keeps pegging it!' mindset.

I think my issue is that it doesn't feel good. Rayman's Autorunners are fantastic, it really feels like there is skill involved and even finishing the level without collecting all the lums feels satisfying, when you hit the perfect race line it feels amazing! Mario tries to allow for exploration and plods along at a slower pace, but that just takes away the satisfaction for me.

The pink coins aren't so bad, they're generally on a more obvious path, but the other 2 less so.

I did the Purple Coin Challenge on 1-1 this morning and it felt much more like an auto-runner: constant repetition to achieve that one perfect moment and then on to the next thing. I'm going to beat it tonight and get my thoughts on it in order.

I've accumulated about £7 of credit doing Google Surveys on my phone, so I'll be ready to jump on this when the Android release eventually arrives.

NintendoLife says you can pre-register your Android-y interest in the game and be notified of release. Hopefully not too far away for all the Androiders out there.

Definitely got my money's worth out of it... or, more accurately, I will have by the time I'm finished with it. I've got all the pink coins (just realised that 5 per level and 24 levels means that there are 120 of each in the game - what is it with Mario and the number 120?!) and I'm playing through getting the purple coins. 1-3 next.

Ooh nice! My nephews were showing me this when I was visiting them on Christmas & it looks like a good wee time waster if you have a spare 30 mins or so. Quick question, can you play it in landscape mode?