Nintendo's First Mobile Game: Super Mario Run

Yesterday, Nintendo's very own Shigeru Miyamoto made a surprise appearance at an Apple Event, coming up on stage to show off the next of Nintendo's big mobile games: and let me tell you all, it's exactly what you'd think it would be: a running game.



Starring Nintendo's red-hatted mascot himself, Super Mario Run is an Android/iOS game that, as you can tell, fits into the same broad 'running' category as other popular iOS games, where you tap on the screen to make Mario jump and navigate a 2D environment, stomping enemies, collecting coins, and gettin' high scores. It's a natural fit for Mario, although I will admit it is downright surreal to see Mario himself on a platform not directly owned by Nintendo. I guess this is how Sega fans felt when Sonic Adventure 2 Battle first came out.

Anyway. The game will have two modes, as of right now: a single-player side-scroller, and a multiplayer race mode called Toad Rally, where players complete to get the highest scores on a shared track. The app, thankfully, won't be free: it'll be a paid app, and it will be designed by Nintendo's current Mario team, side-scrolling experts, so you can expect it to be refined and very much belonging in the Super Mario 'chronology'.

Heck, this might be a case where Nintendo's obsession with innovation pays off: the "Running" style games are getting quite old, so hopefully Nintendo will be able to bring some new twist or feature to the genre to help freshen it up and breathe new life into a familiar formula.

Speaking with Time magazine, Shigeru Miyamoto spoke about the transition to the mobile market, and why Nintendo will be releasing its first real 'game' on a non-Nintendo platform.

"[There was] a point in time when our hardware systems were the number one gaming platforms in the world," Miyamoto told Time. "But now we see that smart devices have reached significant penetration across the globe. So for us as designers, our goal is always to try to bring our characters and games to as broad an audience as possible."

Of course, Pokemon Go helped:

"As you've seen with Pokemon Go, we have millions of people who may never have played a Pokemon game, or maybe just knew the name Pokemon, who are now playing that game...and the result of that is that we're also seeing sales of things like our original Pokemon Red and Blue games on the rise. We think we'll see a similar effect with Super Mario Run."

Regardless, Super Mario Run will be coming soon, and I'll admit, I'm excited to see how it turns out. If Miyamoto is right, and we've got the old Mario team working on it, it should prove to be a strong contender in the app store. But enough to inspire people into getting 3DS's or NX's? Well... maybe?