Why is there still no great Super Mario game for the Nintendo Switch 2?
From the 1996 revolution with Mario 64 right through to *Odyssey*, the Kyoto-based company’s consoles have always made their mark thanks to their iconic plumber. Nine years on from the last instalment, anticipation is building, especially on the day of his most important birthday.
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A new Super Mario game is released every 4–6 years. It’s an unwritten rule at Nintendo. Whenever a new console is launched, to give it an extra boost on the market, they release a new game featuring the plumber in overalls, which is almost always better than the previous one and a hit.
When the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled in June last year, pretty much everyone expected him to be the one to herald the arrival of the new console. Nothing. Fans have been waiting for nine years. The watershed year was 1996: Super Mario 64, alongside the launch of the Nintendo 64, taught the world what it meant to move in 360 degrees. It was a revolution for the video game industry, just like the one in 2017, when Super Mario Odyssey convinced us that throwing a possessed cap at a T. rex was the pinnacle of modern interactive entertainment.
And so, when the first boxes of Switch 2 began to appear in living rooms, there was just one collective expectation: to switch on the screen, hear the classic ‘Yahoo!’ remastered in crystal-clear resolution, and lose touch with reality for the next three weeks. Instead, nothing.
Now, let’s be clear, he hasn’t disappeared. Up until now, we’ve had to make do with high-definition Super Mario driving a car (Mario Kart World), playing tennis (Mario Tennis Fever) and appearing in other titles such as Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario Party Jamboree. What fans are really waiting for, however, is a game entirely dedicated to him – one in which he is the one and only star.
Amidst mirror-polished remasters and small teasers, the true, majestic generational leap into three dimensions has remained locked away in a safe. Almost nine years since the last true odyssey seem like a geological eternity in the language of video games: in the meantime, we’ve changed our televisions, our habits, perhaps a few dioptres, but not that childlike desire to see a triple jump done properly.
