Skip to main content

Nintendo teases its upcoming ‘Super Mario Run’ game in a series of tweets

princess daisy
Much to the delight of its investors, Nintendo finally embraced the smartphone/tablet market with the launch of Miitomo earlier this year on iOS and Android. Nintendo’s first mobile game exploded when it hit the mobile scene and then seemingly fizzled out shortly thereafter, pushing Nintendo to quickly follow up with an even more explosive game based on augmented reality, Pokémon Go, in July. Now Super Mario Run is getting ready to dash onto mobile devices in December and to celebrate, Nintendo is teasing fans with a string of tweets on Twitter.

So far, there are five Twitter posts from Nintendo of America, each sporting a loose illustration of the Super Mario Run gameplay. The first drawing illustrates Mario vaulting over Goombas and Koopa Troopas instead of smashing them outright. After that, the drawings indicate that Mario is learning how to run and jump over objects without stopping, rolling or leap-frog jumping over blocks. Finally, Mario graduates to jumping over holes, with his continuous efforts making him faster and able to jump further than he could at the start.

“We’ve received a report from Toad that Mario’s been running around more than usual. Stay tuned for additional info,” Nintendo of America said in the most current Super Mario Run tweet.

If you’re not familiar with the upcoming mobile game, Super Mario Run is a side-scrolling game, but not in the traditional Mario platformer sense. It’s an auto-running title where Mario is running from the left side of the screen to the right, forcing players to tap the screen to make Mario jump over obstacles and gaps. The longer the player taps the screen, the higher Mario will jump.

As expected, Mario can grab power-ups along his side-scrolling marathon, stomp on any enemy that gets in his way, wall-jump up narrow passages, and fight huge bosses at the end of the level. Obviously, the goal of each race is to get Mario to the end in the least amount of time, and in one piece.

Mario will also collect coins in his dash that can be used to purchase items for decorating the player’s custom-built Mushroom Kingdom, which is one of the three parts to the overall Super Mario Run game. The third part is nearly identical to the main Super Mario Run mode, only players race against the “ghosts” of other real-world players to receive an additional stash of coins.

Super Mario Run is slated to hit the iPhone and iPad on December 15 in 151 countries and in 10 languages. So far, there is no set date for the Android version. However, Nintendo of America apparently has more Super Mario Run-themed tweets on the horizon, so perhaps we’ll know more about the Android version as the tweets go live.

Editors' Recommendations

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
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. 

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more