(this review originally published in UpPortland Magazine)
Released in the middle of February, Super Mario 3D World for the Nintendo Switch is much more than just another re-release of a first-party Wii U game; it’s a love letter to the craftmanship of Mario, and his evolution through his first 25 (now 35) years of his digital life.
Set across eight worlds broken into individual stages (like the original Super Mario Bros. Series), 3D World is the creative bridge between Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Odyssey, melding three-dimensional Mario movement and gameplay, with the intricate puzzle-solving and byte-sized platforming challenges later forming the foundation of Odyssey, albeit on a larger scale. Full of inventive optional challenges and easter eggs (plus a cat suit, which is as fun and broken as it sounds), Super Mario 3D World‘s level design is Nintendo at its absolute finest, every stage a tiny thought experiment into a specific game mechanic.
It is a fascinating game, one that hasn’t aged a lick since its original debut in 2011; in 2021, it serves as an intriguing bit of Nintendo’s recent history – and, yet another game from Nintendo’s biggest failure rediscovering lost glory with the Switch’s massive install base. But unlike many of the other Wii U re-releases (like New Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze), Super Mario 3D World also offered Mario fans an entirely new game to play, a separate quasi-expansion called Bowser’s Fury.
Bowser’s Fury isn’t quite a full-fledged new Mario game; depending on play styles, it will take about 2-6 hours to complete the game’s main objectives, with a few additional hours of secrets and side missions to seek out, if you wish. Set on a large network of small, distinct “island” areas, Bowser’s Fury is a rare glimpse into Nintendo’s creative process, presenting a number of possibilities to what the next open-world Mario game might look like.
The conceit is rather simple: when Bowser becomes ill with some kind of monstrous, rage-inducing power, Bowser Jr. recruits Mario to help him save his father. Set in a strange world where literally everything is cat-themed (yes, that includes goombas, trees, and cat seagulls), Bowser’s Fury is a game where Mario roams freely, moving between islands, discovering secrets and collecting cat shrines along the way (identical to collecting moons in Odyssey). Every few minutes, Bowser’s magically-induced rage takes over, and Mario must adapt to the dynamic changes in the world; Bowser’s fire will change the shape of the terrain, offering access to secret areas and opening up previously inaccessible areas.
This cycle persists through the game experience, as players collect coins and power-ups, and discover the ingenious mini-levels built into the open world space. With Mario now having the ability to store multiples of each type of power-up (from mushrooms, cat suits, fire flowers, and more), Bowser’s Fury challenges players with a wide variety of puzzles – which turns a lot of the experience into an intriguing parallel of Breath of the Wild, which saw Link switching between a core set of abilities to complete a variety of tasks.
It makes for a fascinating look into the minds of Nintendo’s creative minds and engineers, and what they’re thinking about as the next evolutionary step of a Mario game. Odyssey brought Cappy and a unique set of mechanics to the franchise, but it feels like those ideas are going the way of Sunshine‘s water-spraying backpack; we might see it in small pockets of future Mario games, but it’s not the future of the core “eating mushrooms and doing sick platforming moves” gameplay that’s been the industry standard for over three decades.
With Bowser’s Fury, it feels like the next big Mario game is right on the tip of Nintendo’s tongue; though I anticipate we’re still three or four years away from seeing what the result is, the integration of new ideas and concepts in Bowser’s Fury proves Nintendo still has plenty of ideas in the tank for its signature pair of plumbers (and princesses, and Toads, and… you get the point). Together, Super Mario 3D World & Bowser’s Fury is a heck of a package, one that considers the past, present, and possible future of Mario games, with the same joy and fervor we’ve enjoyed for the past 30-plus years.