Don’t Miss Out Again on the Perfect Mario Game

Benjamin Frisch: OK, let’s maybe start with some quick background: What’s your relationship to the Mario universe? I’ve played pretty much all of the mainline Mario games, with the exception of 3D World, which I was very excited to finally get to play, since I sat out on Nintendo’s previous console, the Wii U. Karen Han: I’ve always lived in a Nintendo household, but I admittedly haven’t played that many of the big Mario games—most of my Mario experience comes from the Mario Party and Mario Kart series, though I feel like no one who was around when Super Mario Sunshine came out could escape that game completely. Han: Maybe that’s why I started the game feeling overconfident … Urquhart: To Gabe’s point, one thing 3D World pared down is some of the movement options, like the jump dive and the triple jump. Frisch: It maybe feels too obvious, but a more open world take à la Bowser’s Fury set in the Mushroom Kingdom feels like my childhood dream of a Mario game. For most of the 2010s, Nintendo was attempting to translate the 2D Mario games to 3D, and now Odyssey and Bowser’s Fury are translating some of those lessons back into free-roaming environments.