Mario

Google Maps Gets Its Very Own Mario Kart

Google’s already tossed Pac Man into its maps—now it’s Mario’s turn to shine. To celebrate Mario Day, users of the Google Maps phone app can now send their favorite plumber karting around their neighborhood. Leading into March 10th–whose abbreviation Mar. 10 looks like the most l33t spelling of Mario ever–anyone using the Google Maps app…

Mario Is Officially A Plumber Again

In September, Nintendo crushed hearts across the world by declaring that Mario was no longer a plumber. This week, the publisher has remedied that horrible mistake, changing Mario’s bio to note that he is, in fact, a plumber. Previously, as translated by Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft, the official Japanese Mario bio had read: “All around sporty,…

As Mario Odyssey Patches Change The Game, Speedrunners Scramble To Keep Up

Super Mario Odyssey speedrunners often use glitches to grab tricky power moons or skip through major portions of the game. A new patch implemented alongside the new Luigi’s Balloon World mode last week blocked some of those crucial tricks, slowing any runner who upgraded their game. Now, the community is trying to figure out what…

Mario Odyssey Players Are Breaking The New Balloon Mode

Growing up, you probably played hide-and-seek, and you probably had one friend who was so good at hiding that it felt like they’d vanished. Well, imagine that they could literally phase through walls in order to win, and you’ll have an idea of how Mario Odyssey players are feeling right now. Mario Odyssey’s new mode,…

AI Learns To Play Mario 64, Gets A Star

We’ve seen artificial intelligence learn how to play games like Super Mario World and Mario Kart, but Mario 64 is a whole different animal. Kaze Emanuar is a modder who lives to contort Mario 64 into strange, new shapes and forms. In the past, he’s added online multiplayer, a first-person mode, and portal guns, some…

Mario Is Getting His Own Fancy Encyclopedia

Having had tremendous success withits trio of The Legend of Zelda reference books, Dark Horse Publishing sets its sights on the Mushroom Kingdom, chronicling three decades of Nintendo gaming in the Super Mario Encyclopedia. The Super Mario Encyclopedia is an exhaustive look at nearly every Super Mario game Nintendo’s made, from Super Mario Bros. in…

Super Mario Bros. Speedruns Are One Step Closer To Best Possible Time

Super Mario Bros. speedruns are almost as perfect as humanly possible. The swift sprint through the Mushroom Kingdom has only seen incremental gains over the last few years, with runners besting times by fractions of a second. Runs of the game have become so optimized that it seemed impossible to do any better. Last night,…

Here Is Mario’s Nipple Up Close

Over on The Models Resource, some folks have uploaded the raw files used to build Mario’s outfits in Odyssey. His “Boxers” costume is particularly interesting. Sweet dreams, everyone. Hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day not thinking of enormous zoomed-in plumber nipples. Until now.

“We’ve talked together and share the feeling that if we can’t make something interesting we’ll just call it quits,” Shigeru Miyamoto said at a recent financial Q&A about the animated Super Mario movie from Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures .

People Can Now Beat Super Mario World In Less Than A Minute

Super Mario World has plenty of warps and tricks to help players finish the game faster than usual, but none are as extreme as the credits warp. This intense glitch was once thought to be nearly impossible for a human to perform, but one speedrunner recently used it to complete the game in less that…

Nintendo just announced that it is working with Illumination (Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets) on a Mario movie, confirming a report from the Wall Street Journal last year. Shigeru Miyamoto will be co-producing.

Which character represents Japan? According to a multiple answer poll of 500 Japanese people, the first choice was Doraemon with 186 votes, followed by Pikachu (160 votes), Mario (145), Anpanman (116) and Hello Kitty (112). Read the full results here

Your Uncle Who Worked At Nintendo Still Had To Pay For His Games

Even if someone’s uncle really did work at Nintendo, guess what: he probably didn’t get that kid down the street a copy of Mario for free. Chris Bieniek from Video Game Ephemera has got hold of some 1991 “Employee Purchase Order” paperwork from Nintendo of America, which shows how workers were able to buy their…

Fans Create Newer Super Mario Bros. DS

Newer Super Mario Bros. DS is a fan-made project that basically gives you a whole new Mario game for the DS (only you actually play it on PC or Mac). Newer DS is not technically a standalone game; instead, it’s a patch for the original ROM that was made using the New Super Mario Bros.…

ROM Hacker Adds Color To Super Mario Land 2

Super Mario Land 2 is one of the more underrated games in Nintendo’s library, with a suite of interesting ideas and some truly weird levels. It was even the first Mario game to let you go to the moon. And now it’s in color. Thanks to ROM hacker toruzz, you can now play a sleek,…

Vs. Super Mario Bros. Is The Meanest Trick Nintendo Ever Played

Super Mario Bros. is available on the Switch! Well, a long-forgotten version of it, anyway, that’s probably not the one you were expecting. While Nintendo hasn’t yet begun to add its classic console games to Switch, we’re getting something else instead: Nintendo’s classic arcade games, courtesy the Arcade Archives series by the publisher Hamster. This…

The State Of The Nintendo Switch In 2017

For all the video game industry’s noisy hype about groundbreaking technology, it’s still rare that a device comes along and actually breaks new ground. In just nine months, the Nintendo Switch has done just that. The world of games feels different now than it did one year ago. In the summer of 2016, the Switch,…

Hey, Nintendo Didn’t Delay Any Games This Year

When Nintendo unveiled its lineup of launch-year games for Switch back in January, most people had the same thought: Which of these is gonna get delayed? I mean, delaying games is what Nintendo does. So who could have suspected it would actually release everything this year? Nintendo’s 2017 sounded typically ambitious. Although Switch’s launch day…

Is Toad wearing a hat? Or is that his head? Dorkly investigates

A Perfect Mario Odyssey Moment

One thing I love about Super Mario Odyssey is how often it anticipates me. Odyssey seeks to strike a balance between structured challenges and open-ended play. It achieves that balance with remarkable consistency. Each level is a toy-filled sandbox, loaded with springs, levers, and buttons for you to bounce, pull, and press. The game feels so…