Played on Android

Super Mario Run was Nintendo’s first attempt to bring the Mario series to mobile devices. This was a tough challenge because platformers are generally hard to play on cell phones due to their limited controls. However, Nintendo got around this by giving us a different kind of Mario experience than we’re used to. I want to start this review by saying that Mario is my favorite series of all time, and so I’m coming into this as someone that’s played many other Mario games. I’ll be writing from that perspective, but I want to let any potential newcomers know that this is a very easy game to get the hang of, and it doesn’t require you to have played any other games in the series, so feel free to jump in with the rest of us.

There’s not really any story or premise to talk about here, so I’ll jump right into talking about the gameplay. Like I said, making a traditional Mario game on a such a limited control scheme may have been a difficult task, so Nintendo gets around this by making the game an auto-runner. Therefore, you’re not really controlling Mario’s basic movements, since he will perpetually keep running forward. Instead, all you have to do as the player is tap the screen whenever you want him to jump. This is definitely a Mario game boiled down to its simplest parts, but Nintendo was able to take this simplicity and build a game around it that’s still pretty fun to play.

For what it’s worth, I think that the game controls and plays really well. As a long-time Mario fan, it was really strange to adjust to the idea of Mario just continuing to run. I’m used to exploring the levels a bit, hitting all of the blocks I can and generally planning out my jumps and movements. So, it was a bit strange having Mario just continue to run, but once you get used to it, the game really works. On a conceptual level, this is a different take on the Mario series, and so I enjoyed seeing a game done in this style. The game never felt too difficult, but it also required some skill to be able to time your jumps right in order to accomplish your goal.

The game looks and sounds exactly how you would expect too. Graphically, the game translates beautifully onto phones. It looks just as good as a New Super Mario Bros. game would, but just on a smaller screen. The music is a bit less impressive, but it’s also far from being bad. It’s mainly just generic if you’ve played a Mario game before. There’s no amazing music to dazzle you here. Rather, the typical tracks for each type of level are preserved here. It works in the game’s favor, but it’s definitely nothing spectacular.

Now I’d just like to describe the main game modes here. The main game consists of a typical campaign kind of adventure, taking Mario through six different worlds, each containing four levels each. This is your typical kind of Mario game, where the goal is simply to get to the end of level without dying or letting the timer run out. This mode is really fun, and to me it’s the main reason to play the game. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s definitely the highlight of the game to me.

The second mode is called Remix 10, which is a bit different. This mode has you go through 10 levels in a row, each time being randomly generated, and trying to collect medals in each level. The goal is to get as many medals as you can, which are accumulated as another way to get more decorations for your kingdom (more on that in a second). This mode is fun in small doses, but it does get old after a while. It’s worth trying out, but I doubt that it’s going to be a mode you’re going to spend a lot of time with.

While not technically a mode, I did want to explain the kingdom aspect that I just mentioned. Basically, your “hub world” in this game is the outside of Peach’s castle. There are six different screens that you eventually get as part of your kingdom, and this kingdom is eventually upgraded more and more. You’ll unlock decorations for your kingdom as you progress through the game, and so the idea is to build the best kingdom you can. This is a nice little “building simulator” aspect of the game, and while it’s ultimately meaningless, it’s a nice little distraction from the norm. None of it really matters or affects the rest of the game, but it’s there if you want to make your kingdom look nice.

Finally, the other big mode here is Toad Rally. The idea here is that you race against the ghost of another player. Your goal is to collect coins, perform tricks, and be fast about it all in order to accumulate more toads. By the end of the 1-minute race, the player that has accumulated more toads wins the race. I hate to say it, but this mode seems to be where Nintendo wanted players to spend most of their time, and it’s the only real thing that gives the game substantial longevity after beating the main game. You have a cumulative toad count that you add to as you play Toad Rally. If you win a race, you add to that number. If you lose, some of your toads are taken away. The counter maxes out at 99999 toads, but considering you only get around 50 or so toads on most races, it would take a lot of time to get there. I liked Toad Rally for the novelty of it at first, but after a while it started to lose its appeal and just became a way to keep getting me to play the game.

All of this ultimately contributes to a huge variation on how much time this game is going to last you. If you’re just looking to play through the main game and be done with it, then you can easily beat the campaign in about an hour. If you’re a semi-completionist who just wants to 100% all of the levels in the main game, it would take a few more hours. Much like in the New Super Mario Bros. games, there are secret coins hidden in each level, and so this challenges you to do more than simply beat the level. However, if you’re a super-completionist who literally wants to do everything the game has to offer (such as maxing out your kingdom, unlocking every decoration, and maxing out your toad counter in Toad Rally), then you’re looking at sinking well over 100 hours into the game, most of which will be spent racing in Toad Rally. I have a completionist mentality when it comes to Mario games because I’m such a big fan, so I ended up doing this, but I don’t recommend this to most people, because I ended up resenting the game for making me feel like I had to spend so much time doing repetitive races in order to reach an arbitrary goal. The game stopped being fun for me after a while, and so unless you’re someone like me that feels some strange compulsion to 100% complete games, then this is the kind of game that I recommend just playing until you’re bored of it, which will vary depending on what kind of gamer you are.

Despite my hang-ups about Super Mario Run from a completionist perspective, I still think the main game is very well-done. It’s a short and simple campaign, similar to something like the Super Mario Land games for GameBoy, but it’s fun while it lasts. The game is only $10, with no other additional microtransactions on top of that, THANK GOD. This is much cheaper than most video games out there, and while it’s not a free-to-play game like most other mobile games, the trade-off here is that this actually feels like a real game, unlike many other mobile games out there. I think the campaign alone makes it worth the $10, since the other modes aren’t quite as impressive. This is probably one of my least favorite games of the main Super Mario series, but it was still nice to have something like this to play on my phone.

3.5/5