14 ms·

I played through the first couple of levels and was instantly hit by how much better the level design, gameplay and characters were than the usual mobile game.

by dcw303 10y ago

I played through the first couple of levels and was instantly hit by how much better the level design, gameplay and characters were than the usual mobile game. I happily plonked down my ten bucks. I cleared the game in a single lunch hour, but I'm not disappointed. The game design easily surpasses anything I've ever played on my phone, and there's a bucket of replayability. Pink/purple/black coins to get, speed runs on rally to try, etc. Giving the first 3 levels for free was a good move - the install is essentially a demo that is enough to let a customer decide if they want to front for the whole game. I didn't have a problem paying, but I've read a lot of whining on twitter and other places. Younger gamers have an expectation that everything on mobile should be free, but kudos to Nintendo on having the balls to stay away from cheap pay2win tricks and stick to an old school pricing model. I don't know if it's going to turn a profit, but I really hope so. This race to the bottom amongst mobile game devs is madness and has to stop.

ksjdj 10y ago
>Younger gamers have an expectation that everything on mobile should be free, but kudos to Nintendo on having the balls to stay away from cheap pay2win tricks and stick to an old school pricing model. nintendo is sticking to an old school pricing model by making a f2play game? damn im old, like older than 5 years old old
- etherealmachine 10y ago
  I guess you're not old enough to remember the original Quake, released with a shareware license where the first episode was free. Someone will probably come along and shake their fist at me, but if Quake isn't old-school, I don't know what is.
  - swivelmaster 10y ago
    I'll shake my fist :D Id software pioneered the shareware model in 1990 with Commander Keen, six years before they used it in Quake. In fact, Keen, Keen 4, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom all used a three-episode shareware structure where the first episode was free and the rest were considered the "full version." Doom 2 did not use this structure because Doom itself was a good enough advertisement for it. id then used it again in Quake, but fully broke from it with Quake 2, which just had a demo with a few levels.
    - flukus 10y ago
      This is the oldest I can think of, 1989 - Hugos House of Horrors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo's_House_of_Horrors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo's_House_of_Horrors
    - fsloth 10y ago
      ID most certainly did not pioneer the shareware model. Shareware as a model is nearly as old as the personal computer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware
      - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        Technically correct, but the specific Apogee model of shareware (one free episode, two or more commercial episodes) was much more successful than the original model of distributing everything for free and politely asking people to pay for it; it was pioneered by Id's publisher Apogee.
        fsloth 10y ago
        Ah, good point. I stand semi-corrected :)
    - j2kun 10y ago
      Commander Keen games were a staple of my early video game experience.
      - godzillabrennus 10y ago
        No reason to stop now: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/ They are available through steam.
        wapz 10y ago
        Wow! I have to go back and play through these games. I really do wonder how hard the games will feel now that I'm a grown adult..
  - fsloth 10y ago
    Quake is referred to as 'old' now? But it came out only - oh darn, two decades ago. Man there are young adults there for whom real time 3D graphics on the PC have existed through their whole life. Ok, I feel older now :)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fb03 10y ago
    Whenever and wherever someone mentions Quake 1, there will be fists being shaken and bumped! frantic, fluid gameplay, even on lousy hardware (heck, I started quaking on a 486 dx2 66 and it ran quite okay at 320x240), insane difficulty, clever map design and lots of secrets to be found... seriously, that game was soo frigging amazing. Don't even get me started on multiplayer... although we old folks have played our share of deathmatches on Doom/Doom2 (Dwango, anyone?) or Duke Nukem 3D, it was really Quake 1 (together with the booming Internet) that started this whole frenzy. And oh boy, then QuakeWorld came and made it really playable at 300ms+ pings (28800 bauds dial-up!), then we got mods like Team Fortress, and from there it escalated. o/ fistbump and thank you for the trip down the memory lane.
    - matwood 10y ago
      Can I just say hell yeah! Original Quake was awesome, then Quake World made dial up tolerable when playing online. Quake was also one of the very early high rez OpenGl games. I remember getting my first 3dfx Voodoo card and realizing at that moment that it was a turning point in gaming.
      - fb03 10y ago
        Dude, I got my 3dfx Monster 3D card, which could do glorious bilinear filtered 640x480@16bpp Quake 1, using a wrapper called Glide, remember that? The funniest thing about that card was that it only could do 3D graphics, so you still needed a 2D video card for normal video output. Monster 3D came with a short vga-vga cable which you used to connect your 2D card's video output to the Monster 3D, and then its own video output to your actual monitor. When you ran something using 3D, it simply took over your monitor and shut down the previous card's signal eheheh Good times!
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  It's not free-to-play. It's a $10 game with a free demo. Pay attention.
  - croon 10y ago
    I have an Android phone, so I'll have to wait, but I'll likely buy it regardless if it's good, just to vote with my wallet on the payment model. I despise anything that's not pay-for-cosmetics or buy-the-damn-game-once. I can pay for my entertainment, but I'm not playing a game that's designed around microtransactions, eschewing the game mechanics.
    - Fnoord 10y ago
      You despise Pay 2 Win (P2W) and prefer Buy 2 Play (B2P)
    - Insanity 10y ago
      Same here. I would rather just spend money on the game one time rather than being prompted for microtransactions. Just paying for cosmetics is something acceptable for me. In CS:GO, you can pay for the skins but you don't have to. Yet, I'd still prefer the CS:Source model where you just pay the game once and then download any cosmetics you want for free. But well, that model won't come back any time soon.. :-)
      - croon 10y ago
        Yeah, I remember fondly the custom servers, surfmaps, gungame (no, it's not a Call Of Duty-thing) mod, etc, etc. I miss those days, but I'm not sure I'd want to go back from other advancements we've made. Everything is much easier to get working and get into now. But the microtransactions for gameplay impacts is not an advancement I want. We can only hope the gaming market keeps growing enough that indie developers can fill the shoes of AAA-games of yesteryear where we can have large enough playerbase and mod community and self-hosted servers.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  So you aren't old enough to remember demo disks?
aaron-lebo 10y ago
What's the appeal? You say you spent $10 on a game that you beat in an hour. I get that there's replayability but there's only so much in a game like that. If I really wanted to play Mario I could go home and play it on dozens of different devices on a nice TV while resting comfortably instead of on a limited form factor in public where there's dozens of other things to do. Much respect to Nintendo for making a good game, but it seems like a game that just exists because it can. No depth. What value do we get as consumers if we encourage the game industry to move further in this direction?
- eridius 10y ago
  No depth? Most games played on smartphones are designed for playing in short increments, many of them for playing with a single hand. That's what Super Mario Run is. It's designed so you can play in just a couple of minutes, and you can play with one hand while commuting, or like I did today, play with one hand while eating lunch. As for clearing it in an hour, clearing each of the levels once isn't a challenge, nor is it the point of the game. If you want to complete the whole thing you must play each of the levels 4 times, and that's assuming you play perfectly each time (and you won't). And that's just for Tour mode. For Toad Rally mode you're competing against other people (not live, but against their time trial ghosts) and doing tricks to try and impress toads, where winning gives you a bunch of coins and a bunch of toads. And then you use those toads in the kingdom builder mode to unlock new items to put in your kingdom and to upgrade your castle, etc. So yeah, you can play through all of the levels once pretty quickly if you want. But that's not really experiencing the game.
  - minikomi 10y ago
    Rally is really fun! Changed my outlook on the game entirely.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    > No depth? Most games played on smartphones are designed for playing in short increments, many of them for playing with a single hand. Short play sessions have nothing to do with depth or lack of it.
drewrv 10y ago
Check out the mobile Rayman game if you liked this one. Same concept, same level of polish. I haven't played all of Mario yet but Rayman has a surprising amount of depth in the later levels, as they slowly add concepts and mechanics while keeping the controls simple.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Rayman Jungle Run was startlingly excellent for a mobile game. I actually 100%ed it, collecting all 3000+ Lums, which I hardly ever do even with PC/console games.
  - wapz 10y ago
    So I saw Rayman Jungle Run on sale awhile back but it has "In app purchases." I bought one or two paid apps with in app purchases and never again. You can nickel and dime me if you're a free app but not if I spend money on it. How is Rayman?
    - mhaymo 10y ago
      IIRC Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Fiesta Run are not at all annoying about in-app purchases. I paid once for the game and that's it, I don't even remember what was available to buy, cosmetic stuff probably. They're great fun and I highly recommend them. The latest iteration, Rayman Adventures, is free-to-play and so suffers from the usual mobile free-to-play tropes. It also suffered performance issues on my (good) phone.
      - Aldo_MX 10y ago
        Rayman Fiesta Run (Google Play Store) got obnoxiously annoying to the point they included forced video ads of Rayman Adventures. Rayman Fiesta Run (Amazon App Store) has some UI issues (like buttons reacting at press rather than at release potentially purchasing pay2win stuff unintendedly), but at least it doesn't have the forced ads. When I purchased the game at launch date, it didn't have the pay2win stuff, and it was really enjoyable, but eventually the updates degraded the game experience. If I ever purchase a mobile game again I'll certainly backup and cherry pick the update which gets the best balance between less bugs and less mis-improvements.
yaegers 10y ago
I don't think the whole point of the game could have been to "clear" the levels. I mean, Mario auto runs and auto hops enemies. Save from having to manually jump pits its not really that hard to get to the end of a level. I think the whole point is to get a coin highscore and/or collect the purple coins in every level.
- dcw303 10y ago
  I may not have expressed it well, but I agree with you 100% - clearing the levels for the first time is only one part of the fun.
- scrabble 10y ago
  The point is definitely collecting the special coins. The pink coins seem to get harder to obtain as the game goes on. The purple coins afterwards are even harder, and the onyx coins are really challenging. The levels also have different obstacle and coin layouts depending on the special coins you are going for.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I'm surprised by how much your experience differs from mine. For me this is like every other auto running side scrollers with a Nintendo skin and nothing more. It's the same mechanics as almost everything else with a lower amount of difficulty with the auto running and jumping (I mean he even automatically jumps over enemies!!). It seems so...tangential to what Mario games are and so much like every other side scrolling running game out there. I also find hitting the exact buttons incredibly frustrating. They claim one handed play but on a 9.7" iPad when you have to hit a button in a specific place on the screen it's not one handed play. At least not for my hands and I thought they were decent size.
- dcw303 10y ago
  > It's the same mechanics as almost everything else with a lower amount of difficulty with the auto running and jumping We'll have to agree to disagree, but this is essence of Nintendo's acclaimed level design. Yes, the basic run through is easy, which makes it accessible to anyone. But I'll be damned if getting all the black coins isn't excruciatingly tough. The beauty is that the same game can be played on many levels.
  - zyb09 10y ago
    Just collected the black coins in 1-1, and some in 1-2. The black coins seem to be what this game really is about, and damn does it a good job with it. Actually amazed at what it does with just a 1-button input method. Sad to see so many people critize the $10 price tag. Obviously that was expected, but as an iOS dev myself, it always saddens me too see the rejection of people to basically pay for anything on the AppStore.
    - Fnoord 10y ago
      10 USD for 1 hour of play is a lot of money in general. That's not akin to: > "it always saddens me too see the rejection of people to basically pay for anything on the AppStore." Because the point is that the value one gets out of it, is too little for the amount of time it is fun. That is, of course, assuming there's no replay value. There is replay value however I, for one, prefer a difficult game, and prefer one difficulty only. I know, game designers want to make everyone feel 'awesome' these days. All kind of ladders, including for single player! I don't like that. Give an immersive first time experience where the player has to overcome difficult hurdles. Getting stuck? Tough cookie, practice and get better, and you'll feel awesome once you progress further. Compare WoW TBC with how WoW has every difficulty for raiding these days. By the time you get to the highest difficulty it isn't epic anymore. On a different note, 10 USD is a lot of money for poor people. Then again, those people are unlikely to have an expensive iOS device.
jonathansizz 10y ago
I absolutely agree with you about paying actual money for a full game. The problem with this though is I've been burned a few times buying a game, only to have it become free with in-app purchases later on: functionality that was previously included is removed and players must now periodically pay to get it back (usually in the form of some kind of temporary 'power boost' pack). I guess the developers reasoning is they can get as many suckers as possible to pay for the full game after initial launch, then after a couple of months they squeeze more money out of it by changing to a pay-to-win format which hugely increases their user base. It's a disgraceful approach and I certainly won't deal ever again with any devs who do this. Unfortunately, such devs don't really get much shaming so they probably get away with it.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  Music companies were/are notorious for doing something similar. I can't tell how many CD's I bought in the early aught's right when a band I loved came out with a new album - only to see it in Target a few months later with several "previously unreleased" tracks on it as a bonus. It drove me crazy since it happened so frequently.
  - pricechild 10y ago
    That's different, the re-release has new content which wasn't in the original that you bought? And the original continues to work? Instead imagine that half the disc you originally bought turned out to be self-destructing ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3064327.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3064327.stm ) but you can buy a re-release without the issue for a discount if you trade in the old disc.
  - joslin01 10y ago
    Ya you're right, this is cross-industry. Lord of the Rings did the same thing with its franchise. They released all the "Theater Version"s first knowing the hardcore fans wouldn't be able to wait the many months after for the extended edition. It's an annoying tactic to say the least.
- 10y ago
JabavuAdams 10y ago
Have you tried Mega Run? /shameless plug.
Arjuna 10y ago
"I don't know if it's going to turn a profit, but I really hope so." Speaking of profit, what I find almost as fascinating as the game itself is the process and culture shift that occurred at Nintendo in order to make it a reality. For example, Satoru Iwata had previously said: "What I believe is that Nintendo is a very unique company, because it does its business by designing and introducing people to hardware and software - by integrating them, we can be unique. And because we have hardware and software developers in the same building, they stimulate each other." [1] Also... "If I was to take responsibility for the company for just the next one or two years, and if I was not concerned about the long-term future of Nintendo at all, it might make sense for us to provide our important franchises for other platforms, and then we might be able to gain some short-term profit. However, I'm really responsible for the long-term future of Nintendo as well, so I would never think about providing our precious resources for other platforms at all." [2] Iwata died in 2015, and was succeeded by Tatsumi Kimishima, who has stated: "We want to grow smart device gaming as one of the pillars of Nintendo's revenue stream." [3] [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/08/09/nintemdo http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/08/09/nintemdo [2] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/08/10/nintendo-pres-on-mario http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/08/10/nintendo-pres-on-mar... [3] http://zeldauniverse.net/2016/05/09/kimishima-says-nintendo-are-serious-about-mobile-gaming http://zeldauniverse.net/2016/05/09/kimishima-says-nintendo-...
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  Very interesting. Kind of how Apple was all about skeumorphism and went flat a week after Steve Jobs died.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- gohrt 10y ago
  Iwata was right until video game hardware became deeply commodified. "AI" toys are getting big (as annoying as that is), that's where Iwata's vision has potential.
hellbanner 10y ago
As a long time mario player, I was unimpressed. Nintendo clearly doesn't have experience building F2P vortexes and it shows with the surprising introduction of "hey, your castle leveled up!" EDIT - I didn't realize that the first 3 levels were only what's available. I didn't make it past the 3rd level. -- this game has dozens of context switches in the first 10 minutes, not even counting the uninteractable tutorial (Even other endless runner games let you run and figure out how to jump by tapping without 4 text boxes). I will agree that the levels are better designed than the average mobile game. Maybe my tastes are just changing? I feel that Nintendo has historically innovated in gameplay with their Mario games but I just wasn't sucked in this time. EDIT context switches in the beginning about "connecting a Nintendo account" and later, for push notifications - "Push Notifications are important" > User presses OK > Allow Super Mario Run to send you Push Notifications? What is a Nintendo account & why would I care? What on earth would a push notification for a Mario game tell me? It doesn't feel polished to me.

by dcw303 10y ago

ksjdj 10y ago

>Younger gamers have an expectation that everything on mobile should be free, but kudos to Nintendo on having the balls to stay away from cheap pay2win tricks and stick to an old school pricing model. nintendo is sticking to an old school pricing model by making a f2play game? damn im old, like older than 5 years old old

etherealmachine 10y ago
I guess you're not old enough to remember the original Quake, released with a shareware license where the first episode was free. Someone will probably come along and shake their fist at me, but if Quake isn't old-school, I don't know what is.
- swivelmaster 10y ago
  I'll shake my fist :D Id software pioneered the shareware model in 1990 with Commander Keen, six years before they used it in Quake. In fact, Keen, Keen 4, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom all used a three-episode shareware structure where the first episode was free and the rest were considered the "full version." Doom 2 did not use this structure because Doom itself was a good enough advertisement for it. id then used it again in Quake, but fully broke from it with Quake 2, which just had a demo with a few levels.
  - flukus 10y ago
    This is the oldest I can think of, 1989 - Hugos House of Horrors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo's_House_of_Horrors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo's_House_of_Horrors
  - fsloth 10y ago
    ID most certainly did not pioneer the shareware model. Shareware as a model is nearly as old as the personal computer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware
    - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      Technically correct, but the specific Apogee model of shareware (one free episode, two or more commercial episodes) was much more successful than the original model of distributing everything for free and politely asking people to pay for it; it was pioneered by Id's publisher Apogee.
      - fsloth 10y ago
        Ah, good point. I stand semi-corrected :)
  - j2kun 10y ago
    Commander Keen games were a staple of my early video game experience.
    - godzillabrennus 10y ago
      No reason to stop now: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/9180/ They are available through steam.
      - wapz 10y ago
        Wow! I have to go back and play through these games. I really do wonder how hard the games will feel now that I'm a grown adult..
- fsloth 10y ago
  Quake is referred to as 'old' now? But it came out only - oh darn, two decades ago. Man there are young adults there for whom real time 3D graphics on the PC have existed through their whole life. Ok, I feel older now :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- fb03 10y ago
  Whenever and wherever someone mentions Quake 1, there will be fists being shaken and bumped! frantic, fluid gameplay, even on lousy hardware (heck, I started quaking on a 486 dx2 66 and it ran quite okay at 320x240), insane difficulty, clever map design and lots of secrets to be found... seriously, that game was soo frigging amazing. Don't even get me started on multiplayer... although we old folks have played our share of deathmatches on Doom/Doom2 (Dwango, anyone?) or Duke Nukem 3D, it was really Quake 1 (together with the booming Internet) that started this whole frenzy. And oh boy, then QuakeWorld came and made it really playable at 300ms+ pings (28800 bauds dial-up!), then we got mods like Team Fortress, and from there it escalated. o/ fistbump and thank you for the trip down the memory lane.
  - matwood 10y ago
    Can I just say hell yeah! Original Quake was awesome, then Quake World made dial up tolerable when playing online. Quake was also one of the very early high rez OpenGl games. I remember getting my first 3dfx Voodoo card and realizing at that moment that it was a turning point in gaming.
    - fb03 10y ago
      Dude, I got my 3dfx Monster 3D card, which could do glorious bilinear filtered 640x480@16bpp Quake 1, using a wrapper called Glide, remember that? The funniest thing about that card was that it only could do 3D graphics, so you still needed a 2D video card for normal video output. Monster 3D came with a short vga-vga cable which you used to connect your 2D card's video output to the Monster 3D, and then its own video output to your actual monitor. When you ran something using 3D, it simply took over your monitor and shut down the previous card's signal eheheh Good times!
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
It's not free-to-play. It's a $10 game with a free demo. Pay attention.
- croon 10y ago
  I have an Android phone, so I'll have to wait, but I'll likely buy it regardless if it's good, just to vote with my wallet on the payment model. I despise anything that's not pay-for-cosmetics or buy-the-damn-game-once. I can pay for my entertainment, but I'm not playing a game that's designed around microtransactions, eschewing the game mechanics.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    You despise Pay 2 Win (P2W) and prefer Buy 2 Play (B2P)
  - Insanity 10y ago
    Same here. I would rather just spend money on the game one time rather than being prompted for microtransactions. Just paying for cosmetics is something acceptable for me. In CS:GO, you can pay for the skins but you don't have to. Yet, I'd still prefer the CS:Source model where you just pay the game once and then download any cosmetics you want for free. But well, that model won't come back any time soon.. :-)
    - croon 10y ago
      Yeah, I remember fondly the custom servers, surfmaps, gungame (no, it's not a Call Of Duty-thing) mod, etc, etc. I miss those days, but I'm not sure I'd want to go back from other advancements we've made. Everything is much easier to get working and get into now. But the microtransactions for gameplay impacts is not an advancement I want. We can only hope the gaming market keeps growing enough that indie developers can fill the shoes of AAA-games of yesteryear where we can have large enough playerbase and mod community and self-hosted servers.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
nommm-nommm 10y ago
So you aren't old enough to remember demo disks?

aaron-lebo 10y ago

What's the appeal? You say you spent $10 on a game that you beat in an hour. I get that there's replayability but there's only so much in a game like that. If I really wanted to play Mario I could go home and play it on dozens of different devices on a nice TV while resting comfortably instead of on a limited form factor in public where there's dozens of other things to do. Much respect to Nintendo for making a good game, but it seems like a game that just exists because it can. No depth. What value do we get as consumers if we encourage the game industry to move further in this direction?

eridius 10y ago
No depth? Most games played on smartphones are designed for playing in short increments, many of them for playing with a single hand. That's what Super Mario Run is. It's designed so you can play in just a couple of minutes, and you can play with one hand while commuting, or like I did today, play with one hand while eating lunch. As for clearing it in an hour, clearing each of the levels once isn't a challenge, nor is it the point of the game. If you want to complete the whole thing you must play each of the levels 4 times, and that's assuming you play perfectly each time (and you won't). And that's just for Tour mode. For Toad Rally mode you're competing against other people (not live, but against their time trial ghosts) and doing tricks to try and impress toads, where winning gives you a bunch of coins and a bunch of toads. And then you use those toads in the kingdom builder mode to unlock new items to put in your kingdom and to upgrade your castle, etc. So yeah, you can play through all of the levels once pretty quickly if you want. But that's not really experiencing the game.
- minikomi 10y ago
  Rally is really fun! Changed my outlook on the game entirely.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  > No depth? Most games played on smartphones are designed for playing in short increments, many of them for playing with a single hand. Short play sessions have nothing to do with depth or lack of it.

drewrv 10y ago

Check out the mobile Rayman game if you liked this one. Same concept, same level of polish. I haven't played all of Mario yet but Rayman has a surprising amount of depth in the later levels, as they slowly add concepts and mechanics while keeping the controls simple.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
Rayman Jungle Run was startlingly excellent for a mobile game. I actually 100%ed it, collecting all 3000+ Lums, which I hardly ever do even with PC/console games.
- wapz 10y ago
  So I saw Rayman Jungle Run on sale awhile back but it has "In app purchases." I bought one or two paid apps with in app purchases and never again. You can nickel and dime me if you're a free app but not if I spend money on it. How is Rayman?
  - mhaymo 10y ago
    IIRC Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Fiesta Run are not at all annoying about in-app purchases. I paid once for the game and that's it, I don't even remember what was available to buy, cosmetic stuff probably. They're great fun and I highly recommend them. The latest iteration, Rayman Adventures, is free-to-play and so suffers from the usual mobile free-to-play tropes. It also suffered performance issues on my (good) phone.
    - Aldo_MX 10y ago
      Rayman Fiesta Run (Google Play Store) got obnoxiously annoying to the point they included forced video ads of Rayman Adventures. Rayman Fiesta Run (Amazon App Store) has some UI issues (like buttons reacting at press rather than at release potentially purchasing pay2win stuff unintendedly), but at least it doesn't have the forced ads. When I purchased the game at launch date, it didn't have the pay2win stuff, and it was really enjoyable, but eventually the updates degraded the game experience. If I ever purchase a mobile game again I'll certainly backup and cherry pick the update which gets the best balance between less bugs and less mis-improvements.

yaegers 10y ago

I don't think the whole point of the game could have been to "clear" the levels. I mean, Mario auto runs and auto hops enemies. Save from having to manually jump pits its not really that hard to get to the end of a level. I think the whole point is to get a coin highscore and/or collect the purple coins in every level.

dcw303 10y ago
I may not have expressed it well, but I agree with you 100% - clearing the levels for the first time is only one part of the fun.
scrabble 10y ago
The point is definitely collecting the special coins. The pink coins seem to get harder to obtain as the game goes on. The purple coins afterwards are even harder, and the onyx coins are really challenging. The levels also have different obstacle and coin layouts depending on the special coins you are going for.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

I'm surprised by how much your experience differs from mine. For me this is like every other auto running side scrollers with a Nintendo skin and nothing more. It's the same mechanics as almost everything else with a lower amount of difficulty with the auto running and jumping (I mean he even automatically jumps over enemies!!). It seems so...tangential to what Mario games are and so much like every other side scrolling running game out there. I also find hitting the exact buttons incredibly frustrating. They claim one handed play but on a 9.7" iPad when you have to hit a button in a specific place on the screen it's not one handed play. At least not for my hands and I thought they were decent size.

dcw303 10y ago
> It's the same mechanics as almost everything else with a lower amount of difficulty with the auto running and jumping We'll have to agree to disagree, but this is essence of Nintendo's acclaimed level design. Yes, the basic run through is easy, which makes it accessible to anyone. But I'll be damned if getting all the black coins isn't excruciatingly tough. The beauty is that the same game can be played on many levels.
- zyb09 10y ago
  Just collected the black coins in 1-1, and some in 1-2. The black coins seem to be what this game really is about, and damn does it a good job with it. Actually amazed at what it does with just a 1-button input method. Sad to see so many people critize the $10 price tag. Obviously that was expected, but as an iOS dev myself, it always saddens me too see the rejection of people to basically pay for anything on the AppStore.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    10 USD for 1 hour of play is a lot of money in general. That's not akin to: > "it always saddens me too see the rejection of people to basically pay for anything on the AppStore." Because the point is that the value one gets out of it, is too little for the amount of time it is fun. That is, of course, assuming there's no replay value. There is replay value however I, for one, prefer a difficult game, and prefer one difficulty only. I know, game designers want to make everyone feel 'awesome' these days. All kind of ladders, including for single player! I don't like that. Give an immersive first time experience where the player has to overcome difficult hurdles. Getting stuck? Tough cookie, practice and get better, and you'll feel awesome once you progress further. Compare WoW TBC with how WoW has every difficulty for raiding these days. By the time you get to the highest difficulty it isn't epic anymore. On a different note, 10 USD is a lot of money for poor people. Then again, those people are unlikely to have an expensive iOS device.

jonathansizz 10y ago

I absolutely agree with you about paying actual money for a full game. The problem with this though is I've been burned a few times buying a game, only to have it become free with in-app purchases later on: functionality that was previously included is removed and players must now periodically pay to get it back (usually in the form of some kind of temporary 'power boost' pack). I guess the developers reasoning is they can get as many suckers as possible to pay for the full game after initial launch, then after a couple of months they squeeze more money out of it by changing to a pay-to-win format which hugely increases their user base. It's a disgraceful approach and I certainly won't deal ever again with any devs who do this. Unfortunately, such devs don't really get much shaming so they probably get away with it.

at-fates-hands 10y ago
Music companies were/are notorious for doing something similar. I can't tell how many CD's I bought in the early aught's right when a band I loved came out with a new album - only to see it in Target a few months later with several "previously unreleased" tracks on it as a bonus. It drove me crazy since it happened so frequently.
- pricechild 10y ago
  That's different, the re-release has new content which wasn't in the original that you bought? And the original continues to work? Instead imagine that half the disc you originally bought turned out to be self-destructing ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3064327.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3064327.stm ) but you can buy a re-release without the issue for a discount if you trade in the old disc.
- joslin01 10y ago
  Ya you're right, this is cross-industry. Lord of the Rings did the same thing with its franchise. They released all the "Theater Version"s first knowing the hardcore fans wouldn't be able to wait the many months after for the extended edition. It's an annoying tactic to say the least.
10y ago

JabavuAdams 10y ago

Have you tried Mega Run? /shameless plug.

Arjuna 10y ago

"I don't know if it's going to turn a profit, but I really hope so." Speaking of profit, what I find almost as fascinating as the game itself is the process and culture shift that occurred at Nintendo in order to make it a reality. For example, Satoru Iwata had previously said: "What I believe is that Nintendo is a very unique company, because it does its business by designing and introducing people to hardware and software - by integrating them, we can be unique. And because we have hardware and software developers in the same building, they stimulate each other." [1] Also... "If I was to take responsibility for the company for just the next one or two years, and if I was not concerned about the long-term future of Nintendo at all, it might make sense for us to provide our important franchises for other platforms, and then we might be able to gain some short-term profit. However, I'm really responsible for the long-term future of Nintendo as well, so I would never think about providing our precious resources for other platforms at all." [2] Iwata died in 2015, and was succeeded by Tatsumi Kimishima, who has stated: "We want to grow smart device gaming as one of the pillars of Nintendo's revenue stream." [3] [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/08/09/nintemdo http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/08/09/nintemdo [2] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/08/10/nintendo-pres-on-mario http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/08/10/nintendo-pres-on-mar... [3] http://zeldauniverse.net/2016/05/09/kimishima-says-nintendo-are-serious-about-mobile-gaming http://zeldauniverse.net/2016/05/09/kimishima-says-nintendo-...

nkkollaw 10y ago
Very interesting. Kind of how Apple was all about skeumorphism and went flat a week after Steve Jobs died.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gohrt 10y ago
Iwata was right until video game hardware became deeply commodified. "AI" toys are getting big (as annoying as that is), that's where Iwata's vision has potential.

hellbanner 10y ago

As a long time mario player, I was unimpressed. Nintendo clearly doesn't have experience building F2P vortexes and it shows with the surprising introduction of "hey, your castle leveled up!" EDIT - I didn't realize that the first 3 levels were only what's available. I didn't make it past the 3rd level. -- this game has dozens of context switches in the first 10 minutes, not even counting the uninteractable tutorial (Even other endless runner games let you run and figure out how to jump by tapping without 4 text boxes). I will agree that the levels are better designed than the average mobile game. Maybe my tastes are just changing? I feel that Nintendo has historically innovated in gameplay with their Mario games but I just wasn't sucked in this time. EDIT context switches in the beginning about "connecting a Nintendo account" and later, for push notifications - "Push Notifications are important" > User presses OK > Allow Super Mario Run to send you Push Notifications? What is a Nintendo account & why would I care? What on earth would a push notification for a Mario game tell me? It doesn't feel polished to me.