Shigeru Miyamoto made a special appearance at the Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus launch event and announced that the first game called Super Mario Run will be released on iOS later this year. Miyamoto is the man behind Nintendo’s legendary and iconic game Super Mario. With Apple’s launch of iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus in September this year, it also had this exciting news to announce side-by-side.
Right on cue, Super Mario Run has finally hit the App Store for iPhones and iPads. The game is free to download, but for the complete game, you will have to shell out Rs 620 as per Indian currency.
A brief about the Super Mario Run game:
Super Mario Run brings the cute and stout plumber to your iOS devices and the best part is that you can play it with one hand. The game is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, But there is a condition that your device should be running on iOS 8.0 and above.
The game is basically about a continuous runner like Temple Run and Subway surf, wherein the character runs from left to right and during its course of the journey, collects coins, jumps over obstacles and squishes enemies.
The full game consists of three modes. The first is World Tour, second Toad Rally, and third Kingdom Builder.
World Tour: you should run and jump to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser’s clutches, and travel through plains, caverns, haunted houses, airships, castles and more. There are six worlds to clear which are filled with 24 courses. The second mode which is Toad
Toad Rally: In this level, the game is actually a challenge mode wherein the competition differs each time you play. As you compete against other players and gather coins, a crowd of Toads will cheer for you and if you’re impressive enough, the Toads may come alive in your kingdom.
Kingdom Builder: In this mode, you can even perform different moves to fill up your gauge and launch into Coin Rush. To play this mode, however, Rally Tickets are required which can be gained by clearing worlds or through bonus games in your kingdom. The third mode that is the Kingdom Builder lets you build your own kingdom by gathering coins and Toads. You can create your kingdom with buildings and place decorations as well with the help of Toads gathered in Toad Rally.
Did Pokémon GO’s success in India led to a worldwide launch of Super Mario?
The launch of Super Mario Run comes after the overly successful launch of Pokémon GO in India. Nintendo is also behind the game, but owns a minority stake in the Pokémon Company along with Niantic which holds the major part. Pokemon GO took the world by storm, with the fever proving to be one of 2016’s biggest trends online. Although the fever has died down quite a lot, the game still remains popular and it was released in India officially just yesterday.
BBC cites experts predict that Super Mario Run will also prove to be popular like Pokémon GO. Piers Harding-Rolls from HIS Technology consultancy opines, “Mario is one of the best-loved and established icons of gaming and I think this is going to be tremendously successful. To open up the full game you have to make an in-app purchase – it’s quite big but it is a one-off and I don’t think people will think Nintendo is trying to rinse their audience.” However, he added that staying online to play Super Mario Run is a “misstep” to which Shigeru Miyamoto said was done to limit piracy of the game.
As of now, Nintendo has released the game for iOS devices in 151 countries including India and it supports different languages like English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian and traditional Chinese. Nintendo did say that Super Mario Run will come to Android devices “at some point in the future” but did not specify any time frame.
