Mario 35th Anniversary Direct: Everything Announced For Switch And Beyond
Today was a big day for the Mario fans of the world because Nintendo announced a slew of new games for the Super Mario franchise's 35th anniversary. It did this with a surprise Direct dedicated entirely to the festivities, which revealed a number of new titles heading to the Switch. If you missed the Direct today, you've landed in the right place, as we're recapping all of the day's announcements.
We've already covered the two biggest announcements – Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit – separately. Super Mario 3D All-Stars includes enhanced Switch ports of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy and is launching later this month. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, on the other hand, brings Nintendo's popular arcade racer into the living room with toy karts that are equipped with AR cameras.
Those two may have been the biggest announcements of the day, but they were far from the only things Nintendo announced during its direct. The company will also revealed a new Game & Watch device that plays Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, and a Mario-themed version of Ball. The Game & Watch device features a proper D-pad and even doubles as a clock; look for it to land on November 13th for $49.99.
Shifting back to Switch news, we also learned that Nintendo plans to port Super Mario 3D World over from the Wii U. Given the number of other Wii U ports we've seen on the Switch, Super Mario 3D World was more or less a given at this point, and now we have that confirmation. When it arrives on February 12th, 2021, it'll include what appears to be a new expansion called Bowser's Fury, but we're left waiting for more details about that.
Next up we've got Super Mario Bros 35, which takes a page out of Tetris 99's book. In this game, you'll play through Super Mario Bros alongside 34 other players, and the enemies you defeat in your game will be sent to other players' courses. The last person still playing wins the round, so it's essentially Mario Battle Royale. This new game is launching on October 1st as an exclusive for Switch Online subscribers, and it'll only be playable until March 31st, 2021, making this a limited-time affair.
The original Super Mario All-Stars will also be making a return today as part of the catalog of SNES games available to Switch Online subscribers. Super Mario All-Stars includes remakes of the original Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros 2, and Super Mario Bros 3, and unlike Super Mario Bros 35 or Super Mario 3D All-Stars, it seems that this is a permanent edition to the SNES library for Switch Online users.
Finally, Nintendo announced a number of crossover events for its other games and services. For starters, it's rolled out new Super Mario-related missions on My Nintendo, and completing them with net you the opportunity to receive a Super Mario pin set. Mario Kart Tour, on the other hand, will kick off a new event that will see Mario and Donkey Kong Jr. from the original SNES Mario Kart join the mobile game's roster of characters. The event kicks off on September 8th at 11 PM PDT and goes until September 22nd at 11 PM PDT.
Nintendo will also sell special merchandise for Mario's 35th Anniversary at its store in New York and through its online store throughout November, while it will launch a new Ninji Speedruns course for Super Mario Maker 2 during the same month. We'll see a Mario-themed tournament and Splatfest for Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Splatoon 2, respectively, and the crossover events will wrap up in March 2021 with the addition of Super Mario-themed furniture of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
So, Nintendo has indeed queued up a lot of content for Super Mario's 35th anniversary. If you missed the Direct earlier today, you can catch the entire thing in the video embedded above, but otherwise, we'll have more for you on these upcoming games and crossovers when Nintendo announces it.