‘Super Mario Run,’ Or When Nintendo Met Apple

  Nintendo, family-friendly funsters that they are, don’t want their IPs getting involved in any scandals. Company mascots and such aren’t like Tinsel Town celebrities, able to sleep with guys and gals who aren’t their husbands/wives whenever they fancy. Mario can’t be found in a hedge one morning, high on all manner of narcotics with no undercrackers on. He can’t be caught speeding with a bloody chainsaw and two halves of a hooker in his trunk. Nintendo have a reputation to uphold.  

As such, they’ve always been super protective of their mascot. Sure, he’s made cameos in all kinds of games over the years, but that’s all been legal and above board, and required first-born children as collateral and/or a pact with Satan. Permission isn’t granted easily. As we saw with No Mario’s Sky earlier this week, the faintest waft of anything unofficial and their ravenous band of winged zombie lawyer-monkeys are dispatched ASAP.

You won’t find the moustachioed main man on any non-Nintendo consoles, that’s for damn sure. That was always the golden rule. Which makes Shigeru Miyamoto’s announcement at yesterday’s Apple event one hell of a surprise.

Smartphone Mario, Ego-gents. Super Mario Run is a thing. Doubtful as I’m sure you about the legit-itude of a mobile version, Mario’s creator assures us it’ll be the real thing:

"With Mario games, what's important is that they always be simple to understand, easy to know what to do," Miyamoto told GameSpot. "So this time we're really paying attention to that and making it one that you can play one-handed while still retaining the core essence of what makes a Mario game a Mario game… Of course, we've been making Mario games for a very long time now, so we're not just making a simple or easy Mario game. There are a lot of techniques in the game that you can use, and the better you get at mastering those techniques, the better you'll perform in the game."

So there it is. Well hot damn, one-handed Mario for iPhone and iPad. I never thought I’d see the day.