Super Mario Run
is a 2016 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for iOS and later Android. It is Nintendo's first mobile game that is part of one of the company's long-running and major franchises.
In Super Mario Run, the player controls Mario or other characters as they automatically run across the screen while timing jumps to collect coins and dodge enemies and hazards. As a Super Mario game, it contains a common plot wherein Mario must rescue Princess Peach, who has just been captured by Bowser. However, the player must also rebuild the Mushroom Kingdom destroyed by Bowser. The game had involvement of series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and its development team consisted mostly of the original Super Mario development team, featuring many similar gameplay concepts adapted for ease of mobile controllers. The first four levels of Super Mario Run are free to play, but unlocking the rest of the game requires a one-time payment.
Super Mario Run received overall positive reviews by critics. Reviewers generally praised the game's replay value and addictive gameplay, though common criticism was directed towards its comparatively high price in the mobile market, as well as its required connectivity to the internet. With 50 million downloads, it became the most downloaded mobile game in the first week. The total figure of downloads was 300 million as of 2018.
Gameplay
Super Mario Run plays as a side-scrolling, auto-runner platform game. The plot begins with Mario accepting Princess Peach's invitation to her castle, only to witness Bowser kidnapping the Princess and destroying the Mushroom Kingdom, tasking Mario to undo his actions. Mario automatically runs from left to right and jumps on his own to clear small gaps or obstacles. The player can control Mario by tapping the touch screen to make him jump over larger obstacles; the longer the screen is touched, the higher he jumps. Like other Super Mario games, the player must maneuver Mario over gaps, onto enemies, and into coins to collect them. The player's end goal is to steer Mario safely across the level and reach the flagpole before time is exhausted and accumulate as many coins as possible. In addition to controlling when and how high he jumps, a hidden ability exists where the player swipes and holds the screen in the direction opposite of Mario, stalling his jumps during his descent and moving him slightly in that direction. Standing on pause blocks pauses the timer and Mario's running, and standing on blocks marked with directional arrows changes the direction of his jump. Bubbles are collectible items used to send him backward, letting the player repeat sections of the level. If a bubble is available, it is automatically used to rescue Mario from impending death. Otherwise, the player can only restart the level. Replayability comes from collecting all the normal coins and finding special coins in each level. First, the player must find five pink coins. Collecting those unlocks five purple coins and collecting those unlocks five black coins, so it takes at least three playthroughs to collect everything in a given level.In addition to the main game, there is the "Toad Rally" game mode where players can challenge "ghost" versions of other players' prerecorded playthroughs of levels. Access to Toad Rally requires the player to use a Rally Ticket, which can be earned either through completing levels in the main game mode, trading My Nintendo coins, or other in-game tasks. Playing either game mode earns the player coins that can be used to buy items for creating and customizing their own "Mushroom Kingdom" in a third gameplay mode comparable to FarmVille. The player can gain or lose Toads that populate their Mushroom Kingdom in Toad Rallies. The player can unlock other characters to play as through these game modes, such as Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Toadette, and Yoshi. These characters have slightly different gameplay attributes; using the different characters is not required to complete any level, but they give players the tools for completing levels with different approaches.
Since launch, Nintendo has released updates introducing features and other changes. For example, a "Friendly Run" version of Toad Rally does not require any Rally Tickets, but can only be played up to five times per day, and will not earn the player coins for winning. An easy difficulty mode assists players having difficulty in beating levels in World Tour by granting them unlimited bubbles and removing the time limit. However, coins collected will not count while playing in that mode. Another update raised the maximum cap number of Toads from 9,999 to 99,999, and added support for Game Center and Google Play Games achievements. A later update added nine new levels, courses, Princess Daisy as a playable character, and buildings, all of which can be unlocked by completing various goals and challenges. The levels are themed as "a forest, a ship packed with coins, and a whole airship armada", and a new game mode, titled "Remix 10", has players run through ten very short levels in a random order, with each level only taking "a few seconds to complete."
Development
The game was developed jointly by Nintendo and DeNA. Takashi Tezuka served as the game's designer and Shigeru Miyamoto as the producer and director. This was the first game that Miyamoto had been closely involved in its development since 2007's Super Mario Galaxy. The development team consisted mostly of the original Super Mario development team. Super Mario Run shares a similar 2.5D graphic style with New Super Mario Bros. The game's three gameplay modes were developed in parallel by separate groups within the development team. The game was built using the Unity engine. Shortly before release, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aimé said the game would not be coming to the Nintendo Switch, due to different development architecture.Nintendo had been hesitant about developing titles for the mobile gaming market since its onset in the early 2010s, as the company was highly protective of its franchise characters and desired to have them only featured in games for their hardware. At that time, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata felt that by developing mobile titles, they would "cease to be Nintendo" and lose their identity. By 2014, the company recognized that the growth of the mobile market was impacting their financial performances, with sales of its hardware and software declining greatly and posting a $240 million loss for the financial year. By the next year, Iwata's views had shifted significantly, and he led Nintendo into a partnership with mobile developer DeNA to start bringing Nintendo's brands to mobile, including five planned Nintendo titles. The first of these was Miitomo, based on the Mii avatars used in Nintendo's console software. Separately, Nintendo collaborated with Niantic and The Pokémon Company to release Pokémon Go.
The concept of the game arose from ideas for new Mario games on the Wii, including one where the player would need to control Mario in time to the rhythm of the music. This concept was fleshed out further as part of New Super Mario Bros., but led to the idea of a simply-controlled game. Nintendo was also inspired by speedrunners, and had noticed that these players, in racing through the various Mario games, never let go of the forward direction control, effectively making Mario run all the time, and considered how to allow all players to have that experience. Similarly, they observed speedrunners were adept at performing certain types of difficult timed jumps that enabled quick completion times; Nintendo included special blocks that players would encounter in Super Mario Run to easily complete similar jumps, so that they could "give even beginner players an opportunity to get a taste for what's fun about the more skilled style of Mario play", according to Miyamoto. The game was developed to be played with the mobile device in a vertical orientation. This gave the developers more gameplay ideas to stretch the vertical space of the game, as well as to emphasize the simplicity of the game's controls.
Super Mario Run is the second mobile game under the DeNA partnership, and Nintendo's first mobile game to use one of their established intellectual properties. Miyamoto explained that some of their game franchises became increasingly more complex with every installment, making it difficult to attract new players, and that the company believed they could use mobile games with simplified controls not only to target the broadest audience of people, but also to draw them to their consoles by reintroducing these properties. While it would be possible for them to port their existing titles to mobile device with the creation of virtual controllers on the touchscreen, Miyamoto felt that would not be as "interesting", instead they were "more interested in looking at how we can be creative with Mario, and design for iPhones in a way that takes advantage of the uniqueness of that device and the uniqueness of that input and the features that that device has".
Release and updates
The game was announced by Miyamoto on September 7, 2016, at Apple's annual iPhone event. The game initially launched in 10 languages in 150 countries. Super Mario Run was released on iOS devices on December 15, 2016, and on Android devices on March 22, 2017. For the iOS release, the game runs on both iPhone and iPad. While still using the freemium model, Nintendo eschewed requiring players to keep paying to access more levels, instead offering the game as a free demo with the first world unlocked and requiring a one-time payment to unlock the rest of the game. Part of the reason for this pricing scheme was to make it transparent to parents who may be purchasing the game for their children so that they would not incur further costs. Fearing piracy of the game, Nintendo added always-on DRM, which requires that players have a persistent Internet connection to play. Polygon speculated that Nintendo opted to develop the game first for the iOS platform because of its stronger security options and consistent ecosystem compared to Android.Since its inception, Super Mario Run has seen updates that mostly expanded support for Nintendo accounts or added or changed gameplay content. An update released in January 2017 introduced "Easy Mode", reduced the number of Toads lost in Toad Rally, and added Korean language support. The game launched in South Korea on the same date. An April 2017 update allowed players to use Miitomo via their Nintendo Accounts to add friends already registered on their Nintendo Account, as well as customize their Mii icons, including implementing any costumes they own. A significant update in September that year added Daisy as a new character, World Star and the Remix 10 game mode.