Jump Up, Super Star!
Mario is making a return to video games! The next Mario title, Super Mario Odyssey, will make its way to Nintendo Switch systems on October 27, 2017. After years of development, the game will soon be shipped to stores worldwide. It is almost time for the next game in the popular series to be available for purchase.
The upcoming game revolves around King Bowser, the ruler of the Koopa Kingdom, planning to kidnap and forcefully marry the heiress to the Mushroom Kingdom throne, Princess Peach. Now, Mario must go on an adventure in his ship known as The Odyssey to find the stolen Peach, and save the Mushroom Kingdom!
Super Mario Odyssey is the first 3D Mario platformer since 2013’s Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U. In this game, the player will explore a variety of worlds as everybody's favorite plumber, Mario! While exploring, players will search for materials known as Power Moons, which can give Mario’s trustworthy ship enough power to travel to the next destination. As the game progresses, the player will encounter more enemies, have to collect more Power Moons, and find more enemies to capture. The act of capturing enemies is not simple imprisonment, but rather a form of possession. In Super Mario Odyssey, Mario’s hat is possessed by a spirit named Cappy. With Cappy at your side, throwing your hat at an enemy will possess them, and allow you to play as them. Many parts of the game require you to possess enemies to progress, such as taking over a living rocket to fly to different platforms. Super Mario Odyssey is said to be comparable to Super Mario 64, which is considered to be one of the best games of all time.
Mario Odyssey was the main focus of Nintendo’s presentation at E3 this year, which is an annual gaming convention taking place in Los Angeles. With a variety of playable demos, trailers, and other advertisements, very few people at the convention went without knowing of the upcoming game. Since the game has been noticed by the community, gaming review programs also took note of the title. Not only did they take note of it, they broke down the game to find its strengths and weaknesses, and decided to give the game a good amount of awards to celebrate the game’s strong points. The game was said to be the best shown at E3, best family game, best platformer, and many more.
The game has been in production for four years, so the awards are likely well earned. Most games that take a long time to develop are praised for the gameplay, audio, visuals and more. The development team for Super Mario Odyssey experimented with many concepts for new ideas in the game. One of these ideas was the Capturing mechanic, which the developers found themselves playing with and using so often that they decided to implement it into the next game. The producers also found the controls to be extremely satisfying with the Nintendo Switch controllers. This new mechanic was put into the game to give Mario Odyssey a new, different, and exciting feeling. Of course, they had to be careful with how new they got. The creator of the Mario series, Shigeru Miyamoto, was very strict and decisive with what concepts and mechanics were put into the game. With a watchful eye, the game was created over a course of four years. Now the journey of development is almost over, and each player will be able to go on their own journey when the full game releases on October 27.