For years mobile gaming has been a sin against gamers, at least as far as I’ve been concerned. As more and more people began to play games on their mobile phones or tablets, I realized that the despicable habit of enjoying oneself on a work device wouldn’t pass. But that realization certainly didn’t and won’t stop me from totally ignoring the platform. It would take a lot for me to put down my dedicated handheld or turn off my console in favour of playing games on the go using my phone. Since its inception I’ve told myself that mobile games aren’t real games, and people who play them mustn’t know the difference between trash and a piece of art, or they are infants who’ve been silenced with a tablet given to them by their dismissive parents.
While a great majority of the youth play on buttonless devices, I have turned up my nose to anyone who persists to play games on their phone while claiming claiming to care about the games industry. Why would you want to dredge the infinite swamp of apps and free-to-play marketing speak for subpar games? If you truly enjoy gaming, you’ll pay for it, won’t you? At least you can be sure that most of the standout games on dedicated devices offer deeper experiences with more immersive environments and gameplay, not to mention that the developers likely dedicate much more time to creating them.
I can’t say that these sentiments have changed all that much—I am still as stubborn as ever to play games on mobile—but the announcement of Super Mario Run at Apple’s recent event has definitely complicated things. I guess you could say that I’ve changed my mind . . . I guess. But just a little.
I like how Nintendo’s chosen to handle their beloved IP. Instead of creating a half-baked Mario game with some silly gameplay hook, they took what’s best in their side-scrolling series and simply built it for mobile devices. Super Mario Run adopts the same graphical style as the New Super Mario Bros. series and all the basic conventions of past Mario games. Your mission as usual is to travel to the goal post at the end of the scrolling screen, and do it as fast as you can; you collect coins along the way, and even squish a few Goomba heads as you do; and you platform from left to right just like you’ve always done in a Mario game, only this time the game automatically scrolls for you. This minor difference is imperative for the gameplay of a mobile platformer, so I wouldn’t say that its inclusion creates any kind of identity crisis—the game retains its authenticity, and appears to be at home with the other Mario titles, even if it’s for mobile.
Minus the lack of free control over Mario’s movement, Super Mario Run looks to be an authentic trek through the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario platformers, for me, have never been about exploring anyway—they have been about progressing forward, avoiding obstacles and bonking enemies standing in the way of the Italian plumber and the very tip of the flagpole he looks to rub his gloves on.
What scares me most about putting my favourite games and characters on mobile is that they won’t retain the elements that made them special in the first place. Nintendo’s short presentation of Super Mario Run earlier this week, crushed these anxieties, and by doing so seems to be handling a mobile game the right way. The best parts of the world-renowned franchise were kept and Nintendo didn’t just create a simple port of an existing Mario game and dump it in with the rest of the sludge on the app store. Instead, Nintendo created an all-new Mario game that actually takes advantage of the input methods inherent of a mobile device, all the while meticulously keeping with the identity of a Mario outing. Judging by the showcase, Super Mario Run looks and plays like Mario game.
The other issue with mobile games that Nintendo remedied is the flagrant devaluation games suffer from when being put on mobile devices. The price of mobile games, including the free-to-play models, only support that the creators don’t care enough about their games to charge a price indicative of a high-quality product. That’s because most of the time the games are actually worth a dollar, or probably nothing at all.
When Nintendo announced that Super Mario Run would be sold at a fixed cost, the company proved that it’s serious about maintaining the value of a Mario game, and doesn’t expect customers to delude themselves into thinking that the franchise should offer a free game. This is no penny-pinching affair, and they made that much clear. Nintendo unequivocally positioned Super Mario Run as a game, a Nintendo game. In fact, the seasoned Japanese company believes so heavily in the quality of the game that they had Shigeru Miyamoto himself take to the stage to speak about it.
For the sake of mobile gaming and all the unknowing souls who dedicate their lives to it, I hope Super Mario Run delivers. The parched gaming space on mobile is in need of a carefully developed and intelligently marketed game, and what better way to save the insufferable platform than with the ultimate saviour of yesterday’s videogame downturn, Super Mario. Nintendo has something here, and I think I will try my first mobile game when Super Mario Run arrives, and I may actually like it.