super mario
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Lego expands its Super Mario world with customization tools, new Mario power-ups and more characters
Lego’s partnership with Nintendo delivered a pretty awesome debut earlier this year with the interactive Lego Super Mario Starter Course, and now it’s following that up with additional sets designed to complement the first. These include a new “Master Your Adventure Maker Set,” which adds customization options by tweaking Lego Mario’s response via three new bricks, and a new way to shuffle the rules for each level. Lego and Nintendo are also releasing additional themed Expansion sets, new power-ups for Mario and a second series of mystery characters to incorporate into level builds.
Image Credits: Nintendo
The Master Your Adventure Maker Set includes 366 pieces in total, and will retail for $59.99. The Expansion sets include a Chain Chomp jungle-themed playset ($19.99), a Piranha Plan puzzle challenge set ($29.99) and a new Poison-themed biome for Mario to explore featuring Wiggler ($39.99). The two new power-ups for Lego Mario are his Penguin suit and his Tanooki suit, which retail for $9.99 each.
Each new Series 2 Character Pack retails for $4.99. These come in packaging that doesn’t reveal their contents until opened, adding some degree of chance to which of the new characters you end up with. The Series 2 characters include Huckit Crab, Spiny Cheep Cheep, Ninji, Foo, Parachute Goomba, Fly Guy, Poison Mushroom, Para-Beetle, Thwimp or Bone Goomba.
Image Credits: Nintendo
These will all go on sale starting January 1, both from Lego directly and from its retail partners. That’s just after the holiday rush, which seems like a bit of a miss for what you’d expect would be a popular set of gifts, but Nintendo’s still selling the original starter course and other kits.
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Nintendo is remaking the first portable gaming system it ever built
Quick, what was the first portable gaming system Nintendo made?
If you said “Game Boy”… solid guess, but not quite. For nearly a decade before Nintendo released that iconic gray beast, it was making the Game & Watch — a collection of handheld devices, each dedicated to playing just one or two simple games and, occasionally, doubling as a clock.
Hammering that nostalgia button in a way that few other companies can, Nintendo announced this morning that the Game & Watch will be making a modernized, but limited edition, return.
Released as part of the celebration around the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., it’s fully Mario themed — and, appropriately, called “Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.”
As with the original Game & Watch lineup, it seems like this one is meant to be pretty limited in the number of different titles it can play. On the official product page, Nintendo mentions “Super Mario Bros.,” “Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels” (or just “Super Mario Bros. 2,” as it was known in Japan) and a Mario-skinned remake of “Ball,” the first Game & Watch title that shipped back in April of 1980. So three games in all… but given what we’ve seen happen with previous devices like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the fans crack it open and have it running a whole lot more than that in no time flat.
A lot has changed in 40(!) years, so Nintendo is sneaking a few upgrades into this Game & Watch that probably seem like givens today. It has a full-color LCD, for example, whereas the original displays were black and white — and you’ll be able to charge it over USB-C, rather than having to burn through a stack of button cell batteries. Nintendo says it should last around eight hours per charge.
Clock Mode!
When you’re not playing one of the included games, this thing turns into a little portable clock (thus the “& Watch” part of its name), with 35 different Mario-themed scenes in all. If Nintendo does that clock feature right, I can see these things earning a permanent spot on a lot of people’s desks.
While Nintendo notes that it’ll be a “limited” run, they haven’t said exactly how many of these they’ll be making… and while pre-order details are “coming soon,” they’re not getting more specific than that. They do say it’ll ship on November 13th with an MSRP of $50… but beyond that, if you’re worried about getting one of these, you’ll want to keep an eye out for more details.
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Here’s the full lineup of Lego Super Mario sets, due out August 1
Back in March, Nintendo and Lego teamed up to reveal one of the most delightful bits of colorful ephemera in an otherwise overwhelmingly bleak time. Lego Super Mario continues to be one thing worth looking forward to through it all, for the young and nostalgia-inclined old alike. And thankfully you only have to hang tight a couple more months to get it.
Image credits: Nintendo
Today, the childhood staples revealed the full rundown of sets. The list includes the already announced Starter Course, along with 10 expansion sets. Four Power-Up Packs and a variety of Character packs. The Starter Course is currently up for pre-order on Lego’s site, and all will be made available on August 1, online and through select retailers that happen to be open for business.
The Expansion sets include a range of familiar levels from the Nintendo series and a few other riffs on the Mushroom Kingdom, including Bowser’s Castle Boss Battle, Mario’s House and Yoshi, King Boo and the Haunted Yard and Toad’s Treasure Hunt. Those range in price from $20 to $100. The Power-Ups will all run $10 and the blind bag Character Packs are $5. Nothing too crazy in Lego terms, but any fan will tell you these things add up quickly. All of the sets are designed to be used together, and each features clever articulation designed to mimic gameplay.
Image credits: Nintendo
The Starter Course, meanwhile is $60. Of the figures, Mario continues to be the most advanced, with four built-in LEDs (two eyes, a mouth and a chest), a speaker for sound and color sensors on his feet, so the figure can track where it jumps. Understandably, he’s the centerpiece of all the play sets.
There’s also some more information on the included app, which offers build guidance, keeps track of scores and presses young players to build and rebuild the levels. There’s a sharing function, as well, along with a kid-safe forum for discussing build ideas.
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A ridiculously rare copy of Super Mario for NES just sold for over $100,000
An extra special copy of Super Mario for NES just sold for a mind-boggling $100,150.
Before you go digging through the attic to find your old copy to throw up for auction, you should know: the version in question here is super, super rare.
So what makes it special?
Super Mario has been released and re-released dozens of times in the past three decades. Even if we’re just talking about the original NES cartridge that came in a black box, there were eleven ever-so-slightly-different versions of the box shipped between 1985 and 1994. Some had tabs for hanging them from store shelves; some lacked a trademark symbol or two in the right spots; others had slightly tweaked graphics for the Nintendo “Seal of Quality” on the face.
The very first few runs, though, had a particularly obvious quirk: rather than being shrink-wrapped, they were sealed with just a little black “Nintendo” sticker at the top of the box. These early versions hit just a handful of test markets. Remember, Mario wasn’t a thing at this point — no one really had any idea what this game was about, much less the worldwide icon that Mario would become. So even amongst the super small number of copies that were distributed prior to the game’s wider launch in 1986, most people who got their hands on it wouldn’t think to keep it in pristine condition.
Wata Games, which certified this copy, pins the condition at around 9.4 out of 10. It also says that this copy is the only known “sticker sealed” one still in existence, and that even the sticker itself is somehow in tip-top shape. Wata has a breakdown of the many variations of Super Mario prints and reprints here.
$100,000 is a hefty chunk of change to drop on a game, and a press release from Heritage Auction house says the purchase was actually a joint effort between multiple buyers, including a coin dealer, multiple video game collectors and the founder of the auction house itself.
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Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aimé on the evolution of Super Mario Odyssey
From the outside, at least, Nintendo is a study in contradictions, at once devoted to the constant development of new gaming experiences, while remaining deferential and staunchly loyal to its past. Super Mario Run’s Android release date is March 23
Super Mario Run is officially making its way to Android, as Nintendo promised what seems like so long ago. The company has now revealed an exact date for Mario’s Android debut: March 23. That’s this Thursday, in case you’re bad at math or don’t have a calendar handy. Apple and Nintendo are bringing Super Mario to an iPhone near you
Apple just announced that it is working with Nintendo to deliver a new game on the App Store called “Super Mario Run.” As the name implies, Super Mario Run is a runner game – think “Temple Run” – that lets you tap to jump, and tap longer to jump higher. The longer you run, the more coins you collect, and you simply finish the race by getting to the flag at… Read More
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