Super Mario Run (available for Android and iOS), in addition to Nintendo’s first mobile game, is a worthy successor to the Marios saga: You will find everything that is characteristic of the series here. Mario, Bowser, the jumps. The only difference is the context. How they have adapted all of this to the smartphones that are not designed to be used to play this game. And how have they done it? Dismissing everything that is not necessary in a game of Super Mario.
Disregarding anything other than jumps.
Let’s think carefully about Mario. What defines it in mechanical terms? Not walking, as it is relatively common. Neither swim, because their aquatic phases usually sin of rompenervios. That leaves us one single element: the leap.
Before Mario was Mario, in the arcade of Donkey Kong (1981), was known like Jumpman. And that is what has always defined him. Each new installment of the saga, when it has wanted to change something, has always been introduced through the jump. Whether it’s the floating jump in Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988), the flight in Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) or already the triple jump in Super Mario 64 (1996), to mention only the first, the primordial mechanics of Mario has always been the jump.
For consonance, in Super Mario Run, Nintendo only needed to respect a single basic mechanic: the jump.
En-jump!
