In order to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros, Nintendo is allegedly planning a number of things, one of which is the plan to “re-release most of Super Mario’s 35 year back catalogue.” In other words, they may be looking to remaster a whole lot of old Mario games, something that should be welcome news to the franchise’s many fans. Reports of a new Paper Mario game coming to the Switch in 2020 has also been confirmed, though exact details on that are pretty scarce.
As for details on the re-released backlog titles, more details on those are to be revealed at the same time as the info on Super Nintendo World theme park as well as the animated Super Mario movie, both of which are projects Nintendo is working alongside Universal with.
Other aspects of the celebration do not include video games, as one of them was the special interactive Lego Mario set that plays jump rope with the line between physical toy and video game. Another aspect of the celebration was the Super Mario Party, which was set to be revealed at E3 2020. Of course, seeing as how this year’s E3 was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic, that plan didn’t hold up. Currently, Nintendo has said that they are reviewing their ruined plans and determining how and when to hold the event considering the current global situation.
While that is bad news, sources have confirmed that one of the games in line for a remaster is Super Mario Galaxy, along with a decent number of popular 3D Mario games. Reports from various sources also claim that the deluxe edition of the Wii U’s Super Mario 3D World will come to the Switch with new levels added to the game.
Of course, these are all just reports, and there has yet to be concrete evidence from Nintendo regarding which games they are actually going to remaster. However, if these reports are taken at face value, then it seems that 2020 will give us remastered versions of the following Mario titles;
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Super Mario 64 (N64 – 1996)
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Super Mario Sunshine (Gamecube – 2002)
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Super Mario Galaxy (Wii – 2007)
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Super Mario 3D World (Wii U – 2013)
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A new Paper Mario game
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Other “3D Mario” titles
Lack of concrete evidence aside, this is all assuming that none of these titles are delayed by issues originating from COVID-19. Many games have been delayed due to the virus, so it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that the same thing could happen to these Mario games. Hopefully, it would not be a particularly long delay, but there’s no way to foresee that if such an outcome were to occur.
Even if the remastered games do get delayed, it will be nice to have updated versions of them on more recent gaming platforms. However, it would do well to keep in mind that these are not remakes: just the same old games with newer graphics, controls, and audio.
