Super Mario Run
Super Mario Run is easily one of the most anticipated iPhone and iPad games to date. Nintendo’s game takes the full-fledged Super Mario side-scrolling experience that we’ve seen for the past 30-plus years and streamlines it for touchscreens and one-handed play.
Modes
The game is nominally split into three modes, although the first, World Tour, is sure to dominate your play time, at least at first. World Tour is Mario as it would ordinarily be understood: a series of worlds, each divided up into three conventional
levels and a Bowzer’s castle boss level to finish up. (In this simple structure SMR harks back to the very earliest Mario games.)
The second mode, Toad Rally, is a bit more unconventional and social: it involves trying to beat the performances of other players. You’ll be presented with a series of high scores, in effect recorded by real-world players, and if you see one you reckon you can beat, and have a spare ticket to pay for entry (these are acquired in World Tour), you can take it on. You play against a ghost of the player’s performance, ‘as live’ as it were, and try to pick up more coins, impress more Toads and generally outperform your rival in the time allowed.
The final mode is called Kingdom Builder and is really just a place to go to spend your ill-gotten gains from the other two modes. You gradually build up your own little kingdom, adding decorative elements and new buildings when your acquired resources allow it; some of the new buildings bring with them bonus games and other goodies. This is where impressing Toads in Toad Rally is particularly important: if you impress them, they’ll come and live in your kingdom, and the more Toads you’ve got of each colour, the more other stuff you can unlock.
Gameplay
The essence of SMR across both World Tour and Toad Rally, the principle underlying every design decision, is that it is played with one hand. Which means it’s an endless, or rather auto runner – albeit nowhere near as limited as that implies.
Whereas traditional Mario games occupy multiple buttons and both hands at once – the