Coming soon to Nintendo Switch is Super Mario Bros. 35, a 35-player online battle royale twist on the classic NES game. This announcement was part of Nintendo's Mario 35th Anniversary Direct, once which announced an abundance of new Mario games, updates, and products releasing in the next few months. While many fans were expecting Super Mario 3D All Stars, the new Super Mario Bros. 35 was a pleasantly surprising announcement.
Super Mario Bros. 35 seems to be similar in style and concept to last year's Tetris 99. In Tetris 99, 99 players are placed in a lobby together and play solo games of Tetris. Matching a row in Tetris 99 would sabotage another player by adding blocks to their board. So, the goal of the game is to both be proficient at a normal match of Tetris, while also aiming to sabotage other player's games. Super Mario Bros. 35 takes a similar approach, but uses the original Super Mario Bros. as the base for the competitive play.
In Super Mario Bros. 35, a lobby is filled with 35 players, a rather small player count compared to other battle royales. Each player plays through the original NES Super Mario Bros. game, while also attempting to out-skill and sabotage other players. As usual, the last player standing wins.
How Super Mario Bros. 35 Handles Battle Royale
In Super Mario Bros. 35, whenever any player defeats an enemy, like a goomba or koopa, the enemy gets sent to another player's game session, increasing the challenge. Players can choose to target their defeated enemies at certain players. The four choices are: sending enemies to random players, sending enemies to players with the lowest time limit, sending enemies to players who have the highest coin count, and sending enemies back as revenge to other attacking players.
Another change to the usual Mario gameplay, one which increases the speed and difficulty of the game, is the significantly lowered time limit. When starting a match, each player will only have 35 seconds on a countdown clock. If the clock reaches 0 it is an automatic game over. To gain more time, players must defeat enemies. This creates an interesting risk-vs-reward system, because if a player is able to defeat an onslaught of enemies sent by other players, they're rewarded with a huge increase in their time limit.
There is another addition to make defeating enemies easier: an item roulette wheel. Players can spend 20 of their collected coins to receive a random power-up to help defeat enemies or survive more damage. The roulette wheel can drop a fire flower, star, POW block, or mushroom. It certainly seems like a POW block or star will be the most useful for taking out hoards of enemies.
Super Mario Bros. 35 is an interesting spin on the platforming classic. The game borrows many strong elements from Tetris 99, and reworks them to match the Mario gameplay format. It will certainly take some classic platforming skill, and new-form strategy, to be a winner in this unique battle royale.
Super Mario Bros. 35 will be released for Nintendo Switch on October 1, 2020. The game will be a free download only for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, and the game will only be playable until March 31, 2021, when Nintendo's Mario 35th anniversary celebration ends.