This week, Ubisoft released a statement addressing what might generously be called a “controversy” about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows. Let’s be real, though. It’s just the latest salvo from a reactionary hate movement. You can read our thoughts on that, the terrific texture of Yakuza 0, the missteps of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, the amazing sound design of the Riven remake, and more, in the pages ahead.
Kotaku Staff
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Nintendo’s Pokémon series has had a powerful grip on pop culture for decades, and it’s doubtful to change anytime soon. The bulk of that power comes from the video and trading card games, along with the eternally ongoing anime and the movies and shows that’ve spun out of that. So how do you make one of the biggest video game properties even bigger? You take the big, bold jump to Hollywood.
First released in Japan on May 3, 2019 and then the following week in the US, Detective Pikachu was the first ever live-action Pokémon movie, and also Nintendo’s first video game movie since Super Mario Bros. If anyone ever thought Pokémon would get a big budget flick, they probably didn’t think it’d come courtesy of Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, let alone based off a 2016 spinoff game where brand mascot Pikachu is a private eye with the voice of Ryan Reynolds. Yeah, the monsters all looked impressively real and tangible in ways fans had always dreamed, but having Deadpool as the leading ‘mon could’ve undercut everything. Was this going to work?
The answer turned out to be “yes”: Detective Pikachu netted fairly positive reviews and made $450.1 million worldwide. Back then, it’d been the highest-grossing video game movie of its time, at least until the Super Mario movie knocked it off its pedestal last year. If the world hadn’t been hit with the pandemic and Hollywood strikes in the 2020s so far, we’d likely have a sequel by now; Portlandia co-creator Jonathan Krisel was tapped to direct it last year working off a script by Chris Galetta, but it seems at least two years off, minimum. (Coming out as Avengers: Endgame was still in theaters probably wasn’t right move, either.) As is, it’s a well-regarded movie that made a decent impression in the video game movie space whose future got buried underneath some bad luck.
At the same time, it appears to have made a decent impact when it comes to Pokémon’s transmedia output. The anime was always going to persist whether it did well or not, but the film’s success has certainly helped open Nintendo’s mind to the possibilities of what this franchise could be. Without it, we likely wouldn’t have Pokémon Concierge or the original drama series Pocket ni Bōken wo Tsumekonde, which is about the reach and impact of Pokémon rather than being set in its world. And this is just what we know about—a Pokémon Direct or two from now, we may learn that Nintendo’s got plans of doing up a movie universe in the vein of what Paramount’s doing with Sonic the Hedgehog.
Compared to other video game adaptations like Fallout and The Last of Us, or even Arcane, it wouldn’t be wrong to feel like Detective Pikachu has gotten overlooked. Its time in the sun will surely come whenever that sequel rolls around. In that way, it’s like the anime: whatever comes next will hopefully be an evolution that buils upon the winning formula of its predecessor. And if not, well, at least we’ve got a video of Pikachu dancing to brighten the day.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Justin Carter
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Pokémon’s profit margins probably don’t reflect it, but the franchise had a rough year in 2023. Without a new mainline role-playing game to dominate the series’ headlines, Pikachu and friends were, instead, shrouded in controversies throughout the past 12 months. Between Pokémon Go angering swaths of its community, scalpers making a public embarrassment of the franchise to people who don’t even pay attention to it, and Scarlet and Violet’s DLC underlining the problems ingrained within the Pokémon pipeline, the screws are coming loose on the hype train. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Kotaku Staff
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Until very recently, I’d thought that Alan Wake 2 would reside in the #2 slot here, while Tears of the Kingdom would remain my personal game of the year. However, a chance encounter recently with writer Cole Kronman (who wrote this great piece on Xenogears and the games of Tetsuya Takahashi for us) helped me clarify my own feelings. I realized that for me, these two games are in close conversation with each other, strange mirrors of each other’s greatness, and that together, they define the best that 2023’s games had to offer in my mind. I’m not going to spoil plot points for either game, but to engage with why and how this is the case, I need to mention a crucial line of dialogue from the end of Alan Wake 2, one that mirrors the first game’s climactic mic drop of “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.” If you haven’t yet finished Alan Wake 2 and want to discover this line for yourself, turn back now.
In the final moments of Alan Wake 2 (and potentially earlier, depending on how thorough you are in exploring and absorbing Remedy’s metaphysical horror odyssey), a character says, “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” Alan Wake 2 explores the difficulty and anguish many artists find in the creative process, the way it can sometimes feel like you’re just banging your head against the wall and not making a damn bit of progress, seeing no way out whatsoever as that blank page continues to taunt you.
Read More: Alan Wake 2: The Kotaku Review
And yet, sometimes at least, a way out does eventually reveal itself. Sometimes, after we’ve been spinning our wheels for what feels like forever, something in our subconscious will finally crack, a bit of light will shine through, and we will see, at long last, a path forward, knowing that we had to go through all of that internal turmoil to find our way out. What felt like a pointless, exhausting, excruciating loop was in fact a spiral all along. Before spotlighting this at the end by having a character speak the line, Alan Wake 2 hides this idea in plain sight, repeatedly putting you in environments that feel like loops that you have no choice but to run through again and again. Eventually, your persistence pays off, something suddenly changes, and a way out reveals itself. You thought you were going in circles but you were actually moving forward all along; it just took a lot of energy and grit to see that.
I don’t have any particular insight into what the struggle to get Alan Wake 2 made was like for creative director Sam Lake and the other folks at Remedy, but it’s no secret that this is a game the studio had been hoping to make for a very long time. I have to imagine that at times, the setbacks and struggles were crushing, that they felt like defeat. And yet, it’s undeniable that if Remedy had been able to make a sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake some 10 or six years ago, it would not be the game that it is today. Alan Wake 2 is extraordinary in no small part because it is a game that took 13 years to get made, and because, in its creative energy, you can feel the restless struggle, the accumulation of ideas, the desperate search for a way out. Alan Wake 2 is about many things, but perhaps none of them is more crucial to its identity than being about the struggle to make Alan Wake 2.
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Carolyn Petit
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It’s been a surprisingly strong year for the Nintendo Switch even as sales slow and fans eagerly await its successor, and today the company promoted a bunch of indie games that will fill out the console’s release calendar heading into 2024, from a new Shantae action-platformer to a port of beloved cult-hit sci-fi mystery game Outer Wilds. Unfortunately, everyone’s favorite Hollow Knight sequel, Silksong, is still MIA.
Last month’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder was the fastest-selling game in the franchise’s history, and a remake of the beloved SNES classic Super Mario RPG arriving later this month rounds out another great year for the Switch. But plenty of smaller games are also coming to the device this holiday season and beyond, and Nintendo highlighted some of the big ones in its latest Indie World Showcase.
Here’s everything we saw during Nintendo’s brief presentation today:
The 2D half-genie is getting another retro follow-up to the original 2002 Game Boy Color adventure (which goes for four digits on eBay and still isn’t part of the Switch Online catalog). Risky Revolution will be a mix of old and new, with creature transformations and big boss fights as well as a four-player co-op mode and the ability to jump between the background and foreground. It’s out sometime next year.
Outer Wilds was an excellent space exploration puzzler and one of the best games of 2019. Now it’s finally coming to Switch next month on December 7. Archaeologist Edition will include the Echoes of the Eye expansion, and will be a must-play on Switch for anyone who hasn’t already experienced its compelling mysteries, deep secrets, and incredible ending, assuming the performance and visuals are still intact on Switch.
This is a new one about exploring the seaside village of Borgo Marina trying to unmask who’s been menacing the place by collecting clues in the form of trading cards. On Your Tail has you play as the young detective Diana, who can chill, fish, and meet new friends in this detective life sim hybrid. It’ll be a timed Switch exclusive in 2024.
Another 2.5D narrative-led platformer? Sign me up. A Highland Song is about guiding a character named Moira on a journey through the Scottish Highlands. There’s rhythm-action elements with the music affecting how quickly you can progress, and inclement weather forcing you to change up your approach. A Highland Song comes to Switch on December 5.
Another deck-building roguelike? Sign me up for that too! Backpack Hero looks similar to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign turned into a Magic: The Gathering deck builder except your arsenal will be dependent on how you organize the limited space in your backpack. Loot you collect from dungeons is brought back to help repair your village, which you can expand and decorate as you see fit. The game goes live today.
Howl is a turn-based tactics game that features a “living ink” art style that lets you see upcoming enemy attacks and plan multiple turns in advance, making every encounter into a little puzzle box. A plague is sweeping through the world and the only way to defeat it is to collect resources and upgrade your abilities. You know, the usual. Howl is out now and has a free demo.
Blade Chimera is basically a cyberpunk Castlevania. There have been a lot of these retro 2D action-platformers in recent years, but Blade Chimera’s art and abilities make it seem like it could stand out. A Lumina Sword helps the hero slice down enemies and also restore old parts of the environment to unlock new paths forward. It’s a Switch timed exclusive coming spring 2024.
The circus is in town and someone’s dead…probably. Death Trick is a choose-your-own adventure visual novel in which you play a detective interviewing acrobats and fire-breathers to find out what happened to a missing performer. It’s coming to Switch in 2024, with a free demo out today.
Picture a storybook where you dive into the pages and learn about your past memories. That’s what The Star Named EOS looks like. The puzzle adventure “explores photography and the ways we can capture the fleeting moments that shape our lives.” It will probably make you cry. The Star Named EOS is headed to Switch by spring 2024.
Moonstone Island might just have it all: creature collecting, dungeon crawling, deck building, card-based combat, and life sim farming. Hopefully the adorable and colorful-looking mashup of Pokémon, Stardew Valley, and Slay the Spire is half as good as the recipe suggests. The initial reviews on PC have been great. It will be a Switch timed exclusive launching in spring 2024.
You probably know this one already. If you don’t, Core Keeper is kind of like Minecraft meets Zelda. Another way of saying that is it’s like crafting sim Terraria if it were top-down instead of a side-scroller. You dig tunnels to collect materials, items, and treasure that can be used to make a home-turned-factory deep underground while you search for an ancient relic. It features up to eight player co-op, lots of RPG elements, and some neat environments. The Switch port of the Steam hit is coming in summer 2024.
A sizzle reel near the end of the livestream also teased a bunch of other games coming to Nintendo Switch at the end of 2023 and in the year ahead. Here’s the PR:
- Enjoy the Diner, a mysterious narrative adventure with point-and-click elements, available on Nintendo Switch later today!
- Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist, a painting adventure in which you’re invited to explore the charming town of Phénix while creating and selling works of art, available on Nintendo Switch later today!
- Heavenly Bodies, a delightfully challenging physics-based space puzzler that asks you to complete a series of seemingly simple tasks aboard a 1970s space station, arriving to Nintendo Switch in February 2024.
- Braid: Anniversary Edition, a remaster of the acclaimed puzzle-platformer, with updated graphics and sound, plus newly added developer commentary, launching for Nintendo Switch on April 30, 2024.
- The Gecko Gods, a relaxed puzzle-platformer starring a tiny gecko who must explore a set of mysterious islands and temples on a mission to save its friends, launching on Nintendo Switch in spring 2024.
- Planet of Lana, a cinematic puzzle-adventure framed by an epic sci-fi saga that stretches across centuries and galaxies, launching on Nintendo Switch in spring 2024.
- Urban Myth Dissolution Center, a captivating mystery game in which you’re tasked with investigating curses, haunted houses and other urban myths, coming to Nintendo Switch in 2024.
While most of these games are still a couple of seasons away, Backpack Hero, Enjoy the Diner, and Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist are all out today. Howl and Death Trick: Double Blind also have free demos out today. The heavily rumored “Switch 2” could get revealed any day now, but there’s still a ton of games coming to the existing hardware. Hopefully all of them will be backward compatible on whatever new console Nintendo is currently cooking up.
Ethan Gach
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Good parenting is a lot like being a solid player two. You want to be supportive, curious, and competent. You’re there to have a good time, and understand going with the flow is key to harmony. This can be a challenge with kids and video games when you’re actually, literally, player two, especially if you’re a gamer and struggle to turn off those killer instincts. Enter Super Mario Bros. Wonder (see on Amazon). It is without question the year’s best family game (and in the running for GOTY) but it can be a challenge for any parent to share the sticks, regardless of skill level.
And let’s take a moment to acknowledge the mercurial nature of young children. You’re not playing a game with a like-minded adult who shares your sense of purpose or your temperament. One minute you’re co-opping with a volatile, rage-quitting narcissist then a condescending, proficient genius the next. Whether this is your first time playing Mario in years or you’re a lifelong devotee, these tips are designed to help you facilitate a fun session for everyone. And for parents of little ones, we’ve got some extra tips for you, too.
You can’t help being an adult. It’s hard work, and conditions you to approach life a certain way. No judgment: Being a productive, task-oriented person is what our entire education system is based on. Once you’ve gone through school and spent a few years working you have a compulsion to get shit done the right way. Kids are different.
If you’re playing alongside them and find yourself saying you’re “supposed” to do something—i.e. “you’re supposed to get those big purple coins!”—switch gears. SMBW is a great playground, so slow down and have fun. Seeing the game through a child’s eyes will give you a new appreciation for its incredible level design.
Sometimes a level is just a lot of fun and you can’t wait to do it again. So don’t! If your kid thinks the Hoppos are hysterical, then play the Hoppo level as long as they want. If they’re really good at the Parachute Hat Badge Challenge, let them do it again and again. The difficulty curve in SMBW will sneak up on you and can hit kids pretty hard. Nothing takes the fun out of a night of gaming faster than running into a level no one can beat. So avoid frustration at all costs. You can always come back and play more once the kids go to bed. There’s multiple save files for a reason.
While it’s admirable that the Switch comes with two built-in controllers, using a single Joy-Con to play games means having to touch the smallest buttons known to man. This is especially true for parents who aren’t gaming much, or who spend their time on PC or other consoles with keyboards or adult-sized controllers. If this sounds like you, then consider investing in a Switch Pro Controller (like this one) to make life easier. Odds are you’ll like it so much, you’ll end up getting more than one.
On paper, the mechanic of having the player who gets the best score earn a little crown to wear seems cute and harmless. A silly little thing that has no bearing on the game and is essentially meaningless. Unless you are a small child. Then, suddenly and without warning, the crown will become the most important thing in your life. You will wail and despair if someone else has the crown, even if they get it by accident. So, parents, a word of warning. Let your kid get the crown. If you’re navigating siblings you may need to institute some hard rules on sharing, or wear the crown yourself in a “if you can’t play nicely you can’t play at all” situation. In the meantime let’s pray Nintendo lets us disable this feature in a future update.
One of the things that sets Nintendo apart from Sony and Microsoft is their dedication to family-friendly gaming. This comes through in a lot of places in SMBW, but the addition of the Yoshis and Nabbit is probably the biggest accommodation they’ve made in franchise history. These characters can’t take damage, so young players (or adults) can still go through levels without feeling like they’re failing over and over.
The caveat is that these characters can’t use power-ups. This could be very upsetting for young players (or adults) who wanted to see Elephant Yoshi. This may not be a dealbreaker but probably something you want to mention before starting a level together.
Who says games aren’t educational? Sure, Mario may be miles away from Ms. Rachel, but don’t fool yourself into thinking SMBW is pure brain candy. There’s plenty of dialogue and text to read, full of the common sight words kids are learning in elementary school. You can also apply the same techniques that make for effective reading at home. Ask about character motivation, the sequence of events, or make connections to their lives. Your kid may never have had Boswer steal their castle, but they’ve probably experienced someone being bad at sharing.
Buy Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
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Mo Mozuch
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Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the highly anticipated 2D platformer, is finally out on Nintendo Switch. But before you get too ahead of yourself turning Mario and company into giant elephants and whatnot, you should mess around with some gameplay settings first—especially the one that controls the Talking Flowers.
Earlier this week, in another edition of Nintendo’s ongoing web series, Ask the Developer, we learned that Wonder was originally going to have a live commentary feature like what you’d find in a sports game. It was scrapped, but found new life through the game’s Talking Flowers characters who shout at Mario and crew whenever they walk by. Although the Talking Flowers are a cute addition to the game and make solo playthroughs a little less lonely, your mileage with them may vary. Some people think the Talking Flowers, who talk all the time, are pretty annoying, if you can believe that. Here’s how you can turn the Talking Flowers voices off.
First, go to settings and scroll down to “Talking Flower Dialogue.” There you can switch it to “Voice off / Text on.” Super simple. There’s also a fun third option where you can change the language of the Talking Flowers if you want a different flavor of Flower Power commentary. Kotaku’s John Walker is partial to their Dutch language setting.
Read More: Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review Roundup: Wondrous Acclaim
Folks online are pretty delighted that Nintendo gave them the option to let them speak in a separate language from their Switch’s system language but to mute the Talking Flowers entirely.
“Fantastic news. As soon as I saw that they talk to you automatically when you run by them, I was a little worried,”u/klaxhax replied in a thread about the setting option on the r/Nintendo Switch subreddit. “It gave me flashbacks to the GBA Mario re-releases with all those dreadful voice clips…”
“And with that one change, this game is a contender for GOTY,” u/Red_Speed replied in the same thread.
The novelty of the Talking Flowers’ motor mouths has a high likelihood of wearing thin, so knowing how to turn them off or switch up their language may prove useful for Wonder players—whether it’s for their first, second, or third playthrough.
Isaiah Colbert
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Back in the day, you might have wondered: Hey, why does Mario take damage when he bumps into a Goomba in the original Super Mario Bros.? Turns out, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto had an answer: The enemies were biting you. We just never actually saw that happen. Well, that changes in the soon-to-be-released Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
In the latest installment of Nintendo’s ongoing web series, Ask the Developer, the folks behind Wonder answered some wide-ranging questions about the upcoming Switch-exclusive platformer. They revealed that it wasn’t really influenced by the movie, that it was developed differently than past Mario games, and the strange work that goes into making 3D models look good in a precise 2D side-scroller. It’s really interesting stuff! But perhaps my favorite bit to come out of the first two parts of this long Ask the Developer is the backstory on why Goombas bite Mario and other characters when they get close.
According to Wonder’s art director, Masanobu Sato, he once heard someone explain that when Miyamoto was asked why Mario takes damage after bumping into a Goomba in the original game, he answered, “It’s because the Goombas bite him.”
However, as pointed out by Wonder’s director, Shiro Mouri, even if that was what was happening, due to “hardware limitations” back then the game couldn’t show that detail. Super Mario Bros. Wonder producer Takashi Tezuka, who has been working on Mario games for nearly four decades, further explained that was why Koopa Troopas turned around to face Mario when you bumped into them in the NES classic.
“We tried to express them biting the player by making them turn around,” said Tezuka.
“But now we are able to show those expressions,” said Sato.
The devs say that in Wonder, the moment a Goomba does damage to Mario a small animation is triggered that shows the iconic enemy biting the plumber (or whichever other character the player is using.)
“Yes, and when they bite you, they’ll do it with a smile on their face!” added Sato.
I highly recommend reading the full interview as it reveals more behind-the-scenes information about how the game was developed and where all its wacky ideas come from.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder hits the Nintendo Switch on October 20, though copies have leaked out into the wild, so be careful of spoilers.
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Zack Zwiezen
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The next mainline 2D Mario game, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, looks fantastic, shaking up the franchise’s formula with new powers, worlds, and enemies. In particular, one new power that turns Mario into an elephant became quite popular online. However, at first Mario’s creator Shigeru Miyamoto, wasn’t a fan of the odd transformation.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder, out later this October on Nintendo Switch, looks well…wonderful! The game features a new, revamped art style that looks 10x better than the New Super Mario Bros. games’, and is filled with new ideas and gameplay mechanics, including Elden Ring-like multiplayer features and a huge roster of playable heroes: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Blue Toad, Yellow Toad, Toadette, and Nabbit. But perhaps the most talked-about new additions to the Mario formula are the new power-ups, including one that turns Nintendo’s plumber into a large pachyderm. Apparently Miyamoto had some…thoughts about Elephant Mario during development.
In an August 31 interview with IGN, Super Mario Bros. Wonder director Shiro Mouri and producer Takashi Tezuka explained that during production of the game, Miyamoto did provide feedback and notes, but he wasn’t in their “hip pocket” all the time “whispering” in their ears.
“Sometimes he would come by where we are working and look at things and give some opinions,” said Tezuka. “He would generally observe things and make comments here and there.”
However, according to Mouri, Miyamoto did have a problem with Elephant Mario, at first.
“It was a phase where we still had tentative visuals for Elephant Mario, and we had plans to adjust the visuals already,” said Mouri. “But he had come and taken a look before that and he gave us the sharp comment that ‘This doesn’t look like a Mario character.’”
According to Mouri, Mario’s dad also took issue with how Elephant Mario sprays water from his trunk, saying that “if an elephant was actually spraying water, it wouldn’t move that way.”
I like to imagine that Miyamoto comes home and spends hours watching elephants in the wild via documentaries and old videos on the internet, closely studying their moves. And finally, all that hard work paid off. Good for him.
In a separate Thursday interview with Wired, Mouri and Tezuka explained that the idea for Elephant Mario came from the desire to create a power-up for the famous plumber that would make him big and able to shoot water. Elephant was the natural choice.
However, when they wanted to let Mario dig underground, they didn’t go with a “mole Mario,” as they wanted him to be able to also take out enemies above him. So naturally they did what anyone else would in that scenario, and slapped a working drill on Mario’s head. I can only assume what Miyamoto thought about that.
Tezuka also pushed back on the idea that Mario games can’t change or evolve, telling Wired he asks his team to come up with wild ideas and not to worry about rules or limits.
“I do think people have ideas that Mario [games have] to be a certain way. There are certain limitations that people have in their own brains,” Tezuka said. “If you think it looks cool, it’s going to be fun. Do it.”
Super Mario Bros. Wonder—and all of its wild power-ups—launches on October 20 on Nintendo Switch.
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Zack Zwiezen
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 punctuated the ending to arguably one of Marvel’s best trilogy films (don’t @ me) with an emotionally gratifying final needle drop that had its titular characters, the fans, and even the musician behind the song ugly-crying with happiness. Minor spoilers ahead.
On Monday, Florence Welch, the lead singer of the popular indie rock band Florence and the Machine, uploaded a TikTok video of herself reacting to her song “Dog Days Are Over”, which served as the final song in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. If you’ve already seen the film, which came out over the weekend, listening to the song likely had you grinning with glee through tear-filled eyes just like Welch, because it served as a spectacular send-off to the comic book heroes’ nine-year cinematic journey.
“So I cried all the way through this movie but when The Guardians of the Galaxy started dancing to ‘Dog Days’ I really lost it,” Welch wrote in her TikTok caption. “Thank you so much for all the love for this moment. The superhero-obsessed little girl in me can’t believe it happened.”
Read More: PSA: Animal Lovers, Brace Yourselves For Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 3
Each of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films packs an emotional gut-punch with its poignant plotlines and an undeniably feel-good bop in its Awesome Mixes. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, we saw how Star-Lord’s relationship with his late mother affected his devil-may-care outlook on the universe and his place in it. In Vol. 2, we got to see how Star-Lord’s estranged relationship with his all-powerful father Ego didn’t define the man he could become. The first two movies accentuated key emotional beats with The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” respectively.
In Guardians 3, the camera took its focus off of Star-Lord and instead sheds some much-needed light on the trash-talking Rocket Raccoon, revealing how he came to be the standoffish anti-hero he is today. We’ll spare you any spoilers, but be warned, the two-hour and 30-minute movie does depict gruesome scenes of violence against animals while revealing Rocket’s harrowing backstory. But if you can get past that, the happiness emanating from Guardians 3’s finale will hit you like a train on a track, as Welch’s song puts it.
Read More: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 review: James Gunn’s trilogy ends with a big, brash blaze of glory
In non-crying-related news, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has rocketed past Nintendo and Illumination Studios’ Super Mario Bros. Movie’s opening weekend haul with a total of $282 million at the box office. For those keeping track, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, also starring actor Chris Pratt, made a total of $137 million during its three-day domestic opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.
The dog days are over for Pratt as well, because after securing the Nintendo and Marvel bag, he’s coming for the Sony bag next year when he offers his voice to the sardonic orange cat, Garfield.
Correction 05/08/2023 Monday4:47 p.m.: Fixed a song attribution from the first movie.
Isaiah Colbert
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In March, an employee at a Massachusetts GameStop leaked on Reddit that Nintendo was probably about to reveal its long rumored special edition Zelda Switch at an upcoming mini-Direct for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Special editions such as these are highly coveted collector’s items, and news of one for the sequel to a best-selling game would be huge for fans looking to buy a new system. This week, GameStop fired the employee who leaked the news, and the employee claims he was told Nintendo helped make it happen.
Back in March, Mike, who requested Kotaku only use his first name, posted a photo of a GameStop computer screen showing the inventory database had been updated with a secret new Switch model on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit. It was the day before Nintendo’s big extended gameplay reveal for Tears of the Kingdom, and the employee speculated in the post that a special edition Zelda Switch which had already leaked back in December, would be announced during the stream. Mike says he got fired on April 11, about two weeks later.
In a phone interview with Kotaku, Mike said he made the leak because he was a big fan of the franchise and wanted to give others a heads up in case pre-orders went live that day. GameStop in particular has seen issues for buyers when it comes to preorders in the past, though this wasn’t a reason cited by Mike for the leak. On March 28, Nintendo did reveal a special edition Switch, and the following day pre-orders went live at GameStop and other retailers.
At the time, the Reddit post didn’t garner a ton of upvotes, and the now former employee said he didn’t think of it as a big deal since he didn’t technically leak any images or special details about the console itself, and the post itself was mostly speculative. Nintendo also tends to release special consoles such as this one for most of its major releases, such as Pokémon.
But on April 5, a week later, Mike said the company traced the leak back to them. Coming in for his afternoon shift after watching the new Super Mario Bros. Movie on release day, he said his district manager called him into the backroom for a meeting. Joined by another GameStop supervisor via video conference, the employee said he was asked if he made the post and whether he knew it violated company policy.
Mike said he immediately confessed, but maintained he wasn’t aware it went against the company’s social media policies. The district manager took their keys and placed them on suspension, saying the final punishment could vary between a first-offense write up and termination. It ended up being the latter. And the now former employee thinks Nintendo is to blame.
When their store manager called on April 11 to deliver the bad news, he said the supervisor told them “off the record” that Nintendo had forced the company’s hand, demanding the employee be terminated over the leak. Mike shared the allegation on the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit shortly afterwards writing, “Hopefully all of you were able to get your switch pre-orders in as now I will not be able to get mine.”
GameStop and Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another employee at the store corroborated Mike’s account to Kotaku, and said they were told by the same store manager in a separate conversation that Nintendo was the catalyst. “He was an amazing worker,” they said of Mike, adding that he was one of the top performers in the area when it came to achieving GameStop’s aggressive sales goals.
Whoever ultimately made the decision to fire them, the leaker would have been easy to discover. Their social media accounts, including Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch, were linked in various ways to their Reddit account, and included several references to their general geographic location, as well as selfies. “I wasn’t really trying to cover my tracks because I didn’t know it would lead to this,” Mike told Kotaku.
As a large-scale retailer staffed mostly by entry-level workers paid terrible hourly rates, GameStop has historically been a hotbed for big gaming leaks, from Assassin’s Creed to Call of Duty. But it’s rare to hear that someone was actually fired in connection with one of the leaks. It’s perhaps less surprising that this one happens to have been in connection with a big Nintendo reveal, however. The Mario maker has been on the warpath against leaks for years, most recently attempting to subpoena Discord for the private data of someone who shared images from the Tears of the Kingdom collector’s edition artbook.
When asked if the former GameStop employee ultimately managed to secure a Zelda Switch pre-order, Mike confirmed he had. “But sadly I won’t be able to afford it anymore due to lack of a job,” he said. Mike added that when his manager had to deliver the bad news over the phone they pointed out what a shame it was: “This is your favorite company and now they hate you.”
Ethan Gach
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Oh, hello there. I see you’ve got your phone out at the movie theater and you’re sitting in the credits for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. You’re probably here wondering if there are extra scenes worth sticking around for. Well, I’m here to answer that question and more, so let’s jump down the warp pipe and into the unknown.
In short, yes. It has two, actually. One happens during the credits, and another happens right at the very end. Let’s break down both scenes. And no, we’re not talking about the weirdly existential Luma that comes back around near the end. Hopefully the fact that Luma is in the movie at all, though, is a cause to hope for something more SMG-sized. Peach does tell Mario that there are a ton of galaxies out there while they’re waiting in a field of power-ups.
The first scene features Bowser reprising his song from earlier in the movie called “Peaches.” This is nice, because he was rudely interrupted while singing it before, and now he gets to belt out a few more lines about his unrequited love for the princess. Jack Black apparently wrote Peaches himself! However, it turns out he’s still shrunken down and in his bottle prison from the final fight. It’s unclear if the Mushroom Kingdom is just going to keep him locked up in there, but at least he’ll be able to serenade anyone who passes by.
If you wait a little bit longer after that scene and through all the names scrolling on the screen, there’s a second teaser.
While the Bowser scene is cute, the one of real consequence is the post-credits scene at the very end of the film. In it, we see a Yoshi egg has ended up in the Brooklyn sewers after Mario and Bowser’s fight brought parts of the Mushroom Kingdom into the movie’s depiction of New York. As the egg starts to crack, the screen cuts to black and we hear the little dinosaur’s iconic “yoshi” cry.
While this egg likely belongs to the iconic green Yoshi that’s accompanied Mario throughout several games, this isn’t the first time the movie references these dinosaur steeds. In fact, there was a huge herd of them earlier in the movie when Mario and Peach are on their way to the Jungle Kingdom to recruit Cranky Kong’s army. So if the movie is taking the time to single out this specific egg, it likely means the movie is teasing a specific Yoshi that might have a larger role in a hypothetical sequel.
Reception to The Super Mario Movie has been pretty mixed. Those who have already seen the movie have called it overly referential and or found some of its performances lacking, while others have praised its gorgeous animation. Ultimately, I’m not too surprised given I’ve always found Illumination’s output to be lacking. But hey, at least we got to see Bowser be down bad and singing. That’s fun!
Kenneth Shepard
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Like most people who require water to live, you probably like H20 a normal amount—but you definitely don’t like water as much as this famous Nintendo fan. They’re so well-known and beloved that they’ve even been featured in the official plumber website for the Super Mario Bros. movie.
Super Mario Bros. Plumbing is a website for a fake plumbing service where Mario and Luigi come to unclog your pipes. Not like that, you pervert. Anyway, the website is an elaborate movie marketing campaign that even features a real live van tour. If you look down at the carousel section of the website, you’ll see a review by someone named Pipe_Dreamz. “Amazing looking water courtesy of the brothers,” it says.
For the non-chronically online, Pipe_Dreamz is likely a reference to a Miiverse user named MARIO WiiU. They spent at least a couple of years commenting on the graphical quality of video game water on Nintendo’s official forums. Their bio describes them as “a hardcore Nintendo fan” who has been playing the publisher’s games since 1985. Despite being a Nintendo gamer since the Nintendo Entertainment System, they felt that the Wii U is “an amazing system.” You do you, buddy.
Since Miiverse was discontinued in November 2017, a new account claiming to be MARIO WiiU has appeared on Twitter. However, there isn’t a viable method to confirm that they’re the same person (A conundrum that they’ve addressed publicly). I have my doubts. The original water commentator had posts that were unrelated to water, and the new account only contains tweets about water. So the account is likely run by a fan of the water liker.
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This isn’t the first time that Nintendo of America recognized video game water’s biggest fan. Three years ago, the publisher tweeted “Nice water” alongside a clip of Paper Mario: The Origami King.
The Miiverse may be gone, but the spirit of MARIO WiiU lives on.
Sisi Jiang
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While we’ve had two big, official trailers released for the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie, a pair of TV commercials in Europe have very quietly dropped that feature some fresh footage not seen in either.
Maybe you’re the type of person who would like to avoid that at all costs, and leave as much of the movie for your actual viewing of the movie as possible. If that’s you, go away, you should have never have clicked/tapped this far into the post, what could you have possibly have been expecting.
If, however, you do not care, and realise that there will be 90-120 minutes of Mario movie and what difference does seeing another few seconds make, then welcome.
As spotted by Go Nintendo, this Dutch TV commercial—it’s subtitled, all the dialogue is in English—that runs for 31 seconds is pretty much all new footage, showing Mario getting introduced to life in the Mushroom Kingdom, particularly their public transport system, which seems incredibly efficient:
While this 21-second Spanish commercial has even more stuff, bookending the Luigi moustache scene from yesterday’s full trailer with some scenes featuring Mario and Peach:
I don’t know how many more of these are going to come out between now and the film’s release in 2023, but there can’t be too many, otherwise like I alluded to above, we’ll be getting close to actually having seen large parts of the movie by then.
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Anyway, if you missed yesterday’s big trailer—which featured some karting, some gladiatorial combat and Donkey Kong’s ass—you can catch up and watch it here.
Luke Plunkett
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When Nintendo uploaded the first promotional image for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, fans were quick to clown on the plumber for his concave ass. The looming question on everyone’s mind was whether or not Mario’s one-time nemesis Donkey Kong would have his ass nerfed too. Thankfully, DK has enough junk in the trunk to make up for Mario’s shortcomings. Yes, it’s going to be that kind of blog.
Yesterday, Nintendo premiered the second Super Mario Bros. Movie trailer. Outside of being a better trailer than the first one by virtue of it featuring a girlboss Princess Peach and a cavalcade of easter egg references for fans to comb over, it also came with the added bonus of Donkey Kong doing to Mario what a majority of viewers want to do to Chris Pratt’s voice: beating the daylights out of it. But we’re not here to talk about Chris Pratt’s voice, I already did that. We’re here to talk about Donkey Kong’s badonkadonk.
If you weren’t too busy cheering for Donkey Kong straight jobbing Mario in a bout of fisticuffs, chances are your curious eyes wandered toward the derrière of the caked-up barrel-throwing ape. Truly, any and all crimes Illumination Studios committed by unleashing the Minions upon humanity hath been redeemed thanks to the authenticity it brought to Kong’s glorious ass. Illumination even gave Kong a snatched waist to boot, so you know old boy can throw that thang back around in a circle like the best of them. But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what fans had to say about DK’s ass online.
“Thank christ, they keep his clappers,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Damn— Donkey Kong is double cheeked up, hella ass, the sun is still out,” wrote another.
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“Not feeling it, but Donkey Kong has the butt. So at least, if nothing else, they got that right,” another observed.
“He’s gonna carry the twerking scene,” another replied.
The jury is still out on there being a twerking scene in The Super Mario Bros. Movie but if the Minions presenting their TicTac asses for their promotional material is anything to go by, chances are we’re at least gonna get more than a cheeky side angle of Kong’s booty meat when the movie finally hits theaters on April 7.
Isaiah Colbert
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