Mario's first Nintendo Switch outing is one of his best yet. We highlight five secrets and surprises to look for in this epic platformer.
By Damien McFerran
7 min readPublished on
Mario's first outing on the Switch, Super Mario Odyssey, launches this week, and it's pretty special. With his magical cap companion Cappy in tow, Nintendo's mascot embarks on a worldwide quest to save his beloved Princess Peach from the clutches of his nemesis, the evil Bowser. From this familiar setup you may well assume that the title differs very little from previous outings, but you'd be wrong – Super Mario Odyssey is absolutely jam-packed with surprises to uncover and secrets to find. We've highlighted five of our favourites below – don’t worry, these are gentle pointers towards them rather than outright spoilers.
Once upon a time, collecting coins in Mariogames was actually a worthwhile pastime. For score-chasers, they were a vital means of boosting your personal best and gaining some bragging rights over fellow players, and for every 100 spinning gold discs you collected, an additional life was awarded. The risk of nabbing hard-to-reach currency was just about acceptable, given that a spare life at a tricky point later on would come in very handy indeed. However, in more recent Mario titles the need for additional lives has diminished thanks to unlimited continues, and as a result the humble coin collectable has seen its stature plummet – until now, that is. Coins are finally worth seeking out again in Super Mario Odyssey, curiously enough because they can be used to – you know – buy stuff. Coinage can be exchanged for new outfits, Power Moons, stickers for your ship, The Odyssey and much more besides at the various shops which are found dotted around the levels. Not only that, but they're also used in place of lives – when you die, you simply lose a handful of coins and restart. These subtle changes finally make coins worth bothering with again, and that's something we applaud.
When you think Super Mario, iconic power-ups like the Mushroom and Fire Flower may well spring to mind. The original NES game popularised the use of special items in platforming games, and even the "Super" in Super Mario comes from the idea that once he had greedily consumed a mushroom, our hero would become bigger, stronger and more powerful. Amazingly, Super Mario Odyssey jettisons such series mainstays entirely; you don't have any power-ups to find. Instead, Cappy – Mario's sentient headgear – is capable of possessing other characters, enemies and even inanimate objects, allowing Mario to control them.
This means gaining abilities such as swimming as a fish, flying in the form of a winged Dry Bones or even hammer-hurling as a Hammer Brother, depending on what's being possessed at any given time. A Mario game without any obvious power-ups might sound like sacrilege, but Cappy's talents more than make up for this; there are more special skills to uncover here that in any other Mario game ever made. Finding them all is a challenge in itself, and there are more than a few delightful surprises and secrets hidden in there – many of which allow you to find other secrets hidden deep within the game. When possessing a molten ball of lava you can access parts of the map previously off-limits, for example, and when you're a frog you're able to leap much higher than Mario would be able to normally, which is handy for finding hidden coins on tall structures.
Despite the radical changes introduced in Super Mario Odyssey, this is still a game mindful of its proud legacy. Take the neat little retro segments, which adapt The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds' wall painting idea and transform entire stages into old-school NES levels. Hop down a pixelated pipe and you're suddenly in a flat 8-Bit world, a neat visual trick which never grows old, and shows Nintendo is very conscious of its past. You'll also find pixel-based representations of characters from Mario's previous adventure, Super Mario 3D World, dotted around the nooks and crannies of each level – usually off the beaten track, as is the case in the Wooden Kingdom, where Cat Peach is waiting for you to find her – and these hand out restorative items which help no end. Finally, there's a moment towards the end of the game – the full context of which we won't spoil, naturally – which takes Mario on a whistle-stop tour through his past adventures. The average gamer playing Super Mario Odyssey may not have been alive when Mario took his first steps back in the '80s, but this game gleefully celebrates his past regardless. Heck, even the infamous Hammer Bros. make a return at one point.
Samurai Mario doesn’t just look cool – he’s essential to progress
Much has been made of Mario's ability to change his clothes in Super Mario Odyssey, but costume changes aren't just a visual trick – they have an impact on the gameplay, too. The range of different outfits is incredible, with pirate suits, builder's uniforms (lifted from Super Mario Maker, naturally) and even a pair of boxer shorts on offer – the latter giving players the chance to scoot around each level with a near-naked Mario brother. These are obtained using standard gold coins or the rarer purple variety, which are unique to each level. Running around dressed as a snappy New York musician (complete with pin-stripe suit) is a blast, but you'll notice that several locked doors dotted around each kingdom cannot be opened unless you're wearing the right gear; for example, on one of the later stages you need to be dressed as a samurai, while in New Donk City it's impossible to enter a building unless you're in safety attire. Finding the purple coins needed to purchase these elusive outfits triggers another obsession, but there's a tangible reason for a trip to the wardrobe – you simply can't see everything the game has to offer unless you grab them all.
Mario games have, of late, been somewhat deceptive when it comes to the amount of time it takes to finish them. Sure, with a degree of effort you may see the end credits for Super Mario Odyssey in the space of a day or two, but – as the game itself freely admits – that's barely half the overall picture. Brand-new levels are opened up once you finish the game, which has become something of a tradition in Mario platformers of late.
However, what you might overlook is that additional Power Moons in levels you’ve already visited are also activated, ones that you can't reach on your first play-through. Furthermore, unless you've been incredibly careful, you're unlikely to have found every available Power Moon and purple coin on your initial run, which means days and even weeks of painstaking searching before you can truly consider the quest to be complete. The post-game in Super Mario Odyssey packs in more content than most other games do in their entirety. Speaking of which.
Play the post-game challenge. Just trust us.
If you're not convinced by all of the cool features above, then we could mention the fact that Mario dances to the various boomboxes which dot the landscape, or that he can ride a moped around certain stages, or that the game features a photo mode which allows you to apply filters to your images. But really, what you need to know is this: the post-game challenge revisits a certain fan-favourite level from a certain classic Mario game. This alone makes this amazing game worth playing, but we’ll let you uncover this one for yourself.
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