Super Mario Run is a side-scrolling auto-running video game from Nintendo. The game was first announced by Nintendo's game designer and developer Shigeru Miyamoto on September 7th, 2016, at Apple's annual iPhone event, and was first released on December 15th, 2016 for iOS.
Super Mario has been one of Nintendo's mascots, and with Super Mario Run, the company enters the mobile gaming market with its franchise. The game represents the second mobile game under the DeNA partnership, and Nintendo's first mobile game to use its first-party characters.
With positive reviews from critics among criticisms, it became one of the fastest-growing app in iOS history.
In just 4 days after being launched in 10 languages in 150 countries, the game has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Closing the first week, Super Mario Run was seeing 50 million downloads.
The objective of the game is for the player to safely get Mario through the levels in the fastest time possible. They do this by controlling Mario as the character runs from left to right, jumping on his own passing gaps and obstacles. By taping the screen, players can make Mario jump further and higher.
Just like other side-scrolling games, Mario must jump over gaps, onto enemies and get coins.
The concept of the game was from the idea for Mario games on Wii where players need to control Mario in time to the rhythm of music. The game was also inspired by speedrunner. Built using Unity game engine by Unity Technologies, Super Mario Run uses a similar 2.5D graphics seen in Mario's previous title.
With three gameplay modes available, Super Mario Run was developed by several groups within the development team.
The achievement of Super Mario Run is compared to the smash-hit augmented-reality game Pokémon Go. The game by Niantic Labs has reached 25 million in 11 days. This is about a week more than what Nintendo needed. Super Mario Run made it far better than Pokémon Go from day one.
Despite its popularity, Nintendo's share price is going down since the first week the game was launched. This was a contrast to what had happened when Pokémon Go phenomenon began. The augmented-reality game has skyrocketed Nintendo’s stock, although the company had almost nothing to do with the game.
Some of the reasons are its controversially high price at $10 for the full version, and the required continuous internet access. This has led to roughly half its audience leaving bad reviews.
