Oh, sorry, should’ve said DOUG Bowser, as in the Nintendo of America President. Sorry for the confusion. But anyway, when certain announcements were made this year one thing got a LOT of people’s attention. Mainly, that titles like Super Mario 3D All-Stars, the Mario Kart: Home Circuit set and the Game & Watch version of Super Mario Bros was going to be discontinued by March 2021.
This seemed like a bad thing to many games, especially after Super Mario 3D All-Stars went and crushed it in the sales and the other games have been hits in their own right. So why did they do this? Well, Doug Bowser talked about this in an interview with Polygon:
“Yeah, I think I use a simple word: celebration. It just – this is a celebration of Mario’s 35th anniversary. And we wanted to celebrate in unique and different ways, and we’ve done that through games like Super Mario 3D All-Stars, or we will be doing that through future releases, such as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.
And then we’ve also done it through releases such as Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros., or through Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. There are various ways that we’re celebrating Mario’s 35th. And with some of these titles, we felt it was an opportunity to release them for a limited period of time. They’ve done very, very well. Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold over 2.6 million units in the U.S. alone. And so clearly, consumers have been able to jump in and enjoy that. And it’s not strategy that we’re going to be using widely, but it’s one we thought was very unique for the actual anniversary.”
It is unique, we won’t lie, but it seems kind of detrimental, especially for Super Mario 3D All-Stars that has a lot of appeal as an evergreen title. But this Nintendo’s decision, for better or for worse.
