Nintendo is reportedly sitting on four upcoming Mario games, that they have yet to officially reveal. Based on what these rumored titles are, they are probably still for the Nintendo Switch, and not its upcoming successor.
As reported by GameRant, the titles are a remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, a new Mario and Sonic at the Olympics title, a new Mario sports title, and a Mario 2D platformer.
This could mark the first time Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been rereleased since it was originally launched in 2004 on the Nintendo GameCube. Developed by Intelligent Systems, it is the last game in the Paper Mario series to be an RPG. It’s also widely considered to be the best game in the Paper Mario series, so it’s a very suitable game for a remaster, even at this late point in the Switch’s life cycle.
The Mario and Sonic at the Olympics titles are obviously planned around the real life Olympics themselves. The Summer Olympics are scheduled in Paris on July 26 to August 11, 2024, so it’s likely that this game is coming this holiday for that Olympics. While non canon, the prospect of Mario and Sonic characters competing in Olympic sports has been popular enough to make this a recurring series.
The upcoming Mario sports game is rumored to be a baseball game. If true, it will also be an odd return for Nintendo to a long dormant series. Mario has only had two baseball games thus far: Mario Superstar Baseball on the Gamecube in 2005, and Mario Super Sluggers on the Wii in 2008.
Notably, Mario’s baseball games did not make their way to Nintendo’s portable systems, the same way that Mario Golf or even Mario Tennis did. Between this and Nintendo’s woes with the Wii U, this long gap between releases is well accounted for.
We don’t know if Nintendo has evidence that there is renewed interest for a new Mario baseball game, but perhaps they are simply hoping the Switch’s success as a platform and high attach rate will buoy this game’s chances
Lastly, Nintendo has a strange dilemma when it comes to Mario’s 2D platformers. While you will hear quite loudly that hardcore fans don’t want to play 2D Mario platformers anymore, it is the core genre that made Mario famous.
Perhaps the bigger problem is that the team working on the New Super Mario series hadn’t pushed 2D Mario games as hard as they should have. A case can certainly be made that the New Super Mario games haven’t really made dense, enjoyably replayable game worlds in the same way that Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3 were.
The most enjoyable new idea in this space has been Super Mario Maker. Of course, we already have a Super Mario Maker 2 on the Nintendo Switch. It sounds more like this upcoming 2D Mario will be in the New Super Mario Bros series. If so, we can hope that the Mario team has new ideas to shakeup this slice of Mario games.
None of these games sound like they were intended for the next Nintendo console. Rather, they seem to be nicely planned Mario games for the potential new Mario fans after the release of the Super Mario Bros Movie. Nintendo has likely kept mum on these games for after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
If their past behavior is any indication, these games are big enough that they would warrant announcement at a bigger event, possibly the Nintendo Digital Event for E3 Week.
Keep reading GameRanx for more updates on these and other Nintendo games.
