UPDATE
Did you help make the remake sell better than the original? Which version do you prefer? Let us know below!
ORIGINAL STORY
There were several significant releases by Nintendo during 2023 that helped “change the game,” if you will, for fans. We all know about the love that Link’s latest adventure got and how many awards it got due to its quality, but Mario had a few titles to show off, too. In October, his “Wonder-filled” adventure was a Game of the Year nominee and helped set a tone for the franchise’s future. Then, less than a month later, the remake of Super Mario RPG arrived. This was a full-on remake of the SNES title and an adventure that gamers had wanted to play in “modern form” for decades.
The original title was a collaboration between Nintendo and Square and was a rather form of “teaming up” during the early days of consoles. The game was Mario’s first RPG adventure, and they did things with the character, his allies, enemies, and his kingdom that other games hadn’t dreamed of doing before. The game wasn’t just a hit; it became one of the iconic titles of the system and helped create a new RPG-themed franchise on the Nintendo 64.
But the question was, with the Super Mario RPG Remake, would it do well sales-wise? The answer is an emphatic “yes.” As noted by VGC, Nintendo dropped sales info for the title, and by the end of 2023, it had sold 3.14 million units. Why is that impressive? Well, selling that many units for a 25-year-old remake is impressive, but it’s also impressive because the lifetime sales of the SNES version were just 2.14 million.
That means that the game not only outsold the original but it’ll keep “growing the gap” as time passes. After all, the Switch now has 139 million units sold, and not everyone likely bought it during the original release period. Thus, it could easily get up to 4 million, if not beyond, with enough time in 2024.
The real story here is the game’s success as a whole. By that, we mean how gamers were still interested in this game after two decades of waiting and how new gamers clearly wanted to “see what the hype was about.” This might be a key thing for Nintendo to know going into the “final year” of the Switch while also preparing for their next console arrival.
There are several SNES and N64 titles that gamers would love to see given a remake treatment, and with sales like this happening for such titles, the chances of getting them go up.
