Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mahn | Hacker News Reader

Call me cynical, but I still don't believe that you can clone a endless runner game, slap Mario on it, and expect it to be successful on mobile. I get that it's a big deal that Nintendo and Super Mario are coming to mobile, but as soon as the novelty of the news is off I think they'll face a pretty major reality check.

View on HN

> Call me cynical, but I still don't believe that you can clone a endless runner game, slap Mario on it, and expect it to be successful on mobile.

Nintendo has a history of taking existing genres they don't have much experience in, making it their own, and releasing really compelling games. Pikmin for RTSes, Splatoon for FPSes, etc. I don't think they're going to half-ass it.

Those 2 aren't really successful franchises.

Splatoon is the 6th best selling Wii U title so far, and seems likely to overtake most of the ones above it, which are between 6 months to 2.5 years older. It represents 5% of all Wii U games sold to date, and has reportedly sold faster in Japan than anything since Wii Sports (2006).

Sounds quite successful to me, though of course it's still only a bit over a year old so who knows if it'll last.

Wii U though? Seriously?

Yes? There are more than 10M of them.

It's also in the top 20 of Wii/Wii U games combined.

Oh but you can. You can almost argue that we've settled for every other endless runner game only because it sort-of reminded us of Mario and ultimately, we've just been itching to play a Mario runner on our phone this whole time, and that's all we've ever wanted.

Look at the graphics of Flappy Bird and tell me it's not inspired by Mario.

Reuse of graphic assets from a game doesn't always mean the new game was inspired by the game the assets came from.

It isn't an endless runner. It has actual hand-crafted levels, like Rayman Jungle Run, which is much better than any endless runner I've ever played. With Nintendo's level designers, I expect it to be pretty fun.

I've noticed that both here and on reddit there's a vocal population that is really upset that this is being called an "infinite runner" because if the non-procedural and therefore not infinite nature.

It feels kind of like arguing about hacker and cracker.

The reason I brought it up is because Nintendo's level design is fantastic. I expect the levels to be varied and interesting, unlike most endless runners. My comment's parent was specifically talking about the novelty wearing off, and well-crafted levels don't rely entirely on novelty for fun.

I didn't mean to say that I disagreed with your conclusion about level design mattering a ton, I was just commenting on nomenclature and how it seems to be coming up with this. Most people seem to call Rayman Jungle Run an infinite runner too.

I think the Mario IP combined with an App Store feature, which it is almost certain to get, should give it respectable enough download numbers for Nintendo to consider it a success. Endless runner games historically don't monetise as well as other genres so allowing the user to trial the game then pay a fee for full access might work out better for them than if they had went the micro-transaction route. The decision to include the one off payment would suggest to me that they don't see it as an ever-green game with monthly updates like Pokemon Go and expect it to have a much shorter life.

Did Pokemon even get featured on the App Store? Once your name recognition is big enough, traditional marketing is just rounding error.

It did, but long after it was already popular.

I can't remember for certain if it got a banner feature but I think it did.I agree though that it had very little effect on the success of Pokemon GO as a large amount of people downloaded when it was still in soft launch phase and before it was properly featured by Apple.

Just checked and here in the UK Super Mario Run already has a banner feature and is top of the new games we love section despite not being available yet to play yet

It already is featured in the App Store (with a "notify me when this becomes available" instead of buy button)

The whole point of this for them is to promote their Mario games on their systems. (Like what Pokemon Go did for Pokemon on the 3DS.) It's basically today's equivalent of the Super Mario Super Show.

I would agree...except that it's Nintendo. Especially if Miyamoto himself was involved, I suspect it's going to be spectacular in ways I'm not currently imagining.

I'm generally a fan of Nintendo/Mario and the video of gameplay looked like it might have hidden depths. Have to wait for the reviews I guess.

Endless runners seem to enjoy good success. Anything with Mario slapped on it enjoys huge success, be it party games, sport games, platform games etc. For now, Mario is missing (pun intended) on the smartphones.

Seems to me that this is a winning combination for a HUGE success.

I mean it worked for Pokemon Go. Take a mediocre game, slap a beloved IP on it, and it prints money. The novelty obviously has worn off quite a bit, although I think that has a lot to do with the unresponsiveness of the developers and slow bug fixing.

A billion downloads for Super Mario Run is a pretty realistic estimate, I think.

Of course there will always by cynics calling that a failure, whatever the percentage of buyers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com