In a big move from Nintendo, both Reggie Fils-Aimé (Nintendo of America President and COO) and Super Mario Run and The Legend Of Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto rocked up to The Tonight Show this week to debut demo both Super Mario Run and the Nintendo Switch for the first time. Host Jimmy Fellon was frothing at the gusset to get his hands on both, screaming “I’m geeking out” over and over again in a Beatles fan girl from the early 1960s style when Reggie took to the stage.
Fallon’s giddy chirruping aside, both the Switch and Mario Run look pretty amazing and you can see all in action for yourself in the video below. Reggie also confirmed that Nintendo would be announcing much more detail about the launch of the Switch on the 12th January 2016, which we’ll be covering on the day, and that you’ll be able to demo Run in Apple Stores this week, ahead of the release date on the 15th December.
Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Run demo debut:
In case you’ve been trapped under a cow for the last few months or you’re just a bit out of the loop on it all, the Nintendo Switch is the next gen games console from Nintendo that combines home gaming with hand held fun in a move that creates the holy grail of computer games. Super Mario Run, on the other hand, is the little plumber’s first adventure in mobile and tablet app form. You can read more about either by clicking on the links for each above.
In addition to getting to see a little teaser demo of Super Mario Run on an iPhone and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild on the Switch, it also gave us a little taster for some of the features that each will have. There wasn’t anything new as such, but it did give Nintendo fans a chance to see what they’d only read about previously up and running on The Tonight Show’s big screen of gaming love.
For Run, it was good to see some of the gameplay mechanics. This included the auto run, simple jumps, wall climb jumps, slides and blue arrow jumps to get to harder to reach ledges. Reggie also showed a little of the gameplay options screens from the game, to give us a glimpse at the three modes: World Tour, the single-player side-scrolling run through; Toad Rally, where you get to race against other gamers in a coin collecting speed challenge; and Mario Kingdom, where you build your own Mario world on your iPhone or iPad.
In terms of the Nintendo Switch, it was less about the console and more about the flagship game, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, which will also be coming to the Wii U. However, we did get to see Jimmy going from standard console mode to hand held mobile gaming and it was very slick.
It was good to see a little more of the action from the new Zelda game too, which featured everything from nudging a rock off a cliff to take out baddies down below to the genius of the shield slide. There’s also a very brief moment of gliding, mention of the food scavenging to build up your life hearts in the game and the sheer expanse of the open world environment. It all adds even more excitement to what’s starting to look like it’s going to be Nintendo’s year.
