Never let it be said that Nintendo didn’t take Super Mario‘s 35th birthday seriously. 2020 saw a lot of pretty huge announcements that a lot of fans had cause to be excited about. For a long time, fans dreamt of playing nostalgic Super Mario classics on the Switch, and that’s just what Super Mario 3D All-Stars enabled. For a lot of younger fans of the franchise, it was their first chance to play Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine, so it really made an impact on the community to see just how far Mario and company had come. Super Mario 3D All-Stars and all the other exclusive events and merchandise released specifically for this anniversary will certainly stay close to fans’ hearts for a long time.
However, the time to celebrate Mario’s anniversary has come and gone. 2021 is a big year of its own. Nintendo has The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon‘s anniversaries to think about, and it’s already given its fans a taste of what’s in store. The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon‘s gain comes at Super Mario‘s loss, though. Nintendo is shutting down and abandoning some Super Mario projects that really seem like they could’ve kept running a little longer. Unless it has a sudden and unorthodox change of heart, it looks like Nintendo is committed to cutting Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35 short at the end of March.
Nintendo was up front about the ends of these games. When Super Mario 3D All-Stars was announced, Nintendo notified fans that the game’s production would be a very limited run. Production of the physical copy of the game will cease at the end of March. What’s more, it won’t be available on the Nintendo eShop after March either. Fans still have time to secure a copy of the game if they haven’t been able to yet, but by the end of the year, odds are physical copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars will be really hard to find. The physical game seems like a collector’s item in the making.
3D All-Stars isn’t all that’ll stop production by April. The quirky Mario-themed battle royale Super Mario Bros. 35 will go offline at the end of the month. While it may not have been quite as big a hit as 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. 35 still remains a fun, free Super Mario experience for fans to kill a little time with. If the physical cartridge of 3D All-Stars is destined to become a collector’s item, Switches with Super Mario Bros. 35 downloaded on them might be something of a collector’s item too, even if the game is defunct. The same goes for a lot of other Super Mario merchandise that’ll cease production at the end of March, like the anniversary’s official T-shirt and the Super Mario Game and Watch.
It’s unfortunate that Nintendo is leaving all these things behind after fans got such a kick out of them. However, on a certain level, it’s not surprising. A lot of these games and merchandise were created specifically to celebrate the event, and were never intended to be long-term projects for the company. Part of what makes Super Mario Bros. 35 special is that it was a limited time experience that fans could share to celebrate Super Mario‘s legacy before Nintendo moves forward and focuses on Mario’s future again. Even if all these things are going out of production, Mario isn’t going anywhere. After six months in the spotlight, Nintendo is simply ready to focus on its other projects.
The broad scope of Nintendo’s Super Mario extravaganza ought to bode well for the aforementioned anniversaries of 2021. Pokemon already has bright things in its future, including long-awaited remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl and a brand new open-world experience of the Sinnoh region. The Legend of Zelda already has Age of Calamity DLCs and a Skyward Sword remake coming up while fans are still looking forward to coveted Breath of the Wild 2 news. Nintendo really went all out for its plucky plumber, and understandably so, seeing how far he’s taken Nintendo. It’s probable that Nintendo is feeling the same kind of gratitude towards these other franchises. It’s a shame that Super Mario‘s anniversary is coming to an end, but it was certainly fun while it lasted.
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