Nintendo has always prided itself on being at the forefront of the video game industry, but the company has been notoriously slow to adapt to the mobile gaming market. It took until this past spring for its first app, Miitomo, to debut for iOS and Android, with the slow pace causing unrest among shareholders. Miitomo isn’t even a game—it’s more of a social networking app that made very little impact on users. But now it looks like the company is finally all-in on mobile gaming, as it has officially announced that this December will see the debut of Super Mario Run for iOS.
The title was announced by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto during today’s Apple event. As reported by The Verge, Miyamoto showed a demo of the game, which, contrary to the title, isn’t just a clone of the countless infinite run games available on mobile. Instead, the demo showed a player jumping, stomping, and sprinting through a traditional-looking Mario level with graphics similar to the more recent DS titles.
Since this was one of the big reveals at the Apple event, there is of course some important news for iOS lovers. Super Mario Run will be available exclusively through The App Store before being available on Android. When that happens is a mystery, as Kotaku is reporting that Nintendo only said, “We do intend to release the game on Android devices at some point in the future.”
Kotaku also has footage of the reveal and gameplay from Super Mario Run, which you can watch in the video below:
September 7, 2016 – 7:15pm