Please, Nintendo, let Mario take on more mature genres

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I find it virtually impossible to get mad at Mario games. The fact they’re pretty good most of the time definitely helps, and even when the franchise is running in circles, the final products never fail to put a smile on my face. Nintendo truly cares about the quality of its most famous IP, and the spinoffs other studios put out. But what about taking risks? That’s a different story altogether.

Mario is safe. Too safe. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: yes, Mario has dressed up to tackle several sports, organized plenty of parties, become a top racer, and even let many of his friends lead their own spinoffs – whether that’s to find ancient treasure, or to explore haunted mansions. These experiments translated into rapid explorations of a bunch of different genres, with most of them finding a decent amount of success. The most famous and accessible experiments quickly became mainstay series for Nintendo, but – at some point – experimentation kind of stagnated and was replaced by an endless loop of sequels: Mario Party, Mario Kart, Mario [insert sport], Paper Mario… and of course, the mainline 2D/3D games. All cute and fun, but you had to wonder whether Mario could become something more.

Perhaps Luigi’s Mansion, a kid-friendly riff on horror games, always felt like the predecessor to the more out-of-the-box approach the Mario + Rabbids games (perfect introductions to tactical RPGs) have taken. If you start to wonder what the franchise could do outside of its comfort zone (genres and premises you can sell to pretty much anyone), you realize there’s an entire world of possibilities out there for the Mushroom Kingdom and its citizens.

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