Nintendo did not need to reinvent Mario. It needed to let him loose.
KEY FACTS
– Title: Super Mario Odyssey
– Developer / Publisher: Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 8 / Nintendo
– Released: October 27, 2017
– Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
– Genre: 3D platformer, action-adventure
– Mode: Single player, co-operative
– Score: 9.7/10
Cappy Is a Hat and That Is the Whole Game
The best idea in Super Mario Odyssey is a hat. Cappy is a Bonneter — one of the sentient hat-like creatures of the Cap Kingdom — whose sister Tiara was taken by Bowser to serve as Peach’s wedding tiara. When Bowser shreds Mario’s cap in the propellers of his airship, Cappy takes its shape and hands Mario his whole moveset.
That moveset is the capture. Throw Cappy at an enemy, an object or a creature and Mario possesses it. A Goomba stack. A Bullet Bill, to fly across gaps. A Tyrannosaurus, to trample what stands in the way. A Spark Pylon, to climb electric wires. A Sherm tank, to fire at enemies and break blocks for passage.
No Mario game has handed the player this much range. The capture is not a gimmick bolted onto jumping. It is the spine of the design.
Fourteen Kingdoms and the Odyssey
Mario travels aboard the Odyssey, a hat-shaped airship, across 14 kingdoms. Power Moons fuel the ship and unlock the next destination. Checkpoint flags warp you back once activated.
The structure is a return, not a departure. Odyssey revives the open-ended, exploration-first platforming of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine after years of linear entries. Each kingdom is a diorama built to be combed, not sprinted.
Some zones drop Mario into a 2D side-scrolling view, a nod to the original Super Mario Bros. These flat sections land because they interrupt the roaming rather than replace it.
New Donk City and the Snow Kingdom
The kingdoms carry the game. New Donk City is a bustling metropolis of streets and rooftops. The Snow Kingdom is frozen peaks. The Cascade Kingdom, where Mario recovers the Odyssey, opens the journey. Bowser’s own kingdom closes the chase.
Nintendo built these places second. The team constructed gameplay prototypes first, then asked which setting fit each one, then designed more ideas around the location. That order shows. Every kingdom feels organized around a mechanic rather than decorated after the fact.
The Broodals — anthropomorphic rabbit wedding planners hired by Bowser — chase the same kingdoms, stealing a dress, a cake and a bouquet for the ceremony. They are the connective tissue between set pieces.
A Forced Wedding and a Trapdoor on the Moon
Bowser’s plan is a forced marriage, and the game never softens it. He kidnaps Peach from the Mushroom Kingdom and takes her aboard his airship. Mario, also aboard, fights briefly, is knocked off by Bowser’s hat, and falls into the Cap Kingdom.
The pursuit ends on the Moon. Mario and Cappy confront Bowser inside a cathedral. Bowser drops Mario through a trapdoor, and the real fight happens in the Moon’s interior. Bowser loses. Peach and Tiara go free.
Then the cavern collapses. It is the rare Mario ending that keeps moving after the rescue, and it earns the flight home.
Built for Core Fans, Not Casual Players
Development began in 2013, shortly after Super Mario 3D World. The team deliberately aimed Odyssey at the series’ core fans, a shift from Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario Run, which courted a more casual audience.
That choice defines the whole package. There is a co-operative mode, and an update added support for virtual reality through a Nintendo Labo VR kit. Motion controls on the Joy-Con can speed up certain actions, but the game plays fully with the Joy-Con attached to the console.
None of it feels like a requirement. The capture system, the kingdoms and the Moons carry the game without the extras.
What Holds Up and What Does Not
Super Mario Odyssey is the best argument yet that Nintendo still knows what to do with its oldest character. The capture ability gives Mario a vocabulary he never had, and the 14 kingdoms give that vocabulary somewhere to go. The return to Super Mario 64’s open design is not nostalgia. It is a correction.
The weak points are small. The flat 2D zones are a treat. The Broodals are serviceable villains rather than memorable ones. Motion controls add little.
What matters is the freedom. You can cross a kingdom by Bullet Bill, by T-Rex, by tank, or by the triple-jump and wall-jump Mario has always had. The game does not care which. It built a world wide enough for all of them.
This is a platformer with a real idea at its center, executed across 14 kingdoms. Nintendo began development in 2013, and the care shows in every capture.
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