There are three things that you should know about me before we dive into this feature. 1) I am, to all intents and purposes, a 'grown-up'. 2) I do not have any children, nor any tiny relatives to test this app on. 3) I'm a sucker for a bit of N64 nostalgia.
Keeping these first two points in mind, you might assume that Hello, Mario! — Nintendo's new Japan-only mobile/Switch app, laser-focused on pulling some sensory smiles out of a new generation of Mario fans — was not made for me. You would be right. I've spent 20 minutes with it, seen all that it has to offer, and it's unlikely that I'll ever open it again. But that doesn't mean that there aren't some smiles to be had for the old and wizened like myself, even if I am very much not the target market.
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First, some background information. Hello, Mario! marks the beginning of Nintendo's expansion project into the untapped world of toddler fandom. I mean, come on, those babies are just sitting there, without a single piece of Mushroom Kingdom merch on them! The horror!
This 'My Mario' line has wormed its way into a bunch of different avenues already, from books and wooden blocks (which double as amiibo, because you're never too young for some NFC goodness) to stop-motion animated shorts, but Hello, Mario! 'gameifies' the whole thing — and I use 'game' very loosely there.
For the most part, this is an interactive soundboard. Mario's ever-grinning face pops up in the middle of the screen, and you're free to squish and squash it in any way you please, all while he utters the general chorus of "Ooh!", "Haa!", and "Wa-Haa!" with every poke.
There's a small menu in the top left where you can choose to put Mario in a handful of different situations --beef him up with a Mushroom, bring on the rainbow with a Star, get inky with a Blooper, or hit the music block to see the prized plumber perform a rendition of an iconic tune while his surrounding shifts to an underwater scene or icon-filled backdrop.
Nintendo couldn't resist adding a little bit of 'game' to the whole affair. Spinning Mario's face in a circle or firing him through a pipe (also accessed from the menu) brings up a little bubble-popping challenge, where you can tap the bubbles or drag Mario's face into them, each pushing a counter up towards 100. Nothing outside of a small confetti burst happens when you reach triple-digits, but it's just enough to hit every beat in that 3-5-year age bracket, I suppose.
It's super simple and rather sweet. As anyone who ever spent an afternoon with the Super Mario 64 start screen will tell you, there's something in the unending positivity of Mario's smile that makes squashing his face feel... good. The app's 2D sprite is a lot cleaner and marginally less disturbing than its polygonal predecessor, but there's something in my human nature that means, given the opportunity, I have to pull his moustache and see his reaction.
There are even some surprises that cropped up as I poked and prodded Jumpman to hear his different responses. Repeatedly tapping his eyes makes him don a pair of shades, tickling his nose produces a big sneeze and results in a wacky 'tache, and leave him for long enough and he'll start to play peek-a-boo with you. It's all designed to get a chuckle out of little ones, but it'll get a little grin out of N64 fans, too.
After 10 minutes or so, Mario becomes sleepy, the music fades out, and the background is replaced by the night sky. The dozing face drops from the screen, and a message pops up telling you to close and reopen the app if you'd like to play again. It's a built-in measure for managing your kid's playtime, I'd assume, but it's also a neat way of wrapping things up.
If you can read that final message, then the app's not designed for you and you likely will have seen everything it has to offer by that point; if you can't read it...then what the heck are you doing here at the bottom of the feature?
Hello, Mario! is available to download now on Switch for anyone who can access the Japanese eShop, and it's also available on iOS and Android in Japan. There's no word on a wider release just yet, but we imagine it'll be coming soon.
Have you checked out Hello, Mario! yet? Let us know your thoughts so far in the comments.