An Apple a day keeps the Koopa away
Someone’d better check the skies for flying pigs, and someone should call up Hell to see how the weather is.
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, took the stage at the 2016 Apple press conference to announce Nintendo’s first proper game for the iOS platform: Super Mario Run. The game will be an endless runner title in the vein of Temple Run and Sonic Dash. Players tap Mario to make him jump over a variety of obstacles and enemies. The game will be a paid app (unlike Nintendo’s free-to-play Miitomo service), and is planned for a Holiday 2016 release and an Android release sometime in the future. Alongside this, Niantic, the developers of Ingress and Pokémon Go, announced that Pokémon Go will be coming to the Apple Watch by the end of 2016.
Pokémon Go coming to more Apple hardware isn’t especially surprising, and Nintendo has made clear their plans for future mobile games, but for Nintendo to directly develop a proper game for the platform is a pretty stunning turnaround for a company that once dismissed the mobile gaming scene altogether. Nintendo is running towards the future-whether it’s a wide open road or a dead end is yet to be seen.