My very brief journey playing Super Mario Bros 35

Developer: Arika
Available on: Nintendo Switch

Alongside Super Mario 3D All Stars, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros 35, a battle royale in which players compete to see who’s the best at the original Super Mario Bros. Like Super Mario 3D All Stars, Super Mario Bros 35 will no longer be available after March 31st, although in this case the servers for it are also going down, meaning no one will be able to play it altogether.

The game itself is free, but you have to have a Nintendo Switch Online membership in order to play. The morning it came out, I decided to download it and give it a shot.

Super Mario Bros 35 plays out very similar to Tetris 99. Each match has 35 players and they all start in World 1-1. When you complete a level, you’re immediately sent to the next one. Players start out with 35 seconds on their clock. Defeating enemies adds time to your clock, and clones of those enemies appear on other players’ screens, giving them more threats to deal with. You can also purchase power-ups by spending coins. When a player dies, they’re eliminated from the match. Last player standing wins.

The first time I played this game, I died to the first goomba. We don’t need to talk about it.

The second time I played this game, I made it a little further. It was then that I learned levels don’t necessarily go in order. 

Before starting the match, players pick a level out of each of the levels in the original Super Mario Bros and everyone’s choice is added to the pool of levels that can appear. However, you start out with only World 1-1 unlocked. To unlock other levels, you have to come across and complete them in a match. I’m not really a fan of this system as it’s not very intuitive, and it doesn’t encourage picking more difficult and interesting levels.

Each match always starts at World 1-1, and typically you go to World 1-2 afterwards. If you go to the warp zone of 1-2, you get to choose between a few different levels to warp to, often including World 1-1, which you will of course pick because it’s the easiest level. Because of this, you often end up spending 90% of your time in World 1-1 and World 1-2.

The controls itself feel like the original Super Mario Bros and not like Super Mario Maker, where they were improved. I don’t mind this decision though.

I’m a veteran of Mario games, so it didn’t take me very long to start making it to the top 5 consistently. In Tetris 99, when you make it to the top 5, you can pretty much count on the match being over within 60 seconds. That’s because as players are eliminated, blocks begin falling faster, and when there’s only 5 players left, they begin falling so fast you basically have no hope of controlling it. 

Super Mario Bros 35, however, doesn’t have nearly as intense of a ramp up. When you make it to the top 5 in Super Mario Bros 35, you’re only halfway done with the match. At that point you’ve simply narrowed it down to people who don’t just die at the first hard jump. It doesn’t become a contest of who can make the hardest jumps or navigate the most difficult situations, but rather who can endure easy levels the longest. At this point, most of the enemies you kill and send to others end up helping them more than hurting them as they’re very easy to kill and it gives them more time on their clock. This especially holds true when they have a fire flower; with it you’re capable of easily mowing down everything in your path.

Eventually though, I made it to the top 2. I kept going, even sending Bowsers and hammer bros in my lone opponent’s direction. My heart was pounding. After at least 3 minutes of running forward and begging for my opponent to make a bad jump, the screen froze. My heart stopped at this moment as it happened just as I took a (non-lethal) hit. Then, the screen declaring that I had gotten first place appeared. It was my first ever win in any battle royale game. I relished in my victory and bragged about it to my friends.

Then, I never played Super Mario Bros 35 again.