Mario Kart Tour, Switch Online, and Mario Movie

1) Mario Kart Mobile app tweet here: https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/958876622517452801
2) Nintendo Switch Online tweet: https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/958872936257019904
3) Mario movie announced: https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/958878633652731904

I'm mostly more interested in Switch Online more than anything else.

 

Nintendo's general inability to provide a decent online service is something I fear will carry over to the Switch...especially since they've been talking about NES/SNES titles, and given the fiasco with voice chat and smartphone apps. Maybe between now and September they'll be able to develop something passable, but I won't be holding my breath.

Also, where the hell is the Switch Virtual Console, Nintendo. You're sitting on a goldmine of past titles. You have been since you started the Nintendo eShop services. It's time you stopped messing that up and started delivering.

 

So not sure about the Switch Online thing, don't have enough information on it at the moment, but I think the MK Mobile version looks like it will be good so I'm personally excited for it to be released.

My opinion on the Mario Movie is the exact opposite, I have no faith in it whatsoever. Mario just isn't one of those games that can become a movie due to it's playstyle, it's almost impossible to keep that same feel which is what most people want from a video game movie. I am open to being proved wrong though.

 

I also do not have much faith in a Mario movie, but I'm open to Nintendo pleasantly surprising me nonetheless!

 

I can already hear the tremors and fear from the people who don't want to spend twenty USD a year for online service setting their clocks

Also I'm literally going to agree with the above two points regarding a Mario Movie: there's a certain psychology that makes video game movies really bad and I'm willing to bet my cats and all my mismatched socks will be no different from any other video game movie. And why Mario? The only plot I can see coming from a Mario Movie is "Peach gone find her defeat Bowser cake time" which isn't that original, now is it?

 

I still feel like a new Mario TV show might be worth it since I can still see that working. However, I'm not so sure about another film. On one hand, I am kind of wondering how this could turn out. After all, it's been ages since Nintendo greenlit a Mario adaptation, which tells me they must have a LOT of faith in this. I have also heard they're actually going to monitor the creation of the film to make sure it fits the tone and spirit of the franchise. That said, though, so far, the Mario Adventures manga is the only Mario adaptation that really works. I may get some enjoyment out of the old cartoons, but I'm not gonna pretend those were legitimately good. Same goes for the Mario anime film. I loved that movie in my teens but now all I see are problems that prevent it from being legitimately good.

Of course, then there's the elephant in the room. The studio giving us this film is Illumination. Now, for what it's worth, I have not jumped on the hate bandwagon for this studio. Personally, so far, I feel like their films have ranged from enjoyable enough for me to give them a pass to maybe one or two that I can honestly call great. (And I'll admit, Sing is one of those two. I felt like the characters more than made up for the tired story) The only thing I know for certain will be in this film is some sort of minions-type group. I don't know if it'll be the goombas, the toads, the koopas or, heck, all of Bowser's minions since they're, well, minions, but you know they're gonna be in there. Even Secret Life of Pets and Sing, while those didn't put a big emphasis on it, still managed to squeeze minions-type characters into them. They just got so little focus I hardly noticed. (That and the kids from Sing struck me less as minions clones and more as typical annoying movie children) Even so, the only thing I can really expect from this studio is great animation, but I also expect lots of over-the-top humor. For everything else, not sure.

I guess part of the reason I may have more faith in this than most, though, is partly because of 2016. While I can't call the video game adaptations that came out that year great, they were a step-up from what you typically get from North America. Yes, Ratchet and Clank wasted a lot of its potential by just slapping together the cutscenes from the latest installment prior to its release and edited them slightly, but it came close to capturing the franchise's spirit. Angry Birds may not have worked as an adaptation, but as its own stand-alone thing, it was surprisingly fun. And Warcraft, okay, if it wasn't for the dull human characters, I'd honestly consider that a great adaptation. Because of this, I feel like American studios are starting to get it. They haven't quite mastered it, but I think they're slowly starting to realize what makes roughly half of Japan's video game adaptations actually work. I guess it also helps that I've been pleasantly surprised so many times ever since I obligated myself to watching every animated film to hit theaters where I live, so I'm hoping this could at least be a good adaptation. I'm not expecting the first truly great one from North America, but I'm hoping it'll at least be good.

 

Just saying...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._(film)