Today we published an article about the decision to not make Princess Peach a “damsel in distress” for The Super Mario Bros Movie, but that same Variety interview has some other gems in it too. Particularly, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto was asked when we can expect the next new Super Mario video game, so he gave an amusing non-answer: Just keep watching Nintendo Direct presentations.
Specifically, Variety asked, “Now that we have the movie and Super Nintendo World amusement park, when can we expect a new Mario game?” Miyamoto responded, “Well, all I can say is please stay tuned for future Nintendo Directs,” and then he laughed kind of hard. It’s practically a case of (friendly) trolling from Miyamoto, and under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t constitute news at all. But considering the fact that Nintendo has had basically nothing to say about a brand new Super Mario game on Nintendo Switch since the Bowser’s Fury portion of the Super Mario 3D World remaster in 2021, we kind of have to cling to these scraps.
There was a rumor that a new 2D Super Mario game is in development, but it’s only that — a rumor. It could prove to be nothing, and there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance at this point that the next new Super Mario game will be exclusive to a Nintendo Switch successor console. The only way to know for sure is to keep watching Nintendo Direct like Shigeru Miyamoto suggests.