I was able to play the Yoshi game’s demo. Unfortunately, it only seems to be the first level. I really enjoyed the first level though. It’s not hard at all, unlike the Kirby and the Forgotten Lands. And it didn’t put me to sleep like Kirby Allies did.
So I went with Walmart for physical editions of:
Yoshi
Mario Party Superstar
Luigi’s Mansion 3
Hopefully they will be good to enjoy and then re-gift one day.
I am more or less obsessed with Dungeon and Puzzles, perfect game in portable mode. It is a sokoban-like (?) game. Or pickup (weapons) and deliver (pain) to monsters.
the game is on sale now
It took me a week for Room 27 (I was doing some 20 minutes on and off every day)
You can get pretty fast to a solution, but to do it in the required steps for the gold crown ranking, that’s the challenge. I could do Room 27 in 31 steps, but getting it done in 30 steps drove me almost crazy.
Glad now, that I did not look up the solution.
I’m looking for suggestions on Mario games to buy.
My son (5 yrs old) loves the Lego superheroes games and is surprisingly good at them. I’d like to pick up some of the Mario platform games that are on sale. Any suggestions which ones would be best for a very young gamer? Right now I’m thinking Odyssey and one of Super Mario World 3D, Luigi’s Mansion, or New Super Mario Brothers U.
What does everyone think?
My 5 year old son loves Super Mario Odyssey. Super Mario 3D World not as much, we both loved Bowser’s Fury, which is included with that game. He loves Super Mario 3D All Stars, if you can still get your hands on it (it includes Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy).
I’ve had New Super Mario Bros U this whole time too, but he has never expressed interest in playing it on his own. I’ve kind of coaxed him into playing a couple of levels sometimes, but he’s as bad at the game as I am (and I’m really, really bad at 2D Mario games). Maybe if you, as his Dad, can show him how to do well in it, he’ll like it? I just don’t really grok 2D Mario games, unfortunately. They’re too hard for me.
He also enjoys Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker. Basically it’s a spinoff of Super Mario 3D World, which has these Captain Toad levels, but here it’s a whole game full of those Toad levels. It’s all about rotating the camera, which he’s really bad at, but since we play it cooperatively, I kind of handle that part so that it’s easier for him.
I secretly acquired Luigi’s Mansion 3, Yoshi’s spinoff game and Mario Party Superstars, which I’ll give him on his birthday next month. I hope those go over well, but I can’t really predict it before hand. I mean, I had no idea the Mario game he’d cling to the most would be Super Mario Sunshine. That’s the worst one! But you know, he loves it. And then after that, he’s returned to Super Mario Odyssey, which he is also obsessed with.
Looks like a bunch of them went on sale this weekend btw. Which is lucky. Odyssey is fantastic and is a pretty safe bet. I’m going to be grabbing Mario Party Superstars myself.
Thanks for the insight. I’m also terrible at 2d Mario games, so I think I’ll scratch those off this list. I’m glad to hear your son enjoys odyssey. I’ve played very few 3D Marios and wasn’t sure if they were as hard as the 2d ones.
The 3D Mario games are very user friendly! Unlike the 2D Mario games, they always assume that you’re new to the genre and ease you in. Mario Odyssey even has tutorials throughout the levels on how to do certain more advanced moves.
In that same thought, I thought I’d ask here about Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. It’s also on sale on Mario Day (today). I’m assuming that it’s 2D Gameplay will be just as hard for me as the 2D Mario games? I always assumed so, but I thought I’d ask, just to be sure. I don’t have problems with 2D platformers like the Ori games or Hollow Knight or games of that sort, but I do with the older Mario games and the new 2D Mario games, and the old Donkey Kong Country games, and the Spelunky games. These all seem super hard to me.
Take this with a grain of salt, because I never played any of the classic Donkey Kong Country games, but Tropical Freeze was extremely difficult for me. I’m also an Ori and Hollow Knight fan, and okayish at the 2D Marios, but Kong’s movement is very slow and the levels require incredible precision. I could tell it was well-made, but I did not care for it.
Ok, good. Thanks for the feedback! I will probably really suck at it also.
abrandt
4844
Yeah, Tropical Freeze was tough, which I recall being pretty close to how the original DKC games were.
CraigM
4845
My kids all loved 3D world, even though it does ramp up difficulty beyond their ability. But cat Mario is their jam, and Bowsers Fury is probably their favorite Mario experience.
Also don’t sleep on Paper Mario. Granted your little one probably can’t read, but it’s a fantastic game, and my kids did enjoy it.
I remember reading the Switch version of Tropical Freeze had some setting that made it a little easier than the original Wii version.
My nephews really loved 3D World (the youngest was around 5 I think when we played it), and I think it has a better co-op setup than the rest, although it’s been long enough I don’t remember exactly what set it apart.
Co-op in Mario Games
Super Mario Galaxy: One player controls Mario, the other controls an extra cursor on the screen that can be used to pick up star bits. Pretty poor co-op.
Super Mario Odyssey: One player controls Mario, the other control’s Mario’s hat. Better than Galaxy, but the person controlling the hat can get pretty frustrated about not being able to do enough. You can help Mario jump higher than in Single Player if you both press jump, which is neat. Better than Mario Galaxy, but still sub-par.
Super Mario 3D World: You each control a character! Mario and Luigi. Princess Peach & Toad. However you want to play. However, you can also have the 5 year old just jumping off cliffs, which drains your common life pool pretty fast. In my experience, this is potentially great fun for the 5 year old, but sometimes maddening to the adult, especially if you’re actually trying to finish the levels. How you manage this is obviously going to be up to the dynamic of the pairing. Sometimes we had great fun, other times I was tearing my hair out on the inside, which showed, and which frustrated him later too, because kids react emotionally to your emotions.
Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker: One player controls one Toad, another player controls a different toad. This works pretty well most of the time. Even though it’s a shared life pool, there’s not too many ways to die in Captain Toad, so frustration is usually kept to a minimum unless your kid starts messing with the camera. That will kill you pretty fast. If they don’t mess with the camera, the adult can handle most of the harder tasks just fine.
Bowser’s Fury: This has the best Co-op. One player controls Mario, the other player controls Bowser Jr. Bowser Jr can do some nifty stuff. He’s not just a Hat! But he can’t really get Mario killed. So frustration is kept low. And if the kid is controlling Mario, well, Bowser Jr can actually do lots of stuff to help! This, to me, is the gold standard in mario co-op.
CraigM
4849
The chaos is the fun.
My solution was to find the child most prone to jumping off cliffs, and pick them up and run around holding them. They found this hilarious.
Also the checkpoint system is very generous, and progress lost minimal. You only revert to the start of a level after continue.
This is brilliant.
There were lots of times when he would pick me up and throw me off a cliff. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to pick him up to keep him from jumping off the cliff.
But wait, I can pick him up and still finish the level somehow? Don’t I need my hands for other things?
My 5 year old drains lives about 5 times in 30 seconds, constrained only by the relatively long load times of the Nintendo Switch. So Continues are VERY common. Mostly we’d just have to start the level over. Now that he’s an older 5 year old, things have gotten much less hectic. Now he actually wants to finish levels sometimes, so it’s different.
When I was playing with my nephews I was always only ever there to help them, for as long as they maintained interest. If they were happy falling off cliffs (and they certainly were at times!) I was happy to keep helping if I could, but no one got too frustrated when we didn’t finish a level. I’d already played the game on my own so I didn’t care if we did the same levels over and over.
Not that I’m suggesting @Rock8man was approaching it wrong, just contextualizing my experience.
Maybe it helped that they had incredibly limited gaming experience in general, no doubt less than the average boys their age. It may get frustrating sooner if this is a more regular activity with a child instead of an occasional thing they got excited about when I would bring the Switch with me on a visit.
It’s definitely different when you’re going to a place with a console. I keep my Wii at my parents’ place, so when my nieces and nephews showed up there, we’d play Wii Sports and still do, or sometimes fire up Mario Galaxy 1 or 2. It’s different when you have access to something like that on visits. Definitely an event, and very fun.
It’s different when you have a console at home that you play daily. Your 5 year old wants to jump off the cliffs, but he also wants you to unlock more levels for him somehow. :)
