Once you’ve acquainted yourself with the basic controls, you can head up to Top-Hat Tower. This opening area hints at a bigger, interconnected world, too. There are already all sorts of objects to interact with - stacks of crates to break, and wooden bollards that you can (rather satisfyingly) yank from the ground by flicking Cappy at them. You’ll find yourself standing amid gently rolling fog that has settled between blackened hills. Apparently Cappy himself is a resident of the Cap Kingdom, a whimsically dark city populated by cap-like beings who have erected all manner of cap-like buildings (even the little street lights look like glowing top hats). My first impressions of the Cap Kingdom were that it felt very Tim Burton-esque (with a gorgeous musical score that could easily have come from Danny Elfman). But what if you could travel outside the Mushroom Kingdom to other kingdoms? This idea of travel - of exploring entirely new lands - is central to Super Mario Odyssey and the Cap Kingdom gives you a taste of just how unique each location is. It has its own look and feel, its own climate, regions, and species. Imagine if the traditional Mushroom Kingdom were a real physical place. The Cap Kingdom also prepares you for what’s to come in terms of the game’s aesthetic. For the record, I didn’t try the fabled backwards long jump.
As well as Cappy, though, Mario does appear to have access to all of the moves he had in Super Mario 64 - including the aforementioned long jump, triple jump, and even the cartwheel jump. The Cap Kingdom appears to be the place where you’ll start your odyssey, both in terms of the game’s story (which I can’t speak about here) and getting to grips with Mario’s powerful new buddy, Cappy. Nintendo applies the same principle in Super Mario Odyssey, but with even greater finesse. There were no particular dangers in sight, so you could run around, climb trees, learn how to swim, and practice long jumping and triple jumping to your heart’s content. This situation reminded me of when I first played Super Mario 64 - Mario had all these new moves to master, and Nintendo gave players a gentle pathway to uncover his new tricks by dropping them into the grounds of Peach’s castle right at the beginning. This may seem pretty straightforward at first, but as you explore, it can be really easy to forget the golden rule: try flicking your cap and see what happens. One of the defining features of Super Mario Odyssey is Mario’s ability to interact with the world by flicking his cap around - you can capture enemies in order to puppet them and take advantage of their unique abilities, but you can also play with elements of the world in numerous ways (from activating switches to popping stumps of wood out of the ground). Finally, we explored the Seaside Kingdom, which was only just revealed in the latest Nintendo Direct. Then we moved onto the Luncheon Kingdom (you can see a detailed playthrough of this via Nintendo of Europe’s Gamescom presentation). First up was the (very Tim Burton-esque) Cap Kingdom, which acts as a tutorial area of sorts. We played through sections of three kindgoms during our visit none of which had previously been accessible to media. It also meant that we collaborated on guiding Mario through various weird and wonderful obstacles, often with hilarious results. This meant that, as we played, we were stumbling upon content that even our hosts at Nintendo hadn’t yet seen - this turned out to be wonderful, though, because it felt like we were exploring uncharted territory together. It’s worth mentioning that we played this build of the game quite early the updated code had only just been distributed by NCL (Nintendo Co., Ltd. Super Jump was housed in the Samus Room, while our colleagues at another publication set up in the Zelda Room next door (funnily enough, we could hear faint laughter and yelling coming from the other room and we were trying to guess where other guys might be up to by their reactions).Įlizabeth and I were joined in the Samus Room by Nintendo Australia’s Product Manager for Super Mario Odyssey. I’m going to pause for a moment here and comment on the surroundings: Nintendo has two dedicated spaces that act as mock living rooms - the idea being to simulate the experience of playing the game at home.
Also, it helped Nintendo had set aside a private room for Super Jump to experience the game comfortably and with no distractions. I was excited about the visit partly because this was a good amount of time to get a better feel for the game (it can be tricky to get a true sense of how the game plays during a brief demo at Nintendo’s busy E3 media booth).
I was joined by my sister, Elizabeth, an all-star photographer who very kindly agreed to lend her considerable talents to this story. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Nintendo’s Australian headquarters to spend a good hour and a half with a near-final build of Super Mario Odyssey.
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