To celebrate Mario Day,Nintendohas revealed the release dates for thePaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remakeand theLuigi’s Mansion 2 HD remaster.
This year’s Mario Day might land on a Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped Nintendo from making some pretty big announcements.Not only did it confirm that it’s working with Illumination on a new animated Super Mario Bros. movie(that is specifically not referred to as a sequel, for some reason), but it also confirmed when we’re getting our hands on the next two Mario games afterPrincess Peach: Showtime.
Right towards the end of the video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination’s CEO, the release dates were shown for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. The long-awaited Thousand-Year Door remake is up first and releasing on May 23, while Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD will follow it just over a month later on June 27.
That’s not all, though, as the video ends by revealing that the Game Boy version of Dr. Mario and the Game Boy Color versions of Mario Gold and Mario Tennis are coming to Nintendo Switch Online on March 12. Although that’s a mighty selection of Mario games, it’s a shame that we somehowstilldon’t have Super Mario Land available on NSO.
This year’s Mario Day is also unique since it’s the first one where Charles Martinet hasn’t been voicing the character. This is actually reflected in the video message, as Mario’s “Oh yeah, Mario time!” is done by Kevin Afghani.
With Princess Peach: Showtime launching in just a few weeks, that means we’ve got three Mario games to look forward to between now and the end of June, not counting the Nintendo Switch Online games. Granted, two of them are re-releases of games that a lot of us have already played before, but it’s still looking like a very good time to be a Mario fan.
Not only were the release dates for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD revealed,but they’ve also already been made available for pre-order on the Nintendo e-shop, revealing that both of them will be full-priced releases at $49.99 each. That might be a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but I’m sure it’s a small price to pay to finally see the return of what is generally regarded as the best Paper Mario game.
