A lot of Mario related news dropped from Nintendo yesterday, as the company held a surprise Mario-centric Nintendo Direct presentation where it announced a number of new and remastered titles in celebration of the signature franchise’s 35th anniversary.
While most of the news cycle was dominated by reports of a new Mario 3D collection dropping later this month as well as a number of new launches, Nintendo also quietly put out a blurb about a special bit of crossover content coming to the insanely popular Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The announcement was not huge, barely getting a single sentence in a press release put out by the company. But it stated, “In March of next year, Super Mario themed furniture will be available in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game.”
[embed]https://twitter.com/NintendoEurope/status/1301512205993680900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw[/embed]A number of Twitter accounts associated with the company have also put out announcements about the upcoming bonus content. There were no actual images of what the furniture might look like in the tweets. We only got a teaser image of the Super Mario and Animal Crossing logos side by side.
Animal Crossing New Horizons was a huge hit for Nintendo, especially in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when gamers were forced to remain inside for quarantine.
The game provided a wholesome distraction to those who desperately needed it, and a sense of community at a time when everyone was in isolation.
Nintendo also announced that Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy were being combined into a special limited time anthology called Super Mario 3D All-Stars. The games were updated with new graphics and will be released on the Nintendo Switch on September 18.
Also announced during this Nintendo Direct event was an updated re-release of the Nintendo Wii-U title Super Mario 3-D World. The re-release is called Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. It will feature some new content that was not available on the Wii-U.
It is believed that Bowser’s Fury will be some kind of new Bowser-centric series of bonus levels.
Nintendo is also adding the Super Nintendo game Super Mario All-Stars onto Nintendo Switch Online. This is a collection of some of Mario’s original 2D adventures, which were all originally released on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The games included in Super Mario All-Stars are Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3.
There is no official release date for the Mario content coming to Animal Crossing, save for the vague March 2021 timeline provided by Nintendo.