Is Super Mario Odyssey the tale of Mario’s midlife crisis? In the lead-up to the game’s release, Mario has left his career as a plumber, taken up moustache grooming and abandoned his modesty, revealing a proud beach body.
Now he can even send vertical snaps. The game’s newest mode, announced by Nintendo today, will allow players to transform horizontal in-game screenshots — and send those photos to their smartphone. And by introducing Snapshot Mode, Nintendo has ensured that Super Mario Odyssey players will be able to create and maintain a constant stream of strange photos and memes.
Snapshot Mode allows players to snap a quick picture whenever they feel the urge. By freezing time, players will be able to move the camera around the frozen character. They can zoom in for a close-up if they want to focus on his winning smile, or zoom out to catch Mario living his best life. The photos can be altered with filters, but the most exciting aspect is the ability to send these photos to your smartphone.
Just think of the possibilities this opens up for sharing strange moments on Twitter! It’s almost as if Nintendo has caught on to the fact that its characters are walking, talking memes.
Consider it like this: Super Mario Odyssey is a game that’s meant to be explored and examined. There are so many adorable moments (dinosaurs sleeping in hats, Mario performing an improvised dance) that we collected a bunch of Mario’s best actions during Nintendo’s Treehouse presentation at E3 to showcase why Mario’s smallest movements captivated us.
Nintendo knows what it has on its hands with Super Mario Odyssey: a viral sensation. Pardon the use of the term viral, which comes with an exaggerated eye roll in 2017, but that’s what Super Mario Odyssey is going to be. Look at some of the snapshots below that Nintendo used to demonstrate Snapshot Mode during its Direct. There’s a Koopa sporting Mario’s hat and a wicked mustache, an adventurous Blue Toad reading a book while talking to a terrifying shape-shifting Mario, and Mario riding what appears to be a tiny dinosaur.
Some eagle-eyed Direct viewers noticed that Nintendo even included a cute dog for Mario to run around and play fetch with!
Super Mario Odyssey lets you play frisbee with a dog using Mario's hat... Breath of the Wild who? Persona 5 who? pic.twitter.com/ykvxFV0Eku
— Zach (@Zacube3) September 13, 2017
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9245081/mario_doggo.jpg)
Super Mario Odyssey was crafted with image sharing in mind. That’s why Mario does adorable things, can take on an assortment of shapes and will explore an array of vast worlds. We want to share our favorite moments from games with others online — remember the fiasco over not being able to share Persona 5 screens? — and Super Mario Odyssey’s Snapshot Mode is proof that even developers and publishers like Nintendo are taking note of the way our gameplay styles are changing.
Super Mario Odyssey is out for the Nintendo Switch on Oct. 27.
