I have been playing a TON of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. 3D World was a game that I loved when it came out **checks notes** nearly EIGHT YEARS ago. I wrote about it in my obituary of the Wii U, and said that it was in my top echelon of Mario games. After playing through it again, I can cement it there a while longer.

The addition of Bowser’s Fury is a great bonus. While many are predicting this bonus game to be the future of Mario, I won’t hold my breath. It’s a fun and fantastic experiment.

If you got burned out on the more traditional Mario games from the New Super Mario Bros. series, or wasn’t one of the seven people who owned a Wii U, I’d recommend this over the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection in a heartbeat.

Mario is old enough now that I don’t know if we need to celebrate every five years, but this has been fun. The 3D All-Stars Collection was fun to play through Sunshine again, but with the 1-2 Combo of 3D World and Odyssey on Switch, I think that’s enough new* Mario to last for a bit.

*Obviously over half the Mario games on Nintendo Switch are from older systems. Maybe we’ll get super Mario Odyssey 2?