Super Mario Odyssey Announced for the Nintendo Switch

When survival depends on friends, trust and power, you can always trust Mario to jump around a lot.

Mario will be jumping feet first into a new 3D sandbox adventure on the Nintendo Switch with Super Mario Odyssey. The game was announced during tonight’s Nintendo Switch Presentation with a trailer that plops Mario down in unexplored territory: New Donk City, which bears a pretty strong resemblance to a place you might be familiar with here in the real world.

Super Mario Odyssey isn’t the first 3D Mario console game since the Super Mario Galaxy twofer on the Wii, but it seems to be the first to lay claim to that lineage of core Mario games that experiment with the familiar templates and innovate with new mechanics and concepts. (Yes, we remember the cats from Super Mario 3D World, a great game that nonetheless felt more like a sidebar than a true Mario showpiece.) The heretofore unseen Mario skills hinted at in this trailer include a magical hat (with eyes) that can be used as a weapon and temporary platform, some kind of animal that can be ridden like a mighty steed, and the ability to leap over buildings in a long series of tiny bounds where Mario bounces from the side of one building to another like they’re conveniently placed pipes resting just inches away from each other. Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so new after all.

Take a look at the Super Mario Odyssey trailer below, and look for it on the Switch by the holiday season of 2017…assuming it doesn’t get delayed at some point.