The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildchanged things, not just for Nintendo, but across the industry. Nintendo’s willingness to reinvent a major franchise resounded with fans, with a 3D open-world structure helping provide newfound depth to theZeldaexperience. It’s no surprise that fans of Nintendo, and other game studios, are quick to request similar reinventions for other franchises. One Nintendo fan recently took the initiative and created their own mockup of an open-worldMariogame that’s been well-received by other fans.
The mockup comes from Redditor cestialAnonymous, an artist who said that they combined a screenshot fromSuper Mario Odysseywith an open-world background image from Unity for their concept. The result stood out to fans from theMariosubreddit, who upvoted it to the top of the community recently. TheseMariofans made it no secret that they’d love for the next 3DSuper Mario Bros.game from Nintendo to take on this style of open-world gameplay.
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The concept art from cestialAnonymous is very standard. It shows Mario walking down a dirt path in a lightly-wooded area. There’s grass and flowers around him, a cliff to the left and boulders poking out of the ground to the right. A forested area to the front of Mario beckons, hiding what’s behind it. In the bottom left corner is amini-map, showing paths branching off to the left and right for Mario to explore as he progresses. There are also nearly 10 markers on the map teasing important locations out in the world.
It just goes to show that thepopularity ofThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildis built on very basic ideas that translate to most any other franchise. It’s the idea of a wider world to explore that captures gamers' imagination and excitement. The mockup doesn’t even have anything to do withMariogames, but that doesn’t really matter.
Odds are, Nintendo isn’t going to take itsSuper Mariofranchisein the same direction as it’s takingThe Legend of Zelda. Nintendo fans will get what they want fromThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, after all. Fans ofSuper Marioseem content with the direction of the franchise as it is, after all. The popularity ofSuper Mario Odysseyis undeniable.
At this point, however, it’s hard to argue that “rebooting” a franchise with an open-world style wouldn’t be popular regardless of its previous genre. If Nintendo dropped3D open-worldversions ofMario,Metroid,Kirby, and evenF-Zero, Nintendo fans would likely love them all and ask for more.
Super Mario Odysseyis available now on Nintendo Switch.
MORE:18 Switch Games To Play If You Loved Breath Of The Wild
