Super Mario Run: Old favourite rocks in a new avatar

The new Super Mario Run has cooler moves than its predecessor

One of the highlights of Apple’s iPhone 7 launch was Super Mario Run. Yes, our favourite (and probably earliest) video game friend was coming to the phone and I wasted no time in downloading it on my iPhone as soon as it was released last week.
 
For starters, Mario runs by himself; one just needs to make him run and make cool moves. The familiar red Nintendo screen and Mario greeted me on my phone and soon he was invited to Princess Peach’s castle. But the wicked Bowser had to play spoilsport, kidnap the princess and destroy the kingdom. So Mario climbs into a pipe called “Tour” and finally I was playing on the familiar screen.
 
But this Mario was on steroids — he ran fast and had many cool moves. Now, since one needs to tap to make Mario jump, sometimes I was tapping too many times; this resulted in those cool moves but I was losing time to reach the end of the course in the provided 90 seconds.
 
The game has three parts to it — World Tour, which is the familiar single-player mode; Toad Rally, which is a player versus player scenario to win more toads, with winner takes all; and Kingdom Builder, where one can build up or decorate one’s Mushroom kingdom. World Tour has six levels, with four stages at each level. The first level is free; then you need to shell out Rs 620 as one-time payment for the entire package.
 

A caveat: you need to be connected to the internet at all times to play this game. There’s considerable pain if you’re on an iffy connection — the game might even stop responding a few times.
 

Super Mario Run may have its bugs, yet is worth playing. It got its first update, a “friendly” run on December 22. One can look for an improved gaming experience later.