Our relationship with Mario runs deep. He's not only one of gaming's most beloved characters, but he's been in our lives for so long now that he's pretty much part of most of our core gaming memories. So when Nintendo drop something new with the mustachioed plumber, we're instantly there to check it out so we can relive all of that epic nostalgia.
Nintendo are, of course, no strangers to making Mario take on different forms. That much is clear in the Paper Mario series, and now thanks to their new 'My Mario' brand, we get to see more handcrafted Mario adventures in the form of a new series 'It’s Me, Mario! Stop Motion Shorts.'
I grew up with the likes of Morph and Wallace & Grommit, so to see animated episodes like the one below takes me straight back to my childhood. I love the magic of stop-motion, and knowing the sheer amount of work it too for Nick Park to create some of my favourite Wallace & Gromit moments, it's an art form I certainly don't take for granted.
I've watched all 3 of the short episodes released so far and marvelled at the plush adventures of our favourite plumber. The worlds give off a Yoshi's Wooly World feel to them, almost as if you could put your hand into the screen and start to unravel the individual strands of the set. It's the kind of thing that small children will absolutely love, and their gamer parents will be completely fine with watching the episodes again and again - it's Mario, after all!
You can watch the existing episodes alongside tonnes of other content on the Hello, Mario! app or on the Play Nintendo YouTube Channel, and with Mario's 40th anniversary in 17 days at the time of writing, I can only think that this is the just the begining of a whole bunch of celebrations and freebies Nintendo has planned for us to comemorate one of the biggest and most influential characters in the worlds of gaming and plumbing.