Super Mario Odyssey Finally Does Away With 1-Ups And Game Overs

The Super Mario games have changed a lot over the years, but the series has stubbornly insisted on hanging onto the somewhat antiquated concept of lives. Sure, collecting 1-Up mushrooms is a beloved Mario tradition, but lives haven’t made much sense for a long time. When you can save your game after ever stage, lives don’t really mean anything, and most modern Mario games hand them out like candy – I’ve maxed out the lives counter on games like Super Mario 3D World without even really trying.

Well, the upcoming Super Mario Odyssey is finally tearing off the Band-Aid and doing away with lives. In a recent Japanese tweet, Nintendo clarified the new system (forgive my rough Google translation).

“Mario loses 10 coins if his health drops to zero or he falls in an abyss. However, no matter how many coins you lose, there is no GAME OVER.”

So yeah, taking a page from once-rival Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario’s life is now tied to how much gold he’s toting around. Dying knocks a paltry 10 coins off your total, and sends you back to the last checkpoint. Even if you don’t have 10 coins to spare, you won’t be sent to a Game Over screen. Some hardcore gamers will grumble at the changes, but they make sense given Super Mario Odyssey‘s semi-open-world design.

Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi explained the decision to finally boot 1-Ups…

“We wanted people to be able to, you know, you get into a kingdom and you can just continually keep going through that kingdom without being pulled out, so that was why we kind of wanted to get rid of the lives idea.”

This was a long time coming, and yet…pour one out for the humble 1-UP Mushroom, won’t you? You were a lifesaver.

Super Mario Odyssey leaps onto Nintendo Switch on October 27.

[via Polygon]