At the very beginning of this year, Nintendo confirmed that it was working with Illumination Entertainment—the animation studio responsible for Despicable Me and the Minions—to develop an animated Super Mario movie, with Illumination founder Chris Meledandri and Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto on board as…

We know it’s only Monday, but the world is a terrible, stressful place, and, frankly, you deserve a break. So, why not sit back, relax, and take a much-needed scroll through this impressive collection of video game skies on Tumblr? These cloud-covered background images may vary greatly in terms of style but they all…

It’s a miracle the Super Mario Bros. movie is as barely coherent as it is. That much is clear from reading the many interviews and in-depth reports about its nightmarish production that have been published in the 25 years since it hit theaters. As they tell it, the husband and wife directing duo of Annabel Jankel and…

In Jelly Mario, a new browser game from programmer Stefan Hedman, something horrible has happened not only to Mario but to the entire Mushroom Kingdom. When Mario attempts one of his famously crisp and precise jumps, he floats and rotates away, his legs wriggling uselessly beneath him. When Mario collides with an…

There’s been no shortage of digital ink spilled—from this site, especially— on the shitshow that was the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, which, for most 30-somethings, holds the unique distinction of having taught their entire generation that movies could be bad. This new deep dive into the film’s troubled production…

The Super Mario universe is full of mysteries, like why Mario and Donkey Kong are friends now, whether or not their names are really Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, and why some of the characters from Super Mario Bros. 2 can pop up in other games if that whole adventure was a dream, but one mystery has divided the entire…

In November, we reported on a rumor that Nintendo was in talks with Universal about making an animated Super Mario movie with Illumination Entertainment (the studio behind Despicable Me and the Minions). Tonight, Nintendo officially announced on Twitter that the movie is indeed happening, with iconic Nintendo…

Making the argument that a video game contains some surreal elements may seem like a no-brainer. After all, the majority of video games take place in worlds that look nothing like our own and give players abilities that have little connection to the “real.” But when it comes to the Super Mario Bros. franchise, surreal…

Shigeru Miyamoto is one of the most famous names in video game design. And even casual gamers who don’t recognize him by name are probably familiar with his work. He’s the man behind everything from Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros. to The Legend Of Zelda. And he also helped design the Nintendo controllers that defined…

As evidenced by the runaway popularity of the NES Classic Edition in recent weeks, nostalgia for the golden age of Nintendo is alive and well in 2016. The Nintendo Entertainment System, that familiar grayish rectangle of childhood, can be said to have influenced the sensibilities of an entire generation in a profound…

Like any pop-culture phenomenon worth its salt (or perhaps sugar, as the case may be), some of the biggest video games of the ’80s found their way off of screens and into the cereal aisle. As to be expected, they were uniformly of the ludicrously sweet variety, with sugary corn puffs or marshmallows shaped vaguely…

It looks like coercing cute animals into playing real-life versions of classic 1980s video games is officially a “thing” now. And why shouldn’t it be? Just last week, the internet gods gave the world a Jack Russell terrier named Twinkie playing Pac-Man. And now? Well, now there’s a Djungarian hamster playing Super…

“My neighboring farmer made a pretty sweet corn maze this year.” With those 11 simple words, Reddit user RadioActiveLobster drastically undersold the sheer spectacle of what might be the single most gloriously unnecessary achievement of the week: a massive, eight-acre maize labyrinth at Stoughton Farm in Newark…

Believe it or not, you can still play video games without going outside and risking getting mugged or finding a corpse. Even though it helped usher in our new, terrifying age of active gaming, Nintendo’s next big nostalgia play is bringing games back to their roots: something you do while staring at a TV and pressing…

Experiences with Super Mario Maker seem to fall into one of two categories—the whimsical and the sadistic. Both require a fair amount of creative ability; it’s just a question of intent: Do players want to create something sweet and fun or are they more interested in devising impossible-to-finish levels? That same…

Here’s this week’s question, from reader Jon Grunert:

Their heyday has largely passed, but for decades, novelizations played an important part in movie marketing. These quasi-novels, based on the screenplays for major motion pictures, were rushed out in cheap paperback form to bookstores everywhere. Before VHS, DVD, and streaming video took over, these flimsy books were…

Some of us are still holding out, but the writing’s on the wall. Donald Trump is going to be our next president (at least until he assumes the title of “Generalissimo Para La Vida”). That means that we could soon be getting tax breaks for ordering Trump Steaks. The Donald’s megalomaniacal vision and over-the-top…

Thirty years ago the Nintendo Entertainment System landed on American shores, and ever since that moment, Americans have been trying to beat Super Mario Bros. faster than the last person. Earlier this week, a Virginia gamer who goes by the name of Darbian broke that record, finishing the game with a time of…