Last year’s great new Mario and Zelda games reinvigorated two series that seem to have finally found nostalgia for parts of their past they neglected. Super Mario Odyssey, especially, offered a tribute to Super Mario 64 that’s been overdue.

In many areas of Nintendo’s crowd-pleasing Super Mario Odyssey, there’s a main goal and a side goal that provides the same amount of reward but presents a greater challenge. It’s my favourite design aspect of the game.

Every day, we make decisions about the games we will play and the things we will try to do in them. These days, I’m trying to make choices that are smarter, which I hope is the correct way to classify my decision to only try the jump-rope challenge in Super Mario Odyssey once.

The core innovation of Super Mario Odyssey is Mario's companion, Cappy. Cappy is a hat that can magically possess everything from non-living objects to living characters. Toss Cappy at an enemy, and the enemy will sprout a Mario moustache and a signature red hat. Mario gains full control over the creature's movements and abilities.

A skip that could save up to twenty minutes in the Super Mario Odyssey speedrun has finally been proven to exist. It requires switching into two-player mode, using a Goomba stack to climb up a sheer cliff, and clipping through a pot. The problem is that it doesn't really work.

Super Mario Odyssey came out last October and continues to delight players. Datamined secrets, awesome glitches, and a fancy balloon hunting mode have kept players exploring the game's vibrant world long after other games have come and gone.

As of this writing, a couple hundred people are collectively controlling Mario via a Twitch broadcast. And despite the inherent chaos of Twitch chat, these players are actually making progress in Super Mario Odyssey.

It's been a quietly unprecedented week for Nintendo, and one that should change players' expectations for the company's games going forward.

Super Mario Odyssey's latest patch added a highly exploitable balloon hunting mini-game to Mario's to-do list, but it might have brought secrets as well. Dataminers searching through the new patch have found a handful of hidden images that appear to showcase the location of extra Power Moons.

Super Mario Odyssey speedrunners often use glitches to grab tricky power moons or skip through major portions of the game. A new patch implemented alongside the new Luigi's Balloon World mode last week blocked some of those crucial tricks, slowing any runner who upgraded their game. Now, the community is trying to figure out what to allow in their runs and how to keep their leaderboards fair.

At yesterday's DICE Awards, Nintendo cleaned up. The Kyoto-based game company didn't send their development teams to the ceremony. Instead, it was up to one man to collect all the trophies. His name is Nintendo Guy.

Growing up, you probably played hide-and-seek, and you probably had one friend who was so good at hiding that it felt as though they'd vanished. Well, imagine that they could literally phase through walls in order to win, and you'll have an idea of how Mario Odyssey players are feeling right now.

Luigi is finally in Super Mario Odyssey as part of the game's new Balloon World update which went live this week. What strange wind brought him and his balloons to New Donk City is anybody's guess, but while he's around he has some thoughts to share about Mario's clothes.

Nintendo games are fascinating for the things they hide, and Super Mario Galaxy is no exception. For instance, did you know the opening scene wasn't actually in space, but a floating image in the Mushroom Kingdom?

Over on The Models Resource, some folks have uploaded the raw files used to build Mario's outfits in Odyssey. His "Boxers" costume is particularly interesting.

Sometimes when you're playing Super Mario Odyssey you'll find a coin in a weird, hard to reach area and think, "how they hell did they think to put this here?" Yoshiyaku Koizumi, one of the producers on the game, recently explained the design process behind these hidden caches of coins.

We reported earlier that Nintendo is doing well. No kidding. The Switch is on fire. The company posted a bunch of sales numbers overnight, and we at Kotaku HQ have been discussing which is the most stunning. Let's just say that we're not all in agreement. Which is your pick? (Please say it's the Splatoon one.)

Super Mario Odyssey did a fantastic job melding a nostalgic love for the older retro Mario titles and its more modern 3D games. Its levels are inspired, creatively designed to balance a sense of wonder with a good challenge.

On Christmas, like many people all around the world, I spent some quality time with my siblings hunched around a video game. During a standard run through one of Super Mario 3D World’s many colourful levels, my sister asked if it was weird for Mario to be running around and attacking a bunch of cute creatures minding their own business.