What to expect from Mario’s 40th anniversary

2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Super Mario series – which is crazy, because it feels like only yesterday that we celebrated its 35th anniversary with Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35. This year, however, is different. Though it still hasn’t been announced at the time of writing, Nintendo has new hardware releasing this year, which makes speculation a bit complicated. Will the company release a new 3D Mario game and tie it to the anniversary? Will Nintendo just release more remakes on the existing Switch? Who knows, but today we’re looking at all of the Super Mario anniversary celebrations throughout the years and what we might expect later this year.

The first really big Mario celebration in recent memory was the 25th anniversary. This was done during the Wii and DS era in 2010. The headlining anniversary game was the Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition on Wii, which was an exact copy of Super Mario All-Stars as it originally released on the SNES. The physical package it came in, however, did at least include some extra goodies – a soundtrack CD and a small art booklet. Then you had some special edition red Wii and DS consoles, which came bundled with different Mario games depending on the region. Other than merch and some special interviews, however, there wasn’t much else done for Mario’s 25th anniversary. And given that the big anniversary game was a completely unchanged SNES game (sold for full retail price, instead of on the Virtual Console), it’s safe to say this didn’t wind up being the huge celebration you’d think Nintendo would host for such a milestone.

The 30th anniversary of the Mario series arguably had even less, but its headlining game was Super Mario Maker. This was an all-new way to design and experience Mario levels, which is understandably much more exciting than a re-release of Super Mario All-Stars. That said, we’re not entirely sure if Super Mario Maker was made for Mario’s 30th anniversary or if it just so happened to release with convenient timing. In any case, Nintendo released plenty of new merchandise and interviews, but not much else. Even if there wasn’t a ton of anniversary celebrations, Super Mario Maker has at least stood the test of time as one of Nintendo’s most prominent first-party releases. You can see that with the success of Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch, and we’ll definitely be seeing a Super Mario Maker 3 at some point on Switch 2, if we had to guess.

Despite taking place during the pandemic era, the Mario series’ 35th anniversary was by far the biggest celebration yet, which even included a special Nintendo Direct presentation. That bodes well for the 40th anniversary. In 2021, you had Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, an excellent port of the Wii U classic. Nintendo could’ve just ported the game and sold it at $60 – which they did – but they also added plenty of new content, including an all-new 3D Mario adventure where you team up with Bowser Jr. to take on Fury Bowser. Bowser’s Fury is actually the last 3D Mario game Nintendo has released, and even then it’s seen as more of a bite-sized experiment than a full adventure. But a solid one nonetheless! We also received Cat Mario and Cat Peach amiibo for Super Mario 3D World, plus Mario furniture in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a Mario-themed Splatfest in Splatoon 2, and tons of exclusive rewards on My Nintendo including Super Mario pin sets.

The big anniversary game, however, was Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Infamously, it was only available for a limited time before being delisted forever in March 2021. The game included Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, none of which were available on Nintendo Switch otherwise at the time. All of the ports played quite well, but the collection was still criticized for lacking meaningful side content. If you take a look at Kirby’s Dream Collection: Special Edition that had released on Wii, that’s a great example of an anniversary collection with tons of extra content. That wasn’t the case with 3D All-Stars, however, and it presumably had less development time thanks to pandemic restrictions and such.

We also received Super Mario Bros. 35, an online multiplayer version of the original Super Mario Bros. that worked kind of like Tetris 99 in that you could send enemies to other players to hopefully eliminate them. This was great fun while the servers were online, but the entire game was unfortunately delisted from the Nintendo eShop and taken offline in March 2021 along with Super Mario 3D All-Stars. At least with that game, you can purchase a physical copy from secondhand resale sites. That’s not the case with Super Mario Bros. 35, however, which is no longer playable in any capacity. A true shame.

This leaves us at Mario’s 40th anniversary, which is coming up this year during a transitional time for Nintendo. If the Switch still had a few years left in it, we’d say some kind of port would be likely. Nintendo has ported previous games in the Mario series to modern systems for his anniversary twice now, and it’s incredibly likely we’ll see that happen again in some form. That said, the limited edition of Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario 3D All-Stars had some obvious heavy hitters in them. Which games they’d port this time is much more difficult to discern, if any at all. You could technically make a second 3D All-Stars collection with Super Mario 64 DS, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Super Mario 3D Land, but these games are much less prolific than 64, Sunshine, and the original Galaxy. We also don’t know if Nintendo’s next hardware will eventually add DS games to Nintendo Switch Online, which may (or may not) disqualify Super Mario 64 DS from being included in a collection. And since Nintendo is gearing up to launch a new platform, we feel like they wouldn’t want Mario ports to be one of their year one releases. We could still see something on the current Nintendo Switch, but with all things considered we think it’s unlikely that Nintendo goes for the porting method.

What’s more likely, however, is that a new 3D Mario game releases either along with the Switch 2 or within its first year. The developers have had lots of time to cook – like we mentioned before, Bowser’s Fury is the most recent 3D Mario game, and that was released about four years ago. Before that, it was Super Mario Odyssey, which will be eight years old later this year. Given the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, too, it’s very likely we’ll see a new 3D Mario game this year (and not a 2D one, since Super Mario Bros. Wonder isn’t all that old). It also looks like we’re getting a new Mario Kart, but we’re not sure how close together Nintendo would want to release these games. One or the other might release later on to give the first release time on its own.

And of course, we can probably expect tons of merchandise, promotions, and more at the very least. Or maybe something we didn’t mention here at all! What do you think Nintendo will do for Mario’s 40th anniversary, if anything? What would you like to see? Let us know in the comments down below.