Hey, so you watched our stupidly long Super Mario Odyssey analysis right? What more could
possibly be left to cover...well, about 17 seconds worth, as it turns out, because Nintendo
released a Switch overview trailer a little over a week ago that showcases a bit more
of Super Mario Odyssey...except, it’s not really new at all, as it only shows the same
areas we’ve seen before, just from a slightly different perspective. And that’s why I
didn’t do anything with it...until now. Because I decided to send it through the ol
analysis machine anyway, and it uncovered something interesting--because you can actually
see the control sticks and buttons on the Switch move as Mario does--which makes sense,
since they’re controlling him and all. And this actually provides quite a bit of insight
into how exactly Mario will handle this time. Yeah yeah it may not be super exciting--but
there’s still something interesting stuff here. So let’s dive on in.
So to the surprise of absolutely no one, the left stick can be seen controlling Mario,
while the right one is for camera control, as shown in this scene, with the control stick
being pushed right to swing the camera to the left, and then slightly upward to lower
the camera’s perspective. (like sunshine?)
But what’s perhaps more interesting is that this is the only scene that the right-stick
moves in at all, meaning every other scene where the camera moves is entirely automatic,
such as how it continues to track Mario here as he runs past the camera, before following
behind him. But interestingly, in the city scene, it stays a set distance from Mario
as he runs directly toward it, which could mean that the camera only tries to get behind
him when he’s running at an angle to it. Similar to how it behaved in Super Mario 64
and Sunshine
Besides the camera, we have another shocker for you: the B Button is jump...just like
nearly every other recent Mario game ever. But hey, it’s nice to have some confirmation
But here’s where things start to get a little more interesting. Because we now know how
Mario’s hat-throwing trick works...mostly.
In this scene, we can see Mario throws his hat by Tapping the Y button, and it automatically
returns to Mario’s head shortly thereafter, even including a little animation of Mario
putting it on (m’lady).
But in another scene, his hat hovers in place long enough for Mario to bounce off of it.
And we can see that, in order to hold it in place, you’ll have to keep holding down
the Y button. And as for bouncing off of it--well, we can see the player doesn’t press the
Jump button at all, meaning that Mario bounces from it automatically just by touching it--confirming
what we suspected back in the reveal trailer! Now we can see Mario perform the same trick
just a couple of seconds later, again holding it in place by holding Y, except this time,
he uses it to cross a gap by actively jumping off it.
But here’s where things get weird, as the Y-button appears to be working overtime. Because
right after the gap, Mario performs a dive as he leaps off a building--which we can see
is also performed by tapping Y. So how’s that work? I mean, why is he diving here instead
of throwing his hat? We know it’s not related to whether he’s on the ground or in the
air since we’ve seen him throw his hat in both cases--so it has to be something else.
But, there are no other buttons are being press in either case--except, there are two
buttons we can’t see at all, being the triggers ZL and ZR--which means, they might be the
key.
So we have a feeling one of those is a toggle to change the Y button’s function from a
dive into a hat throw. But which one’s the default action and which is the toggle? Well,
we’re pretty sure Diving is the default action, if only because that was also a default
move in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, both of which Odyssey is a successor to--with the
dive even being on a similarly positioned button in all 3 cases, to the left of jump.
Which means, to throw Mario’s hat, we’re pretty sure you’ll have to press one of
the triggers while tapping Y. But which trigger? Well, we think we have an answer for that
too.
Because in the desert scene, we can see Mario curling up into a ball and rolling down hill.
And we can see that it too, is performed with the Y button, merely requiring a tap to take
on the ball forl. But how the hill can this be? I mean, we’ve already established the
Y-button is likely used for Dives--and barring that, hat throws.
Well, we’re pretty sure that this is where the other Trigger button comes into play,
acting as a 2nd toggle--and we have a feeling that “Toggle” is actually a crouch button,
because if we freeze the video here, we can see Mario entering what appears to be a crouched
position, before he begins to roll. So not only does this seem to mark the return of
the crouch, but we also suspect it’s on the left trigger, ZL, since the similarly
positioned “Z button” in Super Mario 64 did the same thing. And since the crouch-button
has always been how you trigger a long-jump when combined with the jump btton, we’re
pretty sure that’s the case here too. And finally, since crouching appears to be back,
that might mean that Ground-Pounding is as well, and is likely performed by pressing
the crouch button while in the air--much as it has been in every 3D Mario game.
So assuming ZL in is fact the crouch button, that would mean the toggle for the hat throw
would have to be on the other trigger, being ZR--but again, we’re just speculating which
trigger’s which.
Now since we can see that Mario remains in ball form without the player having to hold
down Y, we’re pretty sure you’ll have to hold the crouch button instead in order
to stay in ball form. And you can then tap Y again, like the player does here, in order
to hop while in ball--which we know gives Mario a speed boost, as we pointed out in
our analysis.
And by the way, all of this confirms that there’s no run button this time--which is
usually what the Y button is used for--and instead leaves that job to a far-tilt of the
analog stick--which again makes sense since this is a successor to Mario 64 and Sunshine
and NOT 3D Land and 3D World.
So that covers it for all the button controls that we know about for sure--but what about
the remaining buttons? Well, we have no idea. It’s possibly X & A are just there for redundancy,
duplicating the functions of Y & B, like in Super Mario 3D World. Or perhaps they serve
some kind of new exclusive function, like talking to your magic hat or something. As
for the shoulder buttons--well, in Mario 64 and Sunshine, they did instantly change the
camera angle so maybe they’ll do something here. We also never see the Control Pad being
used in the video either--and while it’s possible they function as an alternates means
of controlling Mario’s movement, it’s unlikely due to the lack of a Run button as
you couldn’t use the dpad in Mario 64 or Sunshine either.
Alright and that covers it for the controls! But there are just a few final things I wanted
to point out. For one, we can see a man straightening his tie--it’s just another neat little touch.
Second, we had previously pointed out that a taxi probably circles the park here endlessly--and
sure enough, we can see what might be that same taxi here doing just that. But just behind
it is another taxi--suggesting that there are actually two that circle the park!
Another scene shows a slightly different area of New Donk City, with Mario jumping between
some rooftops and kicking a construction barrel--which by the way, confirms that Kicking happens
automatically, as we suspected, since no buttons are press. Oh, and you can still see that
barrel bouncing around down there a few seconds later--yep, it seems Mario’s got quite the
kick--no wonder he loves playing soccer.
Now those construction barrels are the same ones we also pointed out in our previous analysis,
being right here on the map, which means the start of this scene takes place right here.
And while we’re here, we finally get a close-up look at a couple of the city’s many tarps--and
we can see there’s a raised section in the middle. So are you able to bounce off that
maybe? Or can you lift the tarps in some way to reveal what’s underneath?
Finally, we get another look at the dirt path in the mechanical forest level--and while
it doesn’t really reveal anything new, it does offer another look at the starting area,
but this time form the opposite perspective--neat!
And there you have it--that’s everything we could dig up in the Switch Overview trailer.
But if you want even more--lots more--make sure to check out our full analysis of the
Super Mario odyssey reveal trailer--there’s a link to it in the description below. Trust
me, it covers waaaaay more than we do here. And with that, thanks for watching and make
sure to subscribe to GameXplain if you haven’t already for even more on Super Mario Odyssey
and other things gaming too.