Thought you knew everything there was to know about everyone’s favourite plumber? Think again. Charting Mario’s history from Super Mario Bros. through to 2015’s Super Mario 3D World, this will be the perfect gift for you to get a 1-Up on the competition in the Mushroom Kingdom trivia stakes.
As you might have realised, Super Mario Odyssey will be sadly missing from the 256-page collection. But fret not, the rest of the package more than makes up for it. Dark Horse’s compendium will include information about 17 main-line Mario games (no Super Mario RPG or its offshoots here, folks) as well as everything from finding those pesky Warp Whistles to the quickest way to complete some of Mario’s trickier levels. Here’s hoping they have a fully-mapped World 1-1 for us to feast our eyes upon.
The book will be out on October 23, so be sure to start nudging family members about Christmas present around about then. The retail price is $39.99 and, as of writing, is only scheduled for a US release, having already launched in Japan way back in 2015 (hence the lack of Odyssey). You can, however, expect it to come to European and UK shores imminently.
While it’s disappointing that Mario’s most varied adventure and his many, many spin-offs won’t make it into book form (not yet, anyway), Dark Horse do such a loving job with their publishing and Western localization that it’s going to be a must-have for anyone out there not named Bowser. We might finally get a proper, definitive answer to what exactly Birdo is too. That’ll be worth the price of admission alone.
You can pre-order your compy of the Super Mario Encyclopedia now on Amazon.
