Episode 145 asks: How well does Super Mario Odyssey uphold Mario's legacy?

The second entry in our "talking about new game releases in the context of a classic games podcast" episode is here. Our in-depth survey of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the ways in which it reinterprets long-running Zelda concepts and standards proved to be a huge hit last year, and people demanded more. More! More!! And, as ever, we live to please… especially since our business model hinges entirely on pleasing you.

So, this week, we tackle the next logical entry in this series by looking at the other big Nintendo legacy franchise release for 2017, Super Mario Odyssey. We recorded this back in December (hence the references to it being 2017!), but we decided to hold off on publishing a while to give people a little more time to play the game. As such, it's a no-holds-barred spoiler minefield here. Please understand.

Like I said in the episode, we're not a one-trick pony here. Given the significance and popularity of Nintendo's two 2017 tentpoles, it made sense for us to tackle Zelda and Mario tihs way! But we have lots of other recent-ish game releases in mind to tackle in a similar fashion. Maybe Sonic Mania? Doom? Assassin's CreedFinal Fantasy? Who knows! All we can be confident of is that we'll be recording more of these for certain. This was a loose, easy conversation (the first Retronauts episode for which we didn't prepare notes in advance in as long as I can remember), and the mailbag section was great, too. Thanks to everyone who took part in this episode!

Retronauts Episode 145
Super Mario Odyssey's classic roots
MP3, 50.3 MB | 1:45:57

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Episode description: Jeremy and Bob convene with Chris Kohler and Henry Gilbert to take another look at the ways a recent hit release draws on the heritage of a long-running game franchise. It's Super Mario Odyssey, and it celebrates 35+ years of Mario (and Donkey Kong!).

Music in this episode comes, if you can believe it, from Super Mario Odyssey. I know, right?