Platformer on Locodigital

New Super Mario Bros.: 20 years since 2D Mario came back

Fri, 15 May 2026 09:00:00 -0300

There's a scene everyone who owned a DS in 2006 or 2007 knows: you switch the handheld on, pick the grey cartridge with Mario's face on the label, and within three seconds you're hearing that opening jingle with the bouncing letters. No long loading screen, no epic introduction, no five-minute cutscene. Just Mario standing there waiting for you to move the D-pad. Twenty years ago, on 15 May 2006, Nintendo released New Super Mario Bros. in North America — the first genuinely new 2D game in the franchise in 11 years — and the world discovered it had missed side-on Mario far more than it realised.

Donkey Kong Country: the visual revolution that saved the SNES

Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:00 -0300

Do you remember the first time you saw Donkey Kong Country actually running? Not on YouTube, not in some retrogaming video compilation — on a CRT telly, in somebody's living room, on a screen big enough that you couldn't believe what you were looking at. I remember. A mate from school had a SNES, and one Friday in 1995 he switched the console on while I was still expecting another generic platformer. What appeared on the screen had volume, light and shadow that I couldn't explain. It looked like 3D. On a 16-bit console launched in 1990. I stood there for a good while before asking for the controller.