Super Mario Run: How to Unlock More Playable Characters
By Jasmine Henry 15 December 2016
Super Mario Run features Toad, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi and Toadette as playable characters, with the characters having special skills and having special unlock requirements.
As advertised in several trailers for Super Mario Run, Nintendo’s iconic plumber Mario is the star of the show. However, Mario isn’t the only character capable of sprinting through the Mushroom Kingdom, collecting coins, and avoiding enemies as the launch of the game has now revealed that several other faces from the Mario universe are playable characters.
Super Mario Run‘s other playable characters are Toad, Toadette, Princess Peach, Yoshi, and Luigi. The easiest of these characters to unlock is Toad, who can be unlocked by linking a My Nintendo account to the game. As Toad is described as being able to “run a little bit faster than others,” it’s worth linking an account as the character could give players a little bit of an advantage. The other characters are a bit more difficult to unlock.
Unlocking Yoshi, Luigi, and Toadette
Requiring a bit more hard work to unlock are Yoshi, Luigi, and Toadette. To unlock these three characters, players will need to get certain items in the Kingdom Builder mode. To unlock Luigi (and his hover ability), players must buy Luigi’s house, which requires players to collect 150 Green Toads and 150 Purple Toads in the Toad Rally multiplayer game mode. To get Yoshi (and his floating ability) players must buy Yoshi’s house which requires 30 Red Toads and 30 Yellow Toads. Toadette needs a house to be unlocked too, and her house costs 200 Red Toads, 200 Blue Toads and 200 Green Toads.
Unlocking Princess Peach
Princess Peach can only be unlocked by paying $10 to unlock the full experience for Super Mario Run. Technically, she requires players to play through the game’s 24 World Tour levels and rescue her from Bowser. However, as only a handful of World Tour levels are available in the free sections of the game, Super Mario Run players will have to pony up some cash to play as her.
Understandably, some players are upset that such a well-liked character is being locked behind a paywall like this. This is also the second bit of controversy to hit the game since it was revealed that Super Mario Run requires an Internet connection to be played. But it seems unlikely that Nintendo will update the game and make Princess Peach available for free as making the character paid-for gives players a strong reason to pay to unlock the game.
Moreover, those upset about Peach’s availability appear to be in a minority. As Super Mario Run is set to make over $70 million in its first month (by some analysts’ estimates, at least) Nintendo will likely be affected very little by those who choose not to pay money for Peach.
Super Mario Run is now available on iOS. The game is scheduled to release on Android in 2017.
