Super Mario Odyssey Director Explains Why the Life Counter Has Been Dropped

I love the idea of losing currency instead. Honestly, lives were so plentiful before it felt like deaths were irrelevant. Now, if I die, maybe I can't afford that thing from that shop. I like that.

Kinda glad they did this after the last few Mario games pretty much gave you all the lives you needed and then some. Seriously, I don't know why they even programmed a Game Over screen into NSMB2

Lives were never needed in any exploration game.

Live systems can work well if the game is designed with it in mind. In Mario, I've never found that it contributed much to the experience. So I'm fine with it being gone.

Just like the Lego games, you lose points and you still keep on going.

Not having lives is good. I mean with recent Mario games, you can easily rack up hundreds of lives and then doing whatever with it. I am wondering about the difficulty of the game.... But still excited haha

RIP 1-Up Mushroom

They had Game over screens in past Mario games? I've never seen them since maybe the NES ones, lol.

Lives should have died with the arcades anyway

I'll kinda miss it, but I feel like only a few of the Mario games were ever challenging enough that I needed to pay much attention to them. Donkey Kong Country is another story, I think the lives (baloons) system works well there.

I like the idea of losing currency, but I think I'm underwhelmed by loosing so little as punishment. Like death is literally cheap.

Minor nitpick though, still excited for this.

Lifes never mattered much in 3D Marios anyway. It‘s not like in the early SMBs where you couldn’t save whenever and wherever you wanted. Especially now with the open world design of Odyssey, dropping the Lifes System feels like the right call.

Seems like a good idea to me and hopefully saves on having to replay the easy bit of a level over and over just to get back to the bit you were stuck at.

The only downside is as @justin233 says, we’ve got to say goodbye to the 1-up mushroom and the little jingle that plays when collecting one!

LEGO CITY UNDERCOVER has NO Game Over too.

Btw, no more 1-Up Sounds ....

The last few Mario games have been so generous with lives that they were arguably irrelevant except for the most incompetant of gamers. I believe World 9 in both NSMBW and NSMBU was absolutely brutal though. I believe I lost at least 70 lives in Wii's World 9-7 if I remember correctly.

I did eventually see all of the New Super Mario Bros. games to 100% completion.

Why not a mechanic like Dark Souls for experienced players You lose all the coins if you die and must get back to the point where you died to reclaim them

Good riddance I say. Lives haven't been necessary since the NES Mario games anyway. I will miss the 1-Up mushroom though.

Please, no more easy Mario games. It's becoming boring at this rate. That was my reason to never 100%ing SM3DW, which didn't present any major challenge outside collecting green stars and stamps.

@rushiosan ohh well, you missed the most brutal level in a Mario game. I Never finished it and I have 100d all Mario games.

@justin233 THIS is actually really sad... Pauline also sings: "I'll be your 1-up girl" but... Mario... Doesn't need her anymore! I'm so sad now...

Having no lives makes sense for a game that focuses on exploration, collecting items, and discovering secrets.

Lives make more sense in traditional Mario games that focus on precision platforming and navigating through linear objectives without dying.

I do miss it for nostalgia but he’s right. People complain that they have 1000 lives and my young kids see the game over screen often. So is hard to balance it.

@Androgunther It worked well for Shovel Knight!

No life counter = no buy

In the last Mario games I didn't see a difference between losing one life and losing the last life (going game over). In all cases, you had to retry the level you died in. Yeah, maybe there was a difference regarding to check points but that was never important.

This (for me) is Nintendo at it's very, very best, going against the grain and considering new users, not just the self-proclaimed 'hardcore'.

I think it is fine. I do not wanna harvest lives in a 3d exploration platformer. In games like Donkey Kong Country for the SNES and even in the two new DK games, I've had a love-hate-relationship with a limited number of retries.
(1) It adds to the thrill and in really tough levels (looking at you, spinning barrels), you are forced to focus a lot more
(2) However, at times, some sections can get a bit unfair and being forced to replay a couple of levels just to progress in one tough one can get annoying really fast.

I recently stopped playing the remake of Crash Bandicoot on the PS4 because it just stopped being fun when retrying a level for the 10000th time

I bet Nintendo is going to sell the life counter with hard mode. It's what Nintendo does best, like Zelda BOTW, like Metroid SR.

@Wendigo Yes and no. Yes in Odyssey because it wouldn't make sense in an exploration collect-em-up game. No, arcades aren't dead, at least in the US. They're experiencing a revival, actually. New arcade bars, Dave and Buster's, and Round1, the Japanese contender, are popping up all over.

What was the point of lives in Galaxy, 64 or Sunshine? The biggest loss it just the loss of the 1-up jingle.

The only recent Mario game where lives actually matter is Super Mario Maker. Otherwise they're pretty unimportant.

@SanderEvers couldn’t agree more
These days difficulty is seen as how many times you die, how much damage you do and how much damage you recieve.
Real difficulty is how much you need to think about how to do something like solve a puzzle or defeat an enemy, how you handle a situation and solve the situation.

I'm gonna miss the 1-ups...wouldn't a hard mode be awesome , if you run out of lives and see the game over screen you have to start again ....then we have the choice how to play

I think there was no need to explain. The only people who wouldn't understand it themselves are people who don't know anything about platformers - about games in general I'd say. It's since Super Mario World that lives and 1 ups have become completely useless and most of the games don't use them since then because they've become completely meaningless.

Lives still have a place in (some) modern games, but they haven’t mattered in Mario for a long time. They were more or less designed to never let you run out of lives.

The lives system has always been irrelevant. It doesn't really do anything. And no doubt if it had been included there'd be the usual way to max them out. Like the last Mario I played, SM3DW, where I've 999 lives. I don't think much of that game, it's a lazy effort, copied and pasted from SM3DL. I'm on World 6 and there's been absolutely no challenge whatsoever. I've collected all the stamps and green stars. It's easily the worst of the 3D games, in fact I don't consider it to be a true 3D game.

@FinalFrog nuff said

It's the sound of a loss of a Mario life 😱 I'll miss.

I think if that's for the less experienced players... then it was unnecessary. Usually Mario games -not all of them, agreed- let you get dozens of lives, and even if you see the "game over" screen it doesn't mean you have to start from scratch, as it occured in early Mario games.

I guess, though, currently most games do it this way and Nintendo wanted to update itself in that regard. Checkpoints all over the place.

I just watched the Game Informer T. rex gameplay. Now I feel dirty.

It's only a matter of time before the exclusion of lives esculates into permadeath. Can you imagine in later games where essential characters like Yoshi may not be around as you sacrificed him for that all important red coin a few games back?

I think it makes sense for a Mario game of this particular design. Most recent games tended to give you all the lifes you needed anyway, so for the most part it was just a pointless interface design element anyway.

To be honest, I'm more astounded by Nintendo's decision to release this and FE Warriors so close together. I think they've done a great job since launch to parcel out releases over time: Every month there's one major 1st-party title plus some 3rd-party ports and indies obviously.

That way the line-up never felt overwhelming, and more importantly, and in complete contradistinction to the WiiU, the system always felt/ feels alive and the e-shop release list never feels barren (and thus by extension the system more or less dead).

I just hope that is a strategy they will aim to continue going forward, but right now I'm unclear what major release(s) they have planned for November and December?

Xenoblade for December I guess (if they can really get it out this year), which leaves ... the Snipperclips and Zelda DLC for November then? Personally, I'd have shifted Mario or Warriors to November.

Lives only really make sense for arcade games anyway where Game Over meant you have to pay another quarter to play. Now it's just a slap on the wrist and restart. They don't really have much meaning in the console and handheld space.

As much as I'll miss the old 1-Up shroom, the idea of 'lives' is so 1980's

Actually, the argument that 3 lives is a holdover from arcades makes sense, until you go play Mario Kart GP in the arcade, like I did recently, and despite placing 1st two races in a row I still saw the Game Over screen. Where's the logic in that?

I hated in Galaxy when I'd save up a bunch of lives during a game sessions but when I'd start over again they'd bump me back down to 5 lives. I'm glad for the change.

It made much more sense some how in a 2D Mario but after Mario 64 went 3D not so much...

Lives were a complete joke in Mario Galaxy 2, so I can welcome this change.

I don't think this will be a mainstay in the series. It'll just be for odyssey.

Shovel Knight takes this approach and challenge wasn't sacrificed one bit.

Im sure the game wouldnt be hard so I dont really think it matters anyway. Only thing that seems to be highly dangerous is falling into pits.

I mean, if you're just going to return back to beginning of the stage over and over anyway from losing 1 life... Sure.
... Bloody Banjo Kazooie

Did 64 or galaxy have lives? I don’t remember them but I don’t think they did. You just started the painting over and what not.

This actually does put a bad taste in my mouth. While as an adult lives in video games don't matter much to me, it was the fact that I played games with lives that encouraged me to get good enough at games not to die over and over. Mario World, Mario 3, Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man games, all of these games let me learn how to prevent myself from dying. With the avenue of save anywhere, the punishment for lives lost has gone away. That's why people feel lives are so pointless. There is no threat for losing them.
People keep complaining about the "Dark Souls" of X Series. I'm 28 years old. I don't recall Dark Souls as a kid I recall playing the same Megaman level 8 times and then still losing because I lost all my lives. I remember playing Super Mario World and then having to replay three or four hard levels because I lost all my lives without saving.
Now. All types of games can still benefit from lives. How about a game series it doesn't use lives? Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney. Currently the game gives you no real punishment when you just spam anything you think could be the answer. The major reason why is save scumming. Did you lose? Restart the chapter from your last save. No harm no foul. if you actually got penalized, if the game recorded that you got a game over and penalize you, you would take more time and your decisions and possibly have to restart the trial until you got it right. This is a critical thinking that people develop in video games. This is the slight motor abilities people develop with video games this is the cost analysis and reasoning people learn with video games. This is one of the few things that still makes video games have a "difficulty". And it makes me furious people keep wanting to get rid of it.

Makes sense but, moving it over to a coin cost per death mechanic is not necessarily a winner. Could make the game very grindy for certain players if not handled correctly (p.s. it will be handled correctly, it's Mario).

@SLIGEACH_EIRE SM3DW might not be the best single-player Mario experience, but it is absolutely incredible as a co-op game... I have beat it several times with different groups of people and it is really awesome... nothing else like it that I can think of...

Hopefully the 1-Up mushroom still exists, but gives you full health... or 6 HP... that's the only part I care about... a lot of modern games don't have a life-counter and it's fine...

@Ralek85 I suppose SMO is their Nov game as Oct 27 is pretty late in the month. And XC2 is Dec 1st which is as close to Nov as you can get. It's also possible they gave Nov to Skyrim, due out the 11th, as they've been promoting that one since the first Switch reveal and they probably would hate for it to fail if say SMO released the same day. And Sonic Forces is Nov 7th. Nintendo may not care about a Sega game but it will get a lot of promotion.

While I agree w/ you Nitneod is pretty good at having 1 game per month I've always really viewed it as 1 game ever 6 weeks or so, which sometimes means every month but sometimes a month gets skipped if you have a late month release - in this case SMO on Oct 27th - followed by an early month release - XC2 on Dec 1. Not really a lot of room in between. And they'll be promoting Mario up the wazoo w/ that Switch bundle and the amiibo, and just b/c it's a Mario game.

And as you point out, Zelda BotW DLC Champions Ballad needs a date, so that could be mid-Nov. It was probably supposed to be based on the amiibo sales date of Nov 10. Could still be that date b/c it's seriously stupid not to be.

And even though they aren't Switch games, S&M Ultra release Nov 17. Nintendo, but mostly Gamefreak and The Pokemon Company, will be promoting them heavily as well.

So take you pick - Skyrim, Zelda DLC, ongoing Mario promotion or Pokemon. Maybe some combination of those. It's not like the month is completely devoid of games.

I agree w/ you on Dec being a bit lackluster, but maybe they'll be a bit more caring w/ XC2 promotion? It really bothers me how good XCX was - why no Switch port for XC2? - but it kind of came and went, meanwhile FFXV is the game that won't die. And I played them both, and XCX is so much better, and I'm a FF fanboi. Well I was, back when the games were good.

If Switch did get both Rocket League and Doom in Dec - 1 a little more fun family friendly, 1 a bit more hardcore - that would be a pretty good month.

@rjejr I think that's the plan, no? Rocket league and Doom, as far as I remember, are both pegged for a December release (along with Xenoblade).

And there's also L.A. Noire in November. I think it's neat (and smart) that Nintendo will give big third party releases a month to shine, with no real first-party competition.

@damo @ThomasBW84

Who's in charge of the upcoming Switch games page?

https://www.nintendolife.com/nintendo-switch/games/browse?status=upcoming&sort=date

There's no listing for Lego Marvel Superheros 2 anywhere, and I'd bet a lot of money that Pikmin (Tentative title) is not releasing on Switch in 2017. (I know it's supposedly still in the works and Hey! Pikmin is not Pikmin 4 that was near completion 2 years ago, but it's still not releasing in 2017)

@ricklongo "L.A. Noire in November."

I knew about that game, but I couldn't bring myself to make the argument that Nitneod left Nov devoid of a big first party game b/c of LA Noire. We really only just found out about it, whereas they've been promoting Skyrim literally since Switch Day 1. Possibly even while it was still NX, my memory gets fuzzy that far back. I even left Sonic Forces out of my summary games list as I decided Nintendo didn't care about Sega or Sonic either.

And by the way that wasn't one of my usual off topic rants for no reason, I was replying to this comment, so it's not all my fault -
"the Snipperclips and Zelda DLC for November then? Personally, I'd have shifted Mario or Warriors to November."

Sounds similar to the Lego games.

I will miss that staple, but in this case, I'm fine with it being gone. I honestly never minded lives as long as they were designed in mind, hence why I liked Mario and Kirby.

3D platformers and life systems don't really gel well since in that case, it creates unnecessary frustration for the player in it's level design so I don't mind the road Oddesey is taking with it.

@rjejr Fair points, but I think the fact that Mario Odyssey will indeed probably be heavily promoted and most likely be very popular with the Switch install-base makes it even more confusing why they would release Warriors within a week of that, when they still don't have one of those '1st-party exclusive AAA retail titles' for November. I'm not really complaining, I'm just wondering what the reasoning for that might have been.

Maybe it has to do with some of the 3rd-party games/ ports like (and esp. like) Skyrim. That is a definite possibility. Personally, I really don't care for those Bethesda games on the Switch, either becaues I was never much of a fan of (Skyrim/TES) or because I have them already on a arguably superior platform (Doom on PS4).

I think it's great that the Switch is getting that kind of support, absolutely, but what matters for me is a) Nintendo games b) 3rd-party exclusives (like the excellent MarioXcomRabbids and Golf Story) and c) 'evergreens' (or what I consider as such, basically stuff I can always play even if I've already got it on one or several platforms, like Ironcast or Darkest Dungeon - highly replayable, borderline perfect games - with Invisible Inc. and FTL also coming to mind.)

Potentially I'd add d) Virtual Console releases, but that is pretty much the blast-from-the-past version of point a) ^^

Last but not least, I agree about Xenoblade. I hope it gets a signifcant marketing budget and finds the audience it deserves. I cannot really speak to FFXV as I was really turned off by the demos and the trailers. That whole road-trip-bromance design ... I absolutely could not get behind. The characters struck me as utterly obnoxious. Starting from the design down to the voice, just a complete misstep for me.

I gotta say though, that Square came back in a big way for me with that Octopath Traveler demo. I was VERY impressed by that. Brought back memories from stuff like Lost Odyssey (made mostly by former Square talent if I recall correctly ^^), Vagrant Story and even the (imho excellent) Crimson Shroud on 3DS. The visuals were unqiue and moody in all the right ways, and even the combat system was fun despite it's very traditional roots. I also adored playing more-or-less adults (which all these games pretty much have in common), or at least characters that were written as such. It's definitely one of my most anticipated games for next year, and it's been a very long time since I felt confident saying this about a Square RPG.

Hence I hope it, too, gets a proper marketing budget and thus the ability to find it's audience and the success the final version (hopefully) will deserve.

A Lives system still has a place in modern games, if only because countless failures should result in a greater than usual punishment. That said, since the game's design is so open and Mario's lives were always interchangeable with coins anyway, it makes sense to take the cut out of coins instead. Especially since they seem more useful than usual.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when you die if you have no coins, since that's when you'd normally get a game over. Other than that it's basically just one less collectible you have to worry about. Since you got lives by collecting 100 coins traditionally, it's not really very different.

Guess who else isn't going to have a life when this game come out.

@ricklongo @Ralek85 Nov 2017

Forgot "Mario Party: The Top 100" on 3DS Nov 10th.

I'm not sure if I'm joking or not b/c I'm not sure if Ntineod is joking or not w/ that game, but it's a 1st party Nintneod Mario title in mid-Nov, a week before Pokemon. So, is it possible Nintnedo sees Nov as 3DS's month? I'm not joking about that last part, they made a New 2DS XL after all, need to promote it sometime. And M&L:SSS&BM just released. So maybe that's why no Switch game in Nov, Nov is 3DS month.

That actually makes the most sense to me of all my other reasons. Mario & Pokemon two weeks back-to-back in mid Nov, just before BF.

As for FE:Warriors releasing only a week before SMO, well it did release in Japan Sept 28, so I'll go w/ that was supposed to be worldwide but something delayed it in the West. Sept 28th would have put it squarely between Mario & Rabbids Aug 29 and Mario Oct 27 - 8/29, 9/28, 10/27. Of course M&R doesn't release in Japan until 2018, so that doesn't work for Japan, but I'm still going w/ it. Even if FE:W got delayed they weren't going to delay Mario into 3DS month of Nov.

If anything was in Nov I would have preferred XC2. I just feel like anything releasing after Black Friday is dead in the water as people spend all their money then. Sure, the die hards who want it will get it, but it's not getting purchased on a whim like it might BF week into cyber Monday. Probably won't make a huge difference in total sales, but I feel like it loses out on exposure to the masses.

@LordGeovanni While I can see where you're coming from, in this case I'd argue that the removal of lives is actually a step back in the right direction. In every 3D Mario game prior, a game over was a minor inconvenience at worst (excluding two very specific levels in Galaxy 2 and 3D World, but those levels don't match Oddyssy's style at all) So in that case, why even care about lives? I certainly never cared about my lives as a kid playing Super Mario 64 the same way I did about Super Mario Bros 3. This game though, the currency of lives (coins) is actual, spendable currency. Which means if you die, there's a genuine penalty associated with it in a 3D Mario game. Admittedly the penalty could be higher, but that's gonna stop me from just messing around jumping off edges and stuff, considering there's an actual weight to dying this time around.

I'm ok with it. I'd say my tolerance for dying frequently is lower in platformers than other game types.

Super Mario Run doesn't use a life system either.

What's there to explain? Having unlimited lives is always more fun, except when it's a versus kind of competition.

If games like Ghost's Goblins, Blaster Master, PLOK!, and Contra III had unlimited lives they wouldn't be on my "Games I hate and will never recommend" list. A little option/cheatcode like unlimited lives could have made them real classics but instead I never want to see those frustrating nightmares of my childhood again.

As for Odyssey... I don't really care. It looks like I would never see the Game Over screen anyway. I think Super Mario World had the perfect difficulty balance and every main Mario after that was easier, except 3D World with its stupid final stage.

@jimi There are hard levels, yes, but you can usually farm lives really easily on other levels. The only consequence of lives is then that you sometimes have to take a break to collect them.

There are a couple different improvements due to getting rid of lives. Now, similar to Link Between Worlds, the punishment for dying is losing something that is actually useful in other parts of the game (i.e. your rented items in Link Between Worlds).
In addition, it also gives the developers an excuse to make more parts of the game harder. Half of the collectibles will probably be more easily accessible, and the others will most likely be for completionists who really want to put in the time and become masters of the game. Since dying a lot won't set you back all that much, there is no incentive to make everything a cakewalk.

That lovely green 1-UP mushroom has gone forever

Makes sense to me.

@SheldonRandoms You would see them if you tried to 100% some of the games. I recall specifically needing to first collect a bunch of lives in the galaxy games before attempting to complete certain comet stars which can be quite difficult, and the games didn't save how many lives you had, you always started at 5 and Toad gave you I think 5 more. It was an unnecessary chore. 3D Land and World also had some quite difficult levels as well, but at least those saved how many lives you had so it wasn't a problem, but then the lives were even more irrelevant.

It's a good idea for massive levels - Particularly for really young gamers.

Imagine a one on one fighting game with no lives system.

"Lives" are a holdover from arcade coin counters and serve to add challenge in games that are relatively short but with frequent traps, like 2D mario games, where it adds challenge to have to get from point to point through the game without erring too many times. It doesn't make sense in an exploration based game because lives by definition make players play conservatively to not err, while exploration games are designed for players to take risks.

good. i wouldnt mind seeing lives in something like another nsmb or 3D world style game but that doesnt really fit as well with the more open mario games

To me the whole life thing was a hold over from arcade games. They don’t make sense on a console where I have an infinite number of tries.

My avatar has become irrelevant...

I profoundly hope lives are dropped. Nintendo hasn't really designed around them in a way that made it a valuable feature. If you were good you amassed them like a hoarder, if you weren't they only added frustration because other games did the same thing without lives.

@link3710
I do feel that you bring up a number of good points. However I still feel as though the removal of video game lives will cause a significant problem down the road. There's two major problems with the way video game lives are done now. The first problem is that the developers such as Nintendo give away too many extra lives or too few. This ends up causing the game to be artificially harder or artificially easier than it should be. Careful balance of extra lives and difficulty is the ultimate point that the game should strive for and the developers should strive for. The second aspect is this concept of saving wherever and whenever we want. If we can save and reload whenever we want wherever we want there is no incentive to keeping lives. This is drastically under performs the difficulty and as a result makes the lives meaningless. If the games were like Super Mario World, where you can only save in certain locations, that is when the lives matter.
I think the best way to explain this would be an old Mega Man game for NES or even SNES. If the game did not have lives, it would either immediately restart you at the beginning of the level making it even harder than it already was or drop you off at the closest save point every single death and make it significantly easier. Anyone who played the original Mega Man on the original systems would probably agree with me on this. The other idea is save states save wherever you want whenever you want. This is a common feature in current retro platform remakes and emulators. It drastically undercuts the entire purpose of lives and therefore makes them completely redundant.
If anything, we need to stop allowing save everywhere in lives-dependant genres and we need to encourage developers to balance their games appropriately.
Perhaps Nintendo can start by making the Mario game have a difficulty option which will reduce the amount of one-ups and coins available in a level. Maybe the Hard difficulty doesn't have those extra coins pointing to the secret; those will add up to extra lives during the normal play but not available for the extreme players.
I am quite honestly interested in hearing any rebuttal to this, however.

Gamers today need their brain stems constantly rewarded and never punished. They even buy DLC to make sure the challenge isnt too high.

@LordGeovanni While on one hand, I do agree that there is a lack of punishing platformers, I'm not sure the Mario series is the place to implement those sort of changes. For example, in Super Mario 3D World, I was able to get two college age non-gamers and one FPS only gamer to play through the whole pre-credits game with me, and two of the three have continued expanding their game playing since, moving slowly towards harder titles. But with Mario's fame making it a key entry point onto Nintendo systems, it's almost certainly the series that needs to be more accessible. When I'm looking for more difficult platformers, especially to play solo, the eshop tends to be the place to go. Or, for example, take a look at the recently released Samus Returns. I've already died at least a dozen times there, and it certainly punishes you for that. For those looking to challenge themselves, Donkey Kong and Metroid tend to be the next step Nintendo makes towards more difficult platformers, while Kirby and Yoshi tend to be a step down in difficulty for increased accessibility. While you are right that challenging games are incredibly satisfactory to play, there's a reason the video game market is bigger than it's ever been today, and that the fact that it has accessible entrance points. Nintendo's job IMO is to keep Mario as their middle of the road series. Challenging enough to keep anyone engaged, but accessible enough to allow it to rope new gamers into the mix. However, they should still continue to produce more challenging games like you suggested for people to move up into as they become more involved in the hobby.

Many great games have systems, where a game over doesn't punish much, if at all. It's still fun to have games that are designed with some sort of punishment for life losing, & game overs.

Mega Man games on the Nes - as far as I'm aware, you might lose your items(e/w tanks, etc.) after game over, but you still got to continue forward, from your point of game over. In the first game, you could continue, if I recall, a set number of time, or maybe it was unlimited, but you lost your score.

SMB/2/3 - A Game Over in SMB/SMB2J meant back to the beginning of the game. In SMB2, you had limited retries, before having to restart the game. In SMB3, I think you had a number of retries, & you had to rebeat all current world-map levels you completed, prior to Game Over.

I think games should have a bit of challenge, & some sort of punishment for, at the very least, getting a game over. Loss of score, having to redo a certain amount of progress you've made, something.

Games having some relevant form of punishment for deaths, & definitely game overs, makes the game more challenging. Yes, the primary point of games are to be entertainment. I think they(games) make better entertainment, if there are challenges to overcome.

Yes, Mario games have, for some time, given out lives like nothing else.

I almost feel like saying millenials can't play games that require them to practice, & get good at the game.

I also think lives still work in 3D Mario titles. I think the key is making it harder to get lives. Most 3D Mario titles I've played recently practically give lives away.

If there's no real loss from a game over, be it permanent, or otherwise, then there is no reason to have a game over. No game over, no need for a lives system. But, if you can't lose, or have even semi-significant setbacks, where's the challenge?

@link3710
A lot of what you said I have a lot of different ideas about so forgive me if I ramble a little bit.
I do feel that Nintendo should put greater emphasis into curtailing difficulty for the amount of lives given. Just flat-out removing lives is not exactly a positive in my opinion. Exploration should be encouraged yes but at the same time this is effectively one tenth of a lost life now. Nintendo is in an awkward situation because the Mario games have been too easy for the amount of lives given. But they are right on the difficulty for a Mario game.
Another major concern I have is that video game lives only really apply well to certain genre. Platformers Fighters and possibly some things like Kart racers. Any other major genres such as action-adventure (aka Zelda) or RPGs don't really work. Only runs off of a single life: you lose, game over.
If Nintendo limited how often players could save the game to only specific locations, and they reduce the amount of lives and especially amount of live exploits available, they would drastically increase the interactivity and success-reward while not making the game more difficult individually.

@coolaggro

They both do (I just started playing 64 for the first time in a decade and I'm having a blast!). I think Galaxy at least has checkpoints, so there is some point to it. 64 always starts you outside of the painting (and therefore back to the beginning of the stage), so all lives do in that game is save you the convenience of running back into and through the castle.

I'll miss the 1-up mushroom but that's about it. Lives have been irrelevant in Mario games for a long time now.

I've lost over a thousand lives trying to beat Crown-Crown in 3D World. That level is the bane of my existence.

Mario games since Mario World have always let you just keep continuing from what I recall, so game over wasnt like Super Mario Bros on NES where you went bak to 1-1

If you thought that at least sidescrollers still need a life count, then everything you know is wrong.

@AlexSora89
Honestly Shovel Knight is one of those games I am talking about. They made it drastically over difficult and no lives whatsoever leaving the game to be far harder than most Gamers would be happy playing. A lot of people talk about how wonderful game it is. I'd like the architecture, I like the pixel art. I don't like the difficulty and I don't like dying 200 times because the same enemy keeps pushing me into a pit.

I hope this becomes an ongoing tradition for Mario games, even for the 2D games. I'd rather have the option to either continue from the halfway point, or complete the level in one go for a reward of some kind, even if it only amounts to being one step closer towards 100% completion to get 5 sparkly stars on my save file.
Death to the Green Mushroom!

Maybe 1up mushrooms can now increase the "p" as that is apparently more relevant than lives these days in gaming

Excuse me, waiter? There's usually a thumbtack on my sandwich. Where the hell is it? Explain yourself.

Can't say I agree with this decision, the game over music is a staple of the Mario series.

@Anti-Matter They'll cram the sound into a few places, for nostalgia's sake. Never fear!

@Kayfios
"Death to the green mushroom" is one of the most cleverly ironic - not ironically clever - comments I've read on the site in a while.

@LordGeovanni
I have it on 3DS, WiiU, and Xbox One. Imagine the joy of playing the same hard game, with three campaigns - four in the following months - to complete, on three consoles. That's a whopping nine campaigns, twelve once SK:KOC hits, to do. Ouchie ouch.

Don't hear me complaining. I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner. It makes the game more tolerable and enjoy.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE actually have to beat the game and then the last world is actually challenging with the last level being one of the hardest I've ever played in anyMario game. Absolutely brutal.

@rushiosan You didn't play it right then. The green stars and stamps are the whole point of the game. Like half of the game is locked until you collect them.

@LordGeovanni see the thing is Shovel Knight is not a drastically difficult game since it's not a hard-core platformer. It has a decent difficulty curve for sure but nothing that a little practice won't get you through. Also an excellent example of how to design a game without lives and still have punishment and difficulty.

@capt_n difficulty comes from smart enemy and level design. For example not having a game over but continuously having to restart at a checkpoint and losing coins which give you something valuable in return during the Hart section is and can get very frustrating à la shovel night hey

@MaSSiVeRiCaN: Then hopefully, the coin loss will actually be something players don't want to experience playing Odyssey. I'm not saying a game always has to have a lives/game-over system. I'm just saying a game needs a balanced, & functional system that in some meaningful way punishes the player, or denies them something valuable, or sets them back a bit, for not being good enough at x task, or level. Otherwise, winning can be done with challenge.

@MaSSiVeRiCaN I've heard that before but it's fairly bad that you've to beat the game to get 1 challenging world.

@Thexare Apples and Oranges.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE sorry I should have clarified that Champions Road is just the hardest one period but pretty much that entire world is good for a challenge. Also it was a real treat as a co-op game and pretty much the only mario platformer I found fun in multiplayer.

Either way I had fun with the game and thought it was really neat but understandable it's not everyone's cup of tea.

@Capt_N completely agree on that.

@MaSSiVeRiCaN
I will be quite honest, Shovel Knight is actually a bit more difficult of a curve with instant death upon falling into a pit, knockback on every injury, and loss of a considerable amount of your money all at once upon death. I can completely truthfully state that I've spent over 3 hours on propeller knights stage as well as over 250 deaths. Yes I did count them.
I would much rather have a three or five lives situation in Shovel Knight and when I fail, get kicked out of the stage and lose half my money. Current progress still has me attempting that stage. No I cannot complete the game.
I have completed every Mario game. Every Mario level I personally completed. And yes, that includes Grandmaster Galaxy.

Mario games are so easy these days that I never die anyway so I don't really care. I will kinda miss the satisfaction from having a maxed out life counter at all times tho...

This is how I remember the life counter worked in SM64:

1. If you die, and you have lives left, you get kicked out a painting.
2. If you die, and you have no lives left, you get a game over screen. You start from outside the castle with 3 lives, picking star progress from the last point you saved.
3. You are prompted to save every time you collect a star and exit a painting.

The difference between a game over and dying is seeing the game over screen and a minute or two of extra running through an essentially empty castle.

Did Sunshine and Galaxy 1/2 add more punishing consequences for game overs? If not, then the life counter always has been irrelevant to the 3D Mario games.

It makes sense to me. Lives really aren't a necessary feature in modern platformers where each new level you reach is permanantly unlocked, and the worst punishment is merely having to start the current level all over again. Sure, the threat of a "game over" adds a little challenge if the levels themselves are long enough to feature checkpoints or otherwise include multiple areas, but there are better ways to add challenge than relying on a frustrating relic of the 16-bit past back when most platformers didn't have save files.

Now if only the modern Sonic games would pick up on this idea...

@Dev Well, you also lose progress, since you'll also be kicked back to the previous checkpoint. That means the challenge is still there to beat a certain section of the game like a tricky platforming segment or a tough boss fight and can take you a few tries to get past it. However, a lives system is still mostly pointless in any game with a save file that lets you automatically skip right back to the current level you've reached no matter what happens.

@LordGeovanni Then what does it matter if "Shovel Knight" had a life system? You'd still be getting pushed into a pit by the same enemy over and over, but it would be even more difficult since you'd have to start the entire level over again after every few tries. As long as you don't destroy the checkpoints for extra loot, Shovel Knight allows you to restart from the last checkpoint an infinite number of times, just like "Super Mario Odyssey" is doing. Shovel Knight may be quite difficult in places, but the continue system it uses has nothing to do with that harsh difficulty level.

Oh, I get it. You just want the option to return to the world map after you die so that you can replay easier levels without being stuck on one single level that you can't beat or starting a brand new game. That way, you'd also have the option of saving up cash for extra meal tickets and relic purchases that may allow you to eventually beat the level. Well, the game doesn't save your progress to your save file until after you beat a level completely, so just restart the entire game and reload your save file.

If you still can't beat that one level but still want to see the rest of the game, well that's what the cheat codes are for, although you will have to start the game over from scratch in order to use one.

@BulbasaurusRex
I think you have drastically misunderstood what I was saying. If Shovel Knight was designed with three or five lives or, as another term, "attempts" per level, there would also be a little bit more forgiveness with death pits. With both of those changes in place, the game would be considerably more available to other players. In the meantime, despite you saying that I should back out and do other levels, I have already unlocked every possible thing: every health upgrade, every armor. The instant death in Propeller Knight's stage has prohibited me from finishing the game. There's a particular reason why it's known as fake difficulty.

@LordGeovanni No, that's real difficulty when it's designed around actually beating the level like that. It's not like it relies on cheap stuff like unreliable collision detection, convoluted pattern memorization, or leaps of faith, and the levels do offer a generous amount of checkpoints. I suppose the number of instant death pits could be reduced, but it's not that big of an issue compared to many other games. Even if they had implemented a life system, they wouldn't just completely redesign the levels for it.

Anyway, you'll just have to use a cheat code to finish the game. I suggest the one that lets you survive the death pits. While many video games these days are designed to be easy to beat the main game (at least on the lowest difficulty setting when there are multiple difficulty settings) and only make it challenging on higher difficulty levels or to fulfill extra goals to 100% the game, there are still many games out there that require a good amount of skill just to beat the main game like was common back in the 16-bit days. It's just as legitmate of a game design style as as long as it's not so brutal a challenge as to strand most gamers within the first couple of levels, and it's preferable to have a cheat system of some sort that will still allow any player to still see most of the game's content.

As another option, you could look up a Youtube video of that one spot on Propellor Knight's stage to find out a good strategy for finally getting past it, although it's still no guarentee that you'll be able to pull it off yourself.

I want it back! lol