GameStop Finds Creative Way to Showcase Cat Mario

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury has been incredibly well received, especially with those players who may have missed the game on the Wii U. Super Maraio 3D World + Bowser's Fury's sales have been pretty impressive, with the game leading game sales charts in both the UK and Japan.

Though the game is selling very well, it seems that not every local game store was given equal treatment when it comes to advertising the game to customers. Recently, one Reddit user poster a picture of a funny, clever workaround that one GameStop store used after the store didn't have the proper standee to advertise Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury.

The Reddit posts comes by way of a user going by the name robinj555, who posted the picture on the Nintendo Switch subreddit. The picture itself shows a standard Super Mario cutout of Mario jumping in his iconic pose. Unfortunately, the Mario in the standee is not wearing the Super Bell cat suit power up. So, in order to advertise Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, the staff covered Mario in yellow, white, and pink sticky notes to give Mario the appearance of wearing the furry cat suit.

In all honesty, it's a pretty good solution that actually doesn't look all that bad. Of course, it would be much better if the GameStop got the proper standee, but this solution probably gets a lot of attention on its own. With the positive reception Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury has gotten already, any advertising is good advertising. Still, hopefully this GameStop manages to nab an official 3D World standee sometime in the future.

With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo took one of its oldest franchises in a bold new direction. Abandoning the more linear structure of previous Zelda games, Breath of the Wild is a massive open world experience, giving players unprecedented freedom for the franchise, while still feeling decidedly like a Zelda game. The gamble paid off, as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild became one of the highest-rated and most influential video games ever made. And now it's time for Nintendo to give Super Mario the Breath of the Wild treatment and bring the franchise to an open world.

Super Mario has experimented with open-ended sandbox video game worlds before. While the earlier Super Mario games are linear in structure, Super Mario 64 features sandbox levels, as does Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Odyssey. The Super Mario Galaxy games and Super Mario 3D World returned to more linear level design, but the fact remains that Super Mario has already dipped its toe in open world gaming.

If anyone doubts that the Super Mario franchise could excel in an open world environment, they just need to play Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. The Bowser's Fury portion of the Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury Switch release is a brand new adventure that is a small-scale representation of how a potential open world Super Mario game might play. It effortlessly blends open world exploration with linear Super Mario platforming challenges, and the result is something that feels both like old-school Super Mario and completely new at the same time.