Super Mario 3D World Appears Significantly Faster on Switch Than It Was on Wii U

Super Mario 3D World is coming to the Switch and we already know that it'll be quite different from the original 2013 Wii U release. Today's Super Mario-focused Direct presentation revealed Bowser's Fury, a mysterious add-on that's being made for the 3D World re-release, but upon closer inspection it seems like the base game is changing too.

The fine folks at GameXplain have taken a close look at today's reveal trailer for Super Mario 3D World on Switch, compared it to similar captures from the Wii U version, and arrived at a conclusion: the new version is a heck of a lot faster.

That's "faster" in terms of character movement, not framerate or other technical performance areas. Seen side-by-side, footage from the Wii U of the player performing similar actions as those seen in the trailer quickly starts to lag behind the Switch trailer. In revisiting Super Mario 3D World for this re-release, it seems that Nintendo has decided to tweak the gameplay so as to make it snappier.

On top of that, GameXplain noticed that it looks like a mid-air dive, similar to the super-useful one that Mario gained in Super Mario Odyssey, has been added to 3D World. It may take the work of speedrunners and other analysts out there to assemble a thorough list of tweaks once 3D World is actually out for Switch, but it's looking like it hasn't received a one-to-one port here.

We won't have to wait long to see if Super Mario 3D All Stars is packing any similarly sneaky gameplay changes, as that's out in just a couple weeks, but 3D World for Switch is another matter. For that, we'll be waiting until February 12, 2021.