 Another day and another batch of Nintendo news to wet our whistles to. If that's not the only thing that's wet for you, I do suggest you take your clothes off, dry off a little bit and find some freshly cleaned underoos because today we have quite the batch of news to deliver to your eyeballs and ear holes. Sure, Super Mario Wonder sales updates are a thing and despite the headlines, things are never quite what they seem. Speaking of Mario, Super Mario RPG is practically here. The digital version unlocks tonight and that means we have reviews to talk about and yes, Nintendo just added to a very impressive resume in 2023. Earthbound fans got excited over hints at Mother 4 from the series creator that might remind some folks that they stare at the sun just a little too much when daydreaming. Speaking of daydreaming, people seem awfully excited for a Mario Kart rumor, mostly because people just want to play a new Mario Kart because Mario Kart just kicks ass. But enough waffling over our favorite flavors of popsicles, let's get to the last lick and talk about some Mario Wonder sales. We know the game has been doing very well in the United Kingdom and Japan with only Japan giving us any actual sales numbers to chew on. But Nintendo themselves technically gave us the entire lifetime to date sales from last quarter at 4.3 million copies in its first two weeks on the market. What we didn't know is where it ranked in sales when it came to the good old US of A. Well, now we know thanks to the MPD. Wait a second. Why did the MPD get rebranded to Serkana? Are they trying to get discontinued like Windows Cortana that now defunct virtual assistant that only ever truly assisted me in screaming at my monitor when I wanted to find a picture of my kids and instead it showed me Jason Kidd, former NBA player and okay this rabbit hole is going a bit too deep. You get the idea. Serkana reported that Mario Wonder came in at number two, just behind Marvel's Spider-Man 2. This may seem like a loss for the plumber compared to our friendly neighborhood spider, but there's one key metric Serkana wants to always remind people when this happens. A little asterisk. Gamers tend to overlook as they console war away on the X-verse or the Reddit spheres of the world. Digital sales for Nintendo published titles are not included in the title sales ranking charts. So the truth is, the little plumber probably did exceed Spider-Man 2, which did include digital sales data. Given Nintendo's data shows anywhere, from 40 to 45% of sales of their biggest games in the United States are digital. So if it got to number two missing a little less than half the total sales data, then I think it's a pretty safe presumption. Of course, we already have official numbers for lifetime sales with the same timeframe as Mario Wonder. Spider-Man 2, as announced by Sony's financials, sold 5 million units in the last fiscal quarter and as mentioned before Mario Wonder sold 4.3 million. So we know worldwide, Spidey has the lead as of the end of the last fiscal quarter. Now, does any of this matter? Not really. Both games are actually doing incredibly well, but console warriors are sure to take all of this data and treat it like Duke Nukem. Of course, Mario Wonder isn't the only Mario getting some shine, as Super Mario RPG is practically here, back from the Super Nintendo grave of our forefathers. Wait, can I even make that joke? I'm a father and the game existed while I was a kid. You know what, does any of this matter if you aren't about to drop a like and subscribe to the channel? Probably not, but we are trying to hit a subscriber goal that enables me to sweep up the cookie crumbs for my children's Oreos and feed them to you like a pack of wild animals because you know you love it. Subscribe, dammit. Okay, sorry about that. Where were we at? Right, reviews for an RPG. At the time I'm making this video, there are 75 reviews listed for Super Mario RPG. On Switch was zero negative reviews. Now this is a meta critic. It's rocking a Super Clean 83. The lowest review, a 60, calls the game one of the most charming and eccentric adventures Mario has ever been on. Their issues with it? They didn't do enough? It's still too easy, in fact their entire problem seems to be that it's too faithful, that it should have fundamentally changed platforming segments and more. On the flip side, the most glowing of reviews are all 90 plus and even one perfect score. And they all sing nothing but praises calling the game near perfect. Look, no matter what any review says, I was always going to pick up this game because I never played it originally. And it's a game I understand that despite being an RPG, it takes a little under 20 hours for the first time through, which is right in my wheelhouse after spending so much time in Tears of the Kingdom earlier this year. Are you going to be joining me on this adventure this weekend? You know what adventure I'd love to go on to? Why not Earthbound 4? Sure, we can all just forget that the third adventure has never been officially released here in the west because at this point it's practically an ongoing joke that I'm sure many Nintendo employees have a good laugh about anytime they see a fan wearing an earthbound shirt at a convention. A bunch of fans are running wild right now after series creator and yes, I'm about to butcher his name and yes, there will be a dozen comments correcting me as if I'm suddenly going to become an expert on Japanese annunciations. What do you take me for? A person who covers video games from a Japanese company for a living or something? Give me a break man. I secretly use all of this to disguise a secret message embedded in every video trying to turn ants into ladybugs with select frequencies for science. Bah, I got off track again. Look, series creator Shigaso Tatoaitoi, I told you, responded to someone on Twitter who had a mother jiff saying there will be a continuation of this, so stay tuned to be continued. And fans went nuts. So many people running around going, oh my gosh, it's happening! It's happening! Earthbound 4 baby! Of course, cooler heads should prevail. Remember, when I first brought this up all the way back at the beginning of the video, I said some people might be looking at the sun a bit too much. All it took was one minute of investigation to find out this was part of a longer chain of conversation that's actually talking about rice crackers and how much Itoi really enjoys them and he's simply going to get more info on his love of rice crackers later. Yes, we somehow took a conversation about rice crackers because a fan threw in a mother jiff and suddenly fans twisted this into mother 4. Honestly, I've seen worse, so bravo internet. You didn't dive into the absolute depths of insanity on this one, you merely tested the waters to see how it felt. You know what does feel like I'm getting a bit deeper into those depths though? Talking about rumors from places that literally call their own existence nonsensical ramblings. I mean, the dude is warning us that what he says makes no sense, has no meaning, and is absolutely ridiculous. But that doesn't mean it's not fun. Yes, Zippo dropped another rumor and this time it's about the next Mario Kart game. Sure, we can point out how he's gotten some stuff correct about Mario lately, he was correct on a couple things of Mario Wonder, and indeed was one of the ones saying 1000 year door was happening all those years ago. Look, I too can throw darts blindly at a dartboard and still occasionally hit a bullseye. But the reason is Mario Kart rumors seem to be getting traction is due to actions and an actual news story by Bandai Namco. And that's the real story here, though don't worry Zippo fans, and yes, I'm talking about all you smokers out there that love whipping out your Zippo like you're the cool kid in the beer garden. We'll get to this rumor in a moment. Bandai Namco has formally announced Studio 2 and Studio S, collaboration studios that typically work on Nintendo games. Of course, we know Bandai Namco has been working on Nintendo games for some time and has credits in games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Tour, Arms, Mario Sports Superstars and more. However, until now they weren't technically unnamed formalized studio publicly, but rather groups of developers from their teams, at least that was the assumption dedicated to certain projects. That's now officially changed as they have been formed in the two studios dedicated to such work, likely to make things more organized and help with proper studio accreditation in the works. The entire team is made up presently of 152 employees, with 32% of them being actually new. 40% are artists and everyone else on the group is made up of designers and programmers. The site also shows they are hiring a lot of new employees, which is probably another reason to announce the studio formally. That way if you wanted the work specifically at Bandai Namco on Nintendo projects, you can apply more directly. The interesting part is when you read some of the job listings, some of them say things like hiring for a 3D action game commissioned by Nintendo. I wonder what that's going to be. In other words, yeah, this team is set to be making Nintendo games for a long time. So what does this have to do with Zippo's Mario Kart rumor? Nothing directly to be honest, but it is notable that Bandai Namco's teams are highly likely helping out with the development of the next Mario Kart game, both on console and mobile. That's not even a guess, they were so heavily involved with Mario Kart the entire Switch generation, it's simply a guarantee that they will be in assistant studio to the next one. Fine, it doesn't really prove anything. So what did our nonsensical little friend have to say about Mario Kart this time? After all, you guys want to add more to your, well, if he said it, it's not happening list, right? Okay fine, fine, fine, you twisted my nipples enough. Yes, I'm going to just quote him because I'm trying to come up with clever quips for what he has to say and it just gets tiring. The 10th, no, not 9th installment of the Mario Kart series will release in 2025, which will be Switch 2's second year on the market. The intention is to release the title sometime before the second holiday on the market. It's being developed by Nintendo EPD Production Group 9 with Bandai Namco Studios once again co-developing. Additionally, Nintendo are absolutely sparing no expense with this game. This is apparently one of the most expensive games Nintendo has ever put into production. The next 3D Mario is said to be absolutely dropping, and this apparently looks even better. The game's visual fidelity is said to be a very high priority for them, meaning the game is going to look good. Damn good. Man, I'm glad I'm done reading that dribble. Look, Mario Kart is likely to be released within the first 12 months of Switch 2 launching. Absolutely, it is going to look visually good. Of course, it's on way more powerful hardware and they have to make sure it's a noticeable visual improvement over Mario Kart 8. Will it be called Mario Kart X or just 10? Maybe. They have only really used numbers for Mario Kart 7 and 8, but with the success of both I could see them continuing the number scheme instead of the subtitle themes that they do use. But going from 8 deluxe and moving 60 million and then skipping straight to 10, that just doesn't really make sense to me. That's just not really something I'm buying. Sure, tour is arguably Mario Kart 9 or maybe you want to argue home circuit is, but I think most general consumers will understand the next Mario Kart they are looking forward to has arrived when it goes with the number 9. But what do I know? It's not as if the entire universe has used numbers to indicate sequels that have led to consistent sales and success over and over and over again. It's almost like Nintendo Switch 2 should literally just be called Nintendo Switch 2 as well. But hey, Nintendo is going to Nintendo. Either way, I think that's just about all the dribble from a nonsensical blog I can handle. Thank you all so much for being here and I hope you enjoyed the news. Hi guys. Oh man, I know most of you guys don't make it to the end of my videos. This is really for some of the hardcore viewers here. Yeah, I'm back making videos. I'm not going to be doing live streams this week, so I don't look forward to stream tonight or anything. And I know it seems like I'm in good spirits and everything's all good, but that's because I just happen to have energy at the moment, which is why I chose to record when I did. For those who don't know, I have been suffering from COVID and pneumonia. And yes, I was submitted to the hospital earlier this week, Sunday heading into Monday, and it was pretty rough. I am heavily medicated, but I am obviously doing much better since I'm able to make videos again. But I've saw all the well wishes. I saw tons of DMs. I had so many DMs from so many people. I couldn't even respond to everyone. And I'm sure once I get this video out, I'm probably going to go crash and take a nice little nap before my kids get home from school. But I just want to let you guys know I'm alive. I'm here. We're doing good. You know, things are back to normal when you see me streaming again, hopefully next week. But you know, I got to I got to let the recuperation do its job. I am glad that I'm able to talk, at least in the moment, I am getting a little short on breath. But that's what happens when you got fluid in the lungs and everything. So thank you to the doctors who put me on some really good medications. Thank you to all of you for your kind words and support. And we'll be we'll be back at this, you know, sooner or not, we got videos coming up for now. So at least I can do that. Thank you guys for being here. And I'll catch you in the next video.