241. Super Mario Bros. 35 (Nintendo, Switch, 2020)

Super Mario Bros. 35 is what happens when Nintendo takes the currently-popular battle royale formula and applies it to my 6th favorite game of all time, 1985's Super Mario Bros. Instead of playing through the game normally, Super Mario Bros. 35 keeps dropping you (and 34 other players) into a neverending series of levels until only one Mario remains, the same way they did with Tetris 99 previously. In a way, it feels like I've been training for this game my whole life, but also it's making me even better at Super Mario Bros. (or at least, better at memorizing its levels). Super Mario Bros. 35 uses the more polished physics from Super Mario Maker, which I put a ridiculous amount of hours into last year.

There are only really 2 mechanics that are new to Super Mario Bros. 35, but they help keep you focused on the battle royale aspects. The first is enemies. Whenever you defeat an enemy in your game, you get a small time bonus, and a copy of the enemy is sent over to an opponent's game. you can choose the categories of who these get sent to (random, attackers, highest coins, lowest time), so there's a small amount of strategy here, but I overwhelmingly stuck with random since it felt the most "honorable". 

The other new mechanic is the item roulette: every 20 coins you collect allows you to spin a roulette for one of 4 items (mushroom, flower, star, or pow block), which help the game with feeling a bit more random / lucky. Collecting an item you also possess gives you a bigger time bonus, so when you are running out of time, a cache of coins can come in handy.

Early on in each level, Super Mario Bros. 35 is all about resource collection: the more time and coins you can rack up now, the better of you are once the timer starts going faster when there are only 5 players left. Later on, you're typically in a group of 5-10 people who are clearly not terrible at Mario. Often, just focusing on your own game and playing well is more than enough to win, though a few times I did run out of time for a second place finish, but even that felt like a 2nd place well-earned. I've never been this instantly good at a battle royale game, and until they make a Katamari or God Hand battle royale, I probably never will be.

5/5, a new modern way to experience one of my favorite games of all time