Hello, Mario!

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

Hello, Mario!, released on Nintendo Switch in 2026, is a game I would describe as an “activity center”, sort of an interactive toy intended for very young children. It’s only playable in handheld mode, and you’ll be able to see more or less everything it has to offer in 15 minutes or so, but it’s free to download, so that helps to make the limited use of this game somewhat more forgivable.

You’re presented with a cartoony 2D image of Mario’s face, which you can use the touchscreen to interact with in a way that isn’t too dissimilar from the 3D Mario head at the beginning of Super Mario 64, tugging on Mario’s nose, ears, mustache, hat, and so on. Depending on what you do, various interactions may occur – you can remove Mario’s hat, or get him to sneeze or play peek-a-boo, or so on.

You can also bring up a menu with a variety of selections – a Mario head, a question mark block, a mushroom, a star, a pipe, a blooper, a cheep cheep, a music block, and a Toad with a camera. Each of these does various things that provide additional ways to interact with Mario.

There aren’t really any goals here, nor is there much depth – for the most part, you can’t combine interactions so there isn’t much in the way of hidden combinations to find here. There’s also very little here that you could deem educational, apart from one “minigame” of sorts that has you popping bubbles by flicking Mario’s head at them, counting up as you do. I guess that could be considered educational, right?

The presentation here is decent, with clean, colorful 2D images that can be interacted with in ways that make subtle use of 3D to squash and stretch. There are renditions of a few classic Mario themes, as well as a few Mario sound effects. However, mostly you’ll be hearing Mario’s voice making little exclamations as you go, and singing along with the music when you change themes. Parents, be warned – I could see this getting very annoying very, very quickly.

Is Hello, Mario! worth a free download? Ehh. This game is very limited in its use, and I’m not sure how much parents want to trust a young child with an expensive device like a Nintendo Switch. And given the lack of variety or educational value here, I’m not sure you’ll get much use out of this. My guess is that either it will remain interesting for all of 15 minutes before your kid gets bored with it, or they’ll be absolutely charmed by something that will have Mario’s voice driving you up the wall. Either way, it’s hard for me to recommend this.

tl;dr – Hello, Mario! is a free-to-play Activity Center-style game for young children that can only be used in handheld mode. While this might provide a cute distraction for 10-15 minutes, there’s not enough variety here to last longer than that, and if your young kid does take a liking to it, it’ll probably annoy you so much you’ll regret ever downloading it. Either way, I can’t really recommend this.

Grade: C-

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