Play Mario Clash Online

Game Overview

Mario Clash feels like someone took an old-school enemy-clear level and made it way more chaotic—in a good way. You’re still stomping around pipes and smacking enemies, but now you’ve got this weird front-and-back depth thing going on. At first, it’s kind of disorienting. You’ll see an enemy in the background, then realize, “Oh, I’ve got to chuck a shell across the screen to hit that guy.”

You jump between two layers using pipes, and it gets tricky fast. Timing throws to hit enemies that aren’t even on the same plane as you sounds simple until you try it. And then there’s the shells—they’re your main weapon, but also super limited, so half the time you’re running around hoping the one shell you threw bounces back toward you without falling off-screen.

It’s still level-based, so once you knock out everything on screen, you move on—but each round piles on weirder enemy types and tighter timing. Mario Clash definitely makes you think a bit more than expected for something that looks pretty simple at first glance, and the Virtual Boy’s weird 3D layering actually plays into the strategy in a cool way. Just don’t expect to breeze through it without getting smacked a few times.