Mario Clash

Mario Clash
Information
Developer	Nintendo R&D1
Publisher	Nintendo
Platform	Virtual Boy
Device	Virtual Boy
Type	Game
Genre	Action, Platform
Play Area	Seated
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	September 28, 1995 (Japan), October 1, 1995 (North America)
Price	¥4,900 (Japan, excluding tax)

Mario Clash (Japanese: マリオクラッシュ) is a 1995 action game developed by Nintendo R&D1 and published by Nintendo for the Virtual Boy, the company's red-monochrome stereoscopic tabletop console. It is a three-dimensional reworking of the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros.: Mario clears single-screen stages of enemies by throwing Koopa Troopa shells, and each stage has a foreground and a background plane that he can move between through pipes. Nintendo released it in Japan on 28 September 1995 at a suggested price of ¥4,900 before tax. IGN's game database gives the North American release date as 1 October 1995.

IGN described it as "technically the very first 3D Mario game". Critics were split on it at launch and in later retrospectives. In March 2026, Nintendo added the game to the Virtual Boy collection of its Nintendo Classics service for Nintendo Switch, which is played by sliding the console into a Virtual Boy-style accessory.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Checked release dates, prices, developer, gameplay, Shoshinkai preview, Nintendo Classics and Nintendo Music re-release details, and all review quotes against Nintendo pages, IGN, GamesRadar, Nintendo Life, Gematsu, Good Game and archive.org scans of Next Generation, EGM, GamePro and GameFan. About review dates.

Gameplay

The game takes place in what Nintendo calls the Clash House Tower, a series of stages built from narrow ledges and pipes. Each stage is a single screen. Mario earns points by clearing it of enemies before moving on to the next. In a change from Mario Bros., Mario cannot walk off one side of the screen and reappear on the other, and hitting a platform from below does not stun enemies; there is also no POW block. Instead, the platforms are split between the foreground and the background, and Mario travels between them through the same pipes the enemies use. Nintendo's Japanese product page describes the Virtual Boy's three-dimensional world as one in which Mario's range of movement extends toward the front and the back of the play area.

Koopa Troopas are the only enemies Mario can safely jump on. Stomping one makes it withdraw into its shell, which Mario picks up and throws at other enemies. Shells can be thrown left and right or across the gap between the two planes, so that Mario aims "into" the screen from the foreground or toward the player from the background. Most enemies are stunned only when hit from the side by a shell thrown from the other plane, and a second hit then removes them; Nintendo's own description notes that a player may need to throw a shell from the opposite platform to stun an enemy before finishing it with another throw. Enemies include Spinies, Boos and Para-Goombas, along with crabs familiar from Mario Bros. A small spiked creature can be knocked out by a single hit from any direction, while a crab has to be spun around first. Hitting several enemies with one shell earns extra points, which IGN noted gives the game a puzzle element, since the player has to work out how the planes connect through the pipes and how to take out a line of advancing enemies with a single shell.

Later stages add snakes that lay eggs, fireballs that cross the screen, icicles that form under platforms and fall, and icy ledges on which Mario slides. A mushroom power-up appears after a number of enemies have been defeated; once Mario collects it, a shell hit from any direction defeats the remaining enemies. After every few stages, a bonus round has Mario jumping to collect coins that travel toward him, with an extra life awarded for collecting all of them.

The game has 99 stages before it loops back to the start. The player can begin from any of the first 40, but the game has no save feature and does not keep high scores after the system is switched off. It is a single-player game, without the two-player mode of Mario Bros.

Controls

Mario moves with the Virtual Boy controller's left directional pad and runs while the L button is held. The A button throws a carried shell in the direction Mario faces, and jumping is assigned to both B and R. The right directional pad also throws, sending the shell in whichever direction is pressed without Mario having to turn around first.

Use of the stereoscopic display

Mario Clash is displayed entirely in red, as are all Virtual Boy games. The game uses the console's stereoscopic depth to separate its two playfields: in IGN's description, the planes "actually look like they are varying distances from the foreground, where Mario often starts". In its 2009 review, Nintendo Life wrote that the 3D effect gives "a good sense of the distance between background and foreground", and that a thrown shell grows larger as it crosses the gap, or flies close to the screen when it misses. GamePro's review made the same point about shells thrown into the distance or, from the opposite ledge, "right into your face". GamesRadar argued that the design depended on that depth, since most enemies could only be knocked out by shells thrown from a different plane. Nintendo Life also noted that the character sprites, including Mario, can look flat against the three-dimensional stages.

Development

Mario Clash was developed by the Nintendo R&D1 team headed by Gunpei Yokoi, whom GamesRadar describes as the creator of the Virtual Boy. In August 1995, Next Generation listed Mario Clash among the playable games Nintendo had confirmed for the system, describing it as a platformer that keeps familiar Mario elements while letting the player move "in" and "out" of the screen. The magazine called it "perhaps the most promising title" for the console, "having been designed in part by Shigeru Miyamoto".

Nintendo had earlier shown a Virtual Boy version of Mario Bros. at its Shoshinkai show on 15 and 16 November 1994, where the console was unveiled; Electronic Gaming Monthly reported it under the title Mario Bros. VB. The same Next Generation report, however, still listed a "Mario Bros VB" as a separate Nintendo project, further from release than Mario Clash, so the relationship between the two is unclear.

Release

Region	Platform	Release date	Notes
Japan	Virtual Boy	28 September 1995	Suggested retail price ¥4,900 (excluding tax); genre listed by Nintendo as action
North America	Virtual Boy	1 October 1995	Date and MSRP of US$29.95 as listed in IGN's game database
Nintendo Switch Online	Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 (Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics)	10 March 2026	Requires a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership and a Virtual Boy accessory for Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Classics re-release

Nintendo launched its Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics collection for Nintendo Switch on 17 February 2026. The collection requires a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership and one of two accessories into which the console is inserted: a replica of the original Virtual Boy hardware or a cardboard model. Gematsu reported on 3 March 2026 that Nintendo would add Mario Clash and Mario's Tennis to the collection on 10 March, as Mario titles for "MAR10 Day". Nintendo's update announcement of 10 March 2026 lists both games as part of the Virtual Boy collection.

On 31 July 2026, alongside its announcement that two cancelled Virtual Boy games would join the service on 4 August, Nintendo added five Virtual Boy soundtrack albums to its Nintendo Music app; the Mario Clash album has 22 tracks.

Reception

Publication	Score	Notes
Next Generation	3 of 5 stars	Reviewed as "Mario Smash", September 1995
Nintendo Life	6/10	Retrospective review of the North American version, 2009

Contemporary reviews

Next Generation reviewed the game in September 1995 under the name Mario Smash. It called the game "basically the original Mario Bros, in a 3D form", which "is actually fun, using the Virtual Boy's additional axis to full advantage without detracting from gameplay". It concluded that the game is "not addictive, exciting, or even nice looking, but it's a darn good distraction in an interesting new format", and gave it three stars out of five.

In GameFan's November 1995 Virtual Boy reviews, one reviewer wrote that the game "to this day can hold my attention for hours", praising how the three-dimensional effect allows throws to be timed "back and forth across the two planes", while finding little variety through the game. A second reviewer found it "kinda fun at the outset" but increasingly tedious, with scenery that rarely changes. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthlys Review Crew in January 1996 were divided. Two criticized the control, saying Mario kept jumping over or short of his targets, and expected players to grow bored with the game; of the other two, one called it "highly addictive" and the other "the type of game that the Virtual Boy does best". GamePros short review in March 1996 praised the "true 3D feel" of the graphics but found the controls sluggish in fast levels, and ended: "Let's hope this amusing little game hits the SNES soon."

Retrospective assessments

Levi Buchanan of IGN wrote in 2008 that Mario Clash is "a mildly clever little game" that could have succeeded "without the strange limitations of the Virtual Boy itself", pointing to the all-red display and the console's imprecise twin directional pads; he also faulted the lack of a save feature and the music. In 2009, the Australian television program Good Game said the game tried to revive the arcade Mario Bros. formula "with a bit of added dimension" from a second plane of action, "but it wasn't very good". Dave Frear of Nintendo Life gave it 6 out of 10, criticizing the flat sprites, the lack of saving and the repetitiveness of defeating enemies, but wrote that players who persist will find a real challenge and that it "hardly deserves the title of 'Worse Mario Game Ever'". Mikel Reparaz of GamesRadar included it in a 2011 list of the five best Virtual Boy games, written shortly before the launch of the Nintendo 3DS. He called it "more puzzle game than action game" and wrote that it "actually made brilliant use of 3D", adding that GamesRadar would not mind seeing it return on the 3DS.

Legacy

GamesRadar described Mario Clash as the only Virtual Boy action game starring Mario; his only other appearance on the console was in the sports game Mario's Tennis, which shipped with the system. IGN noted that the Virtual Boy never received a conventional Mario side-scroller, the closest being Virtual Boy Wario Land. The game's mechanics were later used for a microgame in the first WarioWare game for the Game Boy Advance.

See also

• Virtual Boy
• List of Virtual Boy games
• Mario's Tennis
• Virtual Boy Wario Land