Nintendo and GungHo Online Entertainment are teaming up to merge the wildly successful mobile puzzle game Puzzle & Dragons with Super Mario Bros. and, in the process, print a lot of money for both companies.
GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto joined forces today to announce Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition, a Nintendo 3DS adaptation of Puzzle & Dragons that’s stuffed with Nintendo’s characters: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi and more. The 3DS game is confirmed for a release in Japan on April 29, priced at 4,000 yen.
Puzzle & Dragons, a puzzle role-playing game, was first released for iOS in 2012. Since launch, the game has been downloaded more than 32 million times in Japan and more than 6 million times in North America.
Based on the game’s debut trailer, Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition appears to hew closely to Puzzle & Dragons’ tried and true color-matching gameplay, but adds familiar power-ups, characters and a Mario-style overworld map.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said last year that the company planned to expand its character licensing business, saying it saw “possibilities in licensing character IP in areas Nintendo has never worked before,”
