At first glance, you may think Super Mario Run is an offline, single-player adventure. That’d be fine since that is what Nintendo has become known for with the Mario franchise, but Super Mario Run is actually multi-dimensional. (And it’s not offline either.) In fact, if you link up your Nintendo account, you can add friends and unlock a new social aspect.
The social part of Super Mario Run lets you compare your scores from the tour with friends, plus compete with online players in the rally mode. This is a race against the clock to collect the most coins versus someone else and get the most toads cheering you on. Both rally mode and score comparisons are great for motivating you to keep playing the game and bettering yourself.
Add Friends and Compare in Super Mario Run
To add friends in Super Mario Run, head to the Mushroom Kingdom where all of your sporadic game tools appear. Before you can add anyone, you first need to link the game to your Nintendo account. Tap My Nintendo at the top right to do that, then either create an account or log in with your existing credentials. If you previously downloaded and played Miitomo, logging in will import your Mii into Super Mario Run.
Once you’re logged in with Nintendo and back in your kingdom, over on the left is the Friends panel. Tap that to open up your friend list. There isn’t much you can do from here unfortunately. You just get a list of friends and their current toad scores from rally mode.
To add someone new tap Add at the bottom. This is where it gets hopelessly archaic. Here, you’re presented with your player ID. You have to give this 12-digit string to friends for them to type in which allows them to send you a friend request. Why Nintendo wouldn’t just let us create our own usernames instead of using random digits is totally beyond me. Alas, this is the current process for adding friends. You can also type in someone else’s player ID here to send a request as well.
The problem is remedied slightly by the fact that Nintendo also lets you invite people through email or messages and link up Facebook and Twitter to see which friends are playing. If you log in, the app should show you a list of friends with quick actions for adding them. Notice how I said “should” though — so far every time I attempt this feature, the app crashes on me.
Once you have a friend list, you can see your high scores right there and also in tour mode. I especially appreciate being able to see which of my friends collected the most coins for each level so I have a goal worth accomplishing. Since friends’ achievements change all the time, levels are more exciting to replay and improve upon.
Compete in Rally Mode
The other social aspect of Super Mario Run comes in rally mode. Here, you can compete against other online players to collect coins within the same level.
Tap Rally while looking at your Mushroom Kingdom to begin. What really annoys me about this mode is that you can’t manually select a friend to compete against, and I don’t know what could have caused this massive oversight. Instead, the game just randomly selects five other online players in the world and you get to choose one for your match. It lists each player with their high scores too so you can choose essentially based on how much of a challenge you want.
Super Mario run selects a custom level at random. Then it’s off to the races to collect the most coins and win over the most toads. Each rally match costs one toad rally ticket, which you earn mostly through playing the tour. It’s not a real-time match either, which I actually enjoy because I can pause it if need be. Instead, you play against a ghost of the player’s progress.
Once the game begins, collect as many coins as you can. The more coins you collect, the more toads show up to cheer you on. At the end of the match, the player with the most amount of toads wins. You earn all the coins you collected which go toward additional buildings in the kingdom, plus bonus games and rewards from My Nintendo.
Rally games are quite entertaining and add a welcome component to Super Mario Run. Hopefully, in time Nintendo adds the ability to play directly against friends too.
Check out our complete coverage of Super Mario Run:
- Super Mario Run Review
- Beginner’s Guide: How to Play Super Mario Run
- Top 22 Tips and Tricks for Super Mario Run
- Super Mario Run Is Available In These 150 Countries
- Super Mario Run Crashing on Your iPhone? Here’s How to Fix It
- How to Bypass Jailbreak Detection in Super Mario Run
- How to Unlock and Play as Luigi, Yoshi and Toad in Super Mario Run
- How To Save Battery Life While Playing Super Mario Run
