Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is an upcoming expanded port of Super Mario 3D World for the Nintendo Switch, set to be released on February 12, 2021 as part of the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. It features a standalone story known as Bowser's Fury, which takes place in an open-world-styled area called Lake Lapcat and involves Mario and Bowser Jr. cooperating to stop Fury Bowser. The Super Mario 3D World game also supports local wireless and online play, both of which were absent from the original version.

The game is subject to two 35th Anniversary-related My Nintendo missions, both of which are necessary to complete for the wave 2 prizes: The first involves buying the game itself (whether physically or digitally), and the second involves finding five hidden stickers on the official site of the cast in Cat outfits.

Gameplay

 * amiibo functionality has been added.
 * The players' movement speed has been increased.
 * Certain levels such as Conkdor Canyon have had some changes to their level objects to accommodate for this change.
 * Players can climb higher when in their Cat forms.
 * Players can now roll in midair.
 * Players now fall through pipes when performing a Ground Pound above them, matching their behavior in Super Mario Odyssey.
 * Players can also roll into tunneled Warp Pipes like in Super Mario Odyssey.
 * Multiplayer mode now supports both local wireless and Nintendo Switch Online connections. Up to two players can play on a single system in local wireless mode.
 * Captain Toad's Adventures can now be played with up to four players, unlike the original game where it was single-player only. For these levels, additional players play as the Toad Brigade members.
 * As with the Nintendo Switch version of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Propeller Platforms are replaced with normal Lifts due to the lack of a mic on the console.
 * In TV mode, gyroscopic pointer controls replace the touchscreen controls of the Wii U version, which are activated by pressing . An icon of the character controlling the pointer is present.
 * Due to the discontinuation of Miiverse, the stamps are now used in a new Snapshot Mode, similar to the one seen in Super Mario Odyssey.
 * The stamps' pictures are now colored instead of black and white.

Aesthetic

 * The game's graphics have been slightly updated.
 * The UI for the Item Storage has been revamped with a dark translucent circle and new button icons.
 * The UI for lives and coins lacks the "×" icon between the images and numbers.
 * The interior shadows on the UI have been removed.
 * The UI is smaller than in the original game.

Story
Bowser's Fury is a new standalone adventure included in the game. In the intro to this mode, Mario is walking around a grassy field when a puddle of black goo is formed from a black graffiti of the logo of Shadow Mario, which then grows. Mario falls in, and lands in a rainy Lake Lapcat, falling head-first into a large footprint left by Bowser. After revealing the rest of Lake Lapcat by collecting a Cat Shine, he finds Bowser Jr. who tells him Bowser has been corrupted by black paint (similar to what happened in Paper Mario: Color Splash) causing him to transform into the gargantuan Fury Bowser. While it is never established how it happened, Bowser Jr.'s paintings in the end credits imply that he painted Bowser with black paint, which unintentionally caused his transformation. The towers on the island are covered in this paint, with the waters also covered in this substance as well as having large spiked pillars sticking out of it.

Gameplay
The game revolves around freeing every island from Fury Bowser by recovering Cat Shines from the paint-covered lighthouses. At random time intervals, Fury Bowser periodically emerges nearby from the Fury Sun. When this happens, the weather becomes stormy and he terrorizes the surroundings of the island through large beams of fire and meteors falling from the sky. The nearby cats also become black and start attacking Mario. Bowser will fall back into slumber either after a brief period of time or if a Cat Shine is collected. On three corners of Lake Lapcat, there are Giga Bells, also fallen into slumber by the dark goop, and can only be activated by collecting a certain amount of Cat Shines. When this happens, Mario can touch the bell to become Giga Cat Mario, who is then able to fight Fury Bowser and force him into slumber, allowing Mario access to more islands. Lake Lapcat appears to be a vast open-world setting that is gradually unlocked as more islands are freed from Fury Bowser, extending the sandbox concept of Super Mario Odyssey. Mario can run around the island, climb up the lighthouses, and go from one Giga Bell area to the others by riding Plessie. Every island makes usage of Mario's different power-ups and abilities.

Cat variations
While Bowser's Fury does not seem to introduce many new enemies, the enemies that come from Super Mario 3D World are seen with cat-like features, such as cat ears, fur, paws, and a tail, though unlike the Cat Goombas in Super Mario 3D World, these cat appearances are only aesthetic changes, without gaining any differing abilities (the only exceptions to this are Cat Bullet Bills, which still home in on the player like their Super Mario 3D World counterpart ). As such, the Cat Goombas in Bowser's Fury behave like regular Goombas, and have their standard brown coloring.

Locations
Lake Lapcat is split into three main areas represented by a Giga Bell. Each Giga Bell features four different islands, with each island containing a lighthouse that is covered in goop. By collecting the first Cat Shine of the island, the goop is removed and the lighthouse's light gets rid of the goop nearby, though after Fury Bowser attacks, they become covered in goop again.

There are a total of 100 Cat Shines in the game, some of which can only be collected after beating the final boss. 60 of them come from the 12 main islands which each contain five Cat Shines, with three being standard missions, one being earned by finding the five Cat Shine Shards hidden around the island, and another earned by having Fury Bowser break some Fury Blocks to reveal it. When all five Cat Shines of an island are collected, a cat variation of the Goal Pole will appear on top of the lighthouse, which comes with a spring object. 35 of them come from Lake Lapcat itself, which contains a multitude of Cat Shines that are separately counted from each other. The last five come from a special golden island called the Lucky Isle, which appears post-game during a Fury Bowser rampage, but disappears when one of its five Cat Shines is collected.

Fury Bowser must be fought a total of six times to complete the story. To do so, Mario will need to use one of the three available Giga Bells, though, after each fight with Fury Bowser, the number of Cat Shines needed to activate the Giga Bells increases, from 5, 15, 20, 40, and 50 Cat Shines. When the Giga Bell is used to defeat Fury Bowser, the next Giga Bell area will open up revealing new islands.

On a side note, while Fur Step Island is the first location visited in the game, only the first Cat Shine can be obtained while the other four and its Cat Shine Shards can only be obtained once the main story is completed.

Differences from Super Mario 3D World

 * Bowser's Fury runs at a variable resolution in TV mode, which can drop to as low as 1280x720.
 * In handheld mode, the game runs at 30 frames per second.
 * There are no lives in this mode. Instead, a random power-up is given for every 100 coins collected. The player loses 50 coins upon dying.
 * The HUD for the coin count is placed in the bottom left corner of the screen rather than the top left.
 * Instead of the Item Storage holding one item, Mario can store up to five Super Mushrooms, Super Bells, Fire Flowers, Super Leaves, and Boomerang Flowers each. In addition, Lucky Bells can be stored later in the game. Pressing opens the menu allowing the player to choose a power-up.
 * The game's camera is fully controllable by the player.
 * The game is 1-2 players instead of 1-4 players and does not support online or local wireless play.
 * Mario is the only playable character, with Bowser Jr. as a companion. Bowser Jr. only appears in the Bowser's Fury adventure.
 * Mario has full 360-degree movement, instead of being restricted to eight directions.
 * Plessie has the ability to dive underwater before jumping. There are also new visual effects for its high jump, and can also be performed in single player. In Super Mario 3D World, Plessie can only perform the high jump in multiplayer, and all players must jump at the same time to activate it.

amiibo
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury features amiibo support for all amiibo figures, with Cat Mario and Cat Peach amiibo figures launching alongside the game. The player is granted an item depending on which amiibo is scanned:
 * Scanning the Cat Mario amiibo produces an Invincibility Bell that turns Mario into White Cat Mario.
 * Scanning the Cat Peach amiibo produces a random power-up.
 * Scanning any Bowser amiibo produces a Super Star in Super Mario 3D World and makes Fury Bowser appear in Bowser's Fury.
 * Scanning the Bowser Jr. amiibo produces a Super Star in Super Mario 3D World and makes a shockwave appear that knocks out blocks and enemies in Bowser's Fury.
 * Scanning any other amiibo of characters in the Super Mario series produces a Super Star in both modes.
 * Scanning any amiibo outside of the Super Mario series produces a 1-Up Mushroom in Super Mario 3D World and a Super Mushroom in Bowser's Fury.

Pre-release and unused content
Because Bowser Jr. and Fury Bowser had not yet been confirmed to appear in Bowser's Fury, the Bowser's Fury section of the box art initially only contained the logo, while the section also took up a smaller portion of the box. Because of that, Cat Luigi appears on the pre-release box, but not on the final box.

Critical response
Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu rated Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury a score of 36/40 (2 points lower than the original version's score of 38/40), praising the addition of online play and the Bowser's Fury mode for its added difficulty.

References to other games

 * Super Mario Bros. 2: A portion of the music of Scamper Shores references the start of this game's overworld theme.
 * Super Mario World: The music that plays when Bowser emerges from the Fury Sun is an arrangement of Bowser's intro in this game's final battle. Plessie Medals resemble Dragon Coins.
 * Super Mario 64: The mission "Bully the Cat Bullies" is a reference to the mission "Bully the Bullies" in both the title and the theme of knocking Bullies into lava. There are also missions where Mario must get baby calico cats back to their mothers, similar to the mission "Li'l Penguin Lost". Bowser laughs when Mario dies, just like in this game.
 * Super Mario Sunshine: Bowser Jr. is seen wielding his Magic Paintbrush from this game. Mario encounters Shadow Mario's M graffiti on the ground during the intro cutscene. The way Mario chases the Fury Shadows to get a Cat Shine is similar to how he has to chase Shadow Mario to get a Shine Sprite in this game. Likewise, Cat Shines themselves seem to reference Shine Sprites in name and function.
 * Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker: Hint Toad, Banktoad, and Yellow Toad are extra characters in the Captain Toad levels, wearing their outfits from this game. Additionally, their level clear animation is similar to their level clear animation from the Toad Brigade levels in the Bonus Episode. Instead of using touch controls, the player uses motion controls to control a cursor, similar to this game.
 * Super Mario Odyssey: Snapshot Mode and the map feature return from this game, and characters can ground pound through upright pipes to enter them faster and rolling into tunneled varients. Additionally, Mario's animation when he collects a Cat Shine resembles the animation when he collects a non-story-related Power Moon in this game. Toadette also reappears under her "Archivist Toadette" persona as seen in this game.

Trivia

 * Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is the first Wii U originated game to have amiibo support exclusively for the Nintendo Switch port.