YMMV / Super Mario Run

• Accidental Innuendo: From the first hint the game gives you. 'Super Mario Run can be played with just one hand' sounds oddly dirty, thanks to the common joke about using one hand to do some task, while the other hand masturbates.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • It's possible in Remix 10 mode to have a Super Star active when encountering Boom Boom or Bowser, allowing Mario to simply ram into them for an amusing One-Hit KO.
  • Boom Boom in general is an utter joke. All you need to do is stand at the wall, jump when he approaches, and knock the lout on the head. Not even the burners in 4-4 prove to be an effective countermeasure.
  • Bowser's fights (excluding the final one) can feel like this as well since you can simply beat him without trouble in about 3 seconds if your timing is right.
• Awesome Levels: While it does inevitably get old after a while, Remix 10 is still generally considered to be the best part of the game alongside its diverse character roster. It's fast-paced, vibrant, and occasionally quite challenging, which makes it perfect for playing on-the-go.
• Awesome Music:
  • While most of the tracks are reused directly from New Super Mario Bros. U, both the ground and underground themes have been rearranged completely for this game and they sound quite catchy.
  • The Remix 10 theme, which includes a segment from the Super Mario Land underground theme and vocals from Daisy. Show me your love.
  • The Remix 10 version of the Super Star theme takes remixes up to eleven.
• Badass Decay: Daisy goes from being able to fend off Bowser and send him flying by a single slap in Mario Party 3 to getting kidnapped by him in this game, becoming a Damsel in Distress again for the first time since her debut. That said, this is offset by the fact that she's a playable character who is just as capable of fighting Bowser as the others.
• Broken Base:
  • The full game's $10 pricing. Some think it's a fine price to pay for a polished game with no microtransactions, while others think it's a little steep for the middling amount of content (only six worlds each, half the size of a normal Mario game) and not fitting for a pick-up-and-play app designed to introduce people to the franchise. A discount was added to the game for a limited time in late-September/early October 2017 and again in early March 2018 and March-May 2023 (half-off so the full game was only $5), but some still gripe...
  • The simple fact that a mobile Mario game has been made split the Nintendo fanbase apart. Some people are happy that Nintendo's flagship IP is on mobile devices, while others are disappointed and see it as a missed opportunity for Nintendo to give lesser-known franchises some love for once. And then there's the people that didn't want Nintendo to enter the mobile market to begin with.
• Critical Dissonance: While the game has been getting positive reviews by critics, one look at the App Store ratings seems to suggest a more mixed reception by audiences. (Granted, though, reportedly most of the one-star reviews are just complaints about the aformentioned $10 price tag for the full game.)
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Ninjis, thanks to their constant jumping. Normally, when Mario runs into an enemy, he'll automatically vault over them harmlessly. However, if a Ninji is in the middle of a jump, Mario will still get damaged. This can often lead to situations where a player is trying to vault over a Ninji, only for the Ninji to jump at the last second, causing the player to get hit. They also have a tendency to appear in places where jumping over the Ninji will lead to a different hazard.
  • Rocky Wrenches can easily throw you off because they randomly throw either coins or wrenches. Like Ninjis, dealing with them optimally is unclear — you can run towards them, expecting to pick up their coins and vault them after, only to get killed by a thrown wrench instead. Said wrenches are tiny and can be easily obscured by visual effects during a Coin Rush in Toad Rally, where quickly distinguishing if they're throwing wrenches or coins (and collecting the latter) is necessary to get a good score, but not choosing correctly and being killed by their wrenches can put you at a disadvantage and cost you the match.
  • Spikes are one of the most dangerous enemies around. They throw spike balls that cannot be vaulted, they'll injure you if you try to vault over them while they're holding a spike ball, and they throw spike balls in an arc, meaning even if you try to jump over them, you can still get hit. Like with Ninjis and Rocky Wrenches, whether to stomp them, vault them, or jump past without touching them is ambiguous until you're close, at which point you need to make a split-second reaction on what they're doing. 6-1 in particular has a large cluster of Spikes together that requires really precise timing to get past unscathed, and that level segment can show up in Toad Rally to throw you off your game.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Nintendo officially considers Run to be a "mainline" Super Mario game, even putting it alongside the other Mario platformers on the franchise's website. However many fans prefer to see it as a spin-off instead of a main entry, due to its different control style to 2D Mario gameplay compared to other 2D Mario games and being on mobile devices as opposed to a Nintendo console. This even led to issues when Super Mario Bros. Wonder was announced, with many fans referring to the game as the next mainline 2D title after New Super Mario Bros. U and Princess Daisy's and Yoshi's playable debut in a 2D Mario game, despite Run featuring both. Contributing to the confusion, Nintendo officially considers, alongside some other fans, Wonder the first traditional 2D side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. game in more than 10 years while still acknowledging Run and the Super Mario Maker series official status as mainline games.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Super Star in Toad Rally. Not only do you become invincible, you also attract nearby coins to you, and you immediately activate Coin Rush, causing even more coins to appear, allowing you to rack up points very quickly. Getting even one Super Star can easily lead to victory, assuming the ghost you're racing against either misses it or falls behind. This goes double for Remix 10 mode, where one Super Star can potentially be chained into infinite Super Stars from then on, simply because the stages are so short that you'll trigger a Super Star bubble simply by flying through the level with one already active. Winning is nearly a guarantee as long as you watch out for pits. Just hope you don't run into any layouts that require springing off enemies to reach medals.
  • With a little practice, Luigi is superior to Mario and most other characters thanks to his high jumps and ability to reverse himself for a short time. He makes getting the special coins significantly easier than with Mario, and his jumping ability makes Toad Rally much more tolerable after you've unlocked all the variations.
  • Daisy and her Double Jump allow her to get practically any coin that even Luigi can't reach. The new levels in the update that also added her feel specifically designed for her to break.
• Good Bad Bugs: Touching the Flagpole will clear out any enemies onscreen, as they usually do in a Mario game. The bug is that enemies that have already been defeated and are being Death Thrown to the edge of the screen can still contribute to the Flagpole's clearout. Nobody's going to complain, since that'll give players a couple extra coins for each enemy beaten this way.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A common fanon portrayal of Daisy prior to this game is her desire to be kidnapped by Bowser just for the sake of getting attention and love after being neglected. Come Remix 10 however and she actually ends up getting kidnapped by him, with you having to rescue her.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One of the most common complaints about the game is that the main mode "World Tour" is too short for something that costs $10.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The main criticism is, again, the reuse of New Super Mario Bros. U graphics, music and characters (with the exception of the Ninjis, Toadette, and Daisy; also unlike the latter two games in the New Super Mario Bros. series, both the Ground and Underground themes were rearranged completely for this game and other than the music used in courses the rest of the soundtrack is new, including everything in the Remix 10 mode) and the fact that Bowser and Boom Boom are the only bosses.
• Les Yay: After beating the last level, Peach will kiss almost any playable character, including Toadette. This happens again in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.
• Mis-blamed: One of the biggest complaints about the game is that it's falsely advertised as "free." Nintendo mostly called it "free-to-start," meaning you can start playing for free, but you'll have to pay eventually if you plan on beating it.
• Obscure Popularity: The game is one of the most downloaded mobile phone games of all time, meaning that millions of people have played it —even if a lot of them didn't buy the full game and beat it—, had several tie-in events with other important Nintendo and Mario properties (most notably for The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023), and is the longest-running Nintendo —and Mario— mobile game. However, due to its very nature as a short mobile game, it’s almost never talked about besides when talking about the entire series.
• Older Than They Think: There have been a few segments in the franchise where Mario has had to run forward without stopping, including the cannon levels in New Super Mario Bros. 2 and a challenge in NES Remix.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Losing Toads when you lose a Toad Rally. It really sucks to hit a losing streak and have to build your population back up.
  • Each biome theme in Toad Rally is more likely to get a specific type of Toad color, which isn't a problem in of itself, but the only biome that draws a majority of Purple Toads is the Ghost House. Ghost House levels are designed for a more methodical, puzzle-ish approach that doesn't make room for the flashy tricks that draw large crowds like in other biomes, and as a result, it's significantly harder to get Purple Toads than any other color.
  • The brief pause that happens when you trigger a Coin Rush can throw you off and mess up your timing, especially in situations where you need to tap the instant the game resumes.
  • Enemies' behavior is tied to when they first come onscreen, and the game is generally designed around that: if a Koopa Paratroopa floats onscreen and the game expects you to Goomba Springboard off him to reach a special collectible coin, Mario's automatic running will place him at the exact spot he needs to be to bounce off him. But running past an enemy and then bubbling to retry the challenge won't sync the enemy back up, which makes snagging Pink/Purple/Black coins tied to bouncing off enemies nearly impossible if not done the first try, practically necessitating a restart if you miss them.
  • The game requiring an internet connection to play. If you're in an area with no or poor signal, you can't play, practically defeating the purpose of a mobile game when you're unable to use mobile data — a decision that's especially weird since the only element that needs to be online is playing against other people in Toad Rally. More frustratingly, offline play was considered but not implemented due to anti-piracy and anti-cheating the game uses in its code such as Google SafetyNet in the Android version.
• So Okay, It's Average: It's regarded as well-designed, polished, and perfectly serviceable on its own merits and avoids all pitfalls of mobile games, completely lacking Microtransactions, Freemium mechanics, and intrusive advertisements in favor of a one-time $10 purchase ($5 when it's discounted) that can be fun; but the general consensus is that it isn't worth playing over other console 2D Mario titles, as besides it being very short (only having four levels and six worlds), the automated and simplified nature of the game means there isn't much in the way of interesting mechanics or gimmicks to be found, causing the game to feel repetitive and forgettable. Nonetheless, in spite of the repetitiveness, some fans feel like it more than makes up for it with it's nice character roster comprised of various unexpected characters with each one possessing a different unique ability/gimmick just like Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World, and the entertaining Remix 10 mode.
• That One Level: This can be sorted into several categories depending on your goal:
  • Black coins:
    • The second black coin in 1-4 requires doing a perfect leap and spin off a Dry Bones from ground level. There's no room for error, and it's counter-intuitive since you actually have to time your leap so you hit it just before you finish vaulting over the Dry Bones. Easy if you have Luigi, though.
    • The fourth and fifth black coins in 3-3 are each awful for their own reasons. The fourth requires you to either precisely hit a Koopa from below and then knock its shell forward without jumping too high and landing on its ledge, or else use the bubble mechanic to redo part of the stage after smashing a block to allow a shell through, while the fifth requires using a spring to bounce through a one-block hole. Doesn't matter what character you're using here, it's frustrating all the same.
    • 6-4's first black coin is hell if you're playing as anyone but Toad. It's in a ? block situated over a gap just high enough that a regular jump will clear the block. You need to carefully time your jump to clip the edge of the block. Too little and you miss. Too much and you vault over it. As Mario and Luigi, grabbing a Mushroom makes doing it even harder. Toad's higher speed makes it easier to hit the block, as he can get right under it.
  • Toad Rally:
    • The airship. It combines Ninjis, gaps, and cannonballs to make a run where even the slightest mistake will hurt or kill you. And this is the bare minimum. If you've beaten the World Tour, add burners and Rocky Wrenches to the list for added annoyance.
    • The ghost house is tolerable at first, but once you've beaten the game it gets a lot worse. The puzzle aspects from the later versions are tacked on, so you have to figure those out on top of trying to get coins. It's also fairly stingy with Toads, owing to the lack of tricks you can pull off.
  • Unlocking Star World levels:
    • Of all the challenges necessary for unlocking the levels, the challenge for Star-6 tops them all. You have to collect 400 coins in 1-2, a level where they're separated into different paths and an absolutely optimal strategy will get you 426. There is no margin for error here. You have to backtrack and make the run perfectly to achieve it. Toad alleviates the problem slightly, but not by much.
  • Remix 10:
    • A few of the Remix courses require you to use the back swipe mechanic to slow your character if you want the medals, which is incredibly unreliable on smaller devices.
    • Of particular note is a variation on Wall-Kicking it Underground, which has the medals placed in such a way that the second medal requires a pixel-perfect jump to avoid getting stuck on an alternate path where you can't reach the third. If you're very lucky, you'll wind up there with a Super Star and avoid the headache, but it's usually the first or second of the ten just to make sure you can't use that trick.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The mission to rescue Princess Daisy simply screams this. You have to travel thirty areas in Remix 10. Thirty grueling, tedious areas, each one containing at least two sets of ten remixed courses Mario already went through to save Peach (hence the name Remix 10). For that matter, it feels utterly wasteful to be fighting Bowser for Daisy's freedom, instead of someone different, like Tatanga, who was the boss in her debut game.
  • The Star World courses also qualify. Announcements of the update seemed to imply a wider variety of Video Game Settings to travel through, but what they have in store offers little difference than what the game had before. Just a new Jungle Japes setting, and that's about it.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The levels have a number of underused level biome themes that could have spiced up gameplay if used more frequently than only having 2-3 dedicated levels to them, such as with the forest, airship lower decks, and haunted ghost house woods. The biome that stands out for this is the tower, for having a unique gimmick — vertical scrolling, with Mario & co. changing directions when they jump off a wall — that is only used in 2 levels and will never appear in Toad Rally.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Toadette being playable came as a surprise for fans at the time, since Toadette has mainly only appeared in spin-off titles prior to this game.
  • While Yoshi is a major character in the mainline titles, him being a standalone playable character threw some fans off guard, as he tends to only be a Power Up Mount in the mainline Mario platformers (with his only standalone playable appearance prior being in Super Mario 64 DS).
  • Peach herself also deserves a special mention, being an Unlockable Character after being rescued instead of being relegated to the role of Damsel in Distress as per usual in 2D Mario games, making her return to a 2D Mario platformer since Super Mario Bros. 2 and a mainline game since Super Mario 3D World.
  • Many fans were downright shocked when it was revealed that Princess Daisy would appear in the game as a playable character, since Daisy hasn't made a proper appearance in a mainline Mario platformer since Super Mario Land back in 1989 (unless one counts her costume in Super Mario Maker as a playable appearance) and has largely been relegated to spin-off titles afterwards. Many Daisy fans were, understandably, overjoyed by this.
• Win Back the Crowd: The late September 2017 update added a lot of content, including the new Remix 10 mode, had excited players. The limited-time discount also attracted players as well.

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