I’m very happy with Nintendo at the moment. I’m only one month into building insane things in Tears of the Kingdom, and the company tells me I have two exciting Mario games coming my way: Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the first new 2D Mario game in years that isn’t “New,” and Super Mario RPG, a remake of the SNES classic.
Now, these games aren’t out yet. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is scheduled to launch Oct. 20, while Super Mario RPG is slated for a Nov. 17 release date. You can preorder each individually for $60 a piece, totaling $120 for the complete Super Mario experience. But if you plan to buy both of these games, you shouldn’t simply add them to your shopping cart and hit “Buy Now.” Instead, you should take advantage of a great deal Nintendo offers for all its games.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Nintendo Direct 6.21.2023
How to save $20 on the new Mario games
In order to take advantage of the deal, however, you need to be an active Nintendo Switch Online subscriber. It doesn’t matter whether you subscribe to the standard online membership, or the expansion pack: As long as you pay for an online service on your Switch, you can save on Mario (and any other games on your wish list).
If you aren’t a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber, sign up for a year’s membership here:
The company’s little-known deal lets you save quite a bit on money when buying two games at a time—if you buy a “Nintendo Switch Game Voucher.” The voucher costs $99.98 for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, and is good for two digital game downloads.
It doesn’t work for every game Nintendo sells: If you want to use one for another pair of games, you can check the eligible titles from Nintendo’s official list. But two games that just so happen to be on the list are Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG. If you buy the voucher and redeem these two Mario games with it, you’ll save $20 off the pair. Plus, you’ll get 5% back in My Nintendo Gold Points, which works out to $5.
Even better, you can use Nintendo Switch eShop gift cards towards the voucher. That’s great if someone gifted you eShop cash, but you can also use discounted gift cards from Costco to save even more. You can get $100 worth of gift cards for $89.99, which means you can get Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG for $89.99 as well.
While this deal might not work on every game, there are a lot of great titles to choose from. Take a look for other game pairs you might want to save on, as you can have up to eight vouchers attached to your account at once. While that’ll cost you $799.84 in full (or $719.92 from Costco), it’ll cost less than 16 full-price games would. It’s how many of us saved big on Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo’s first game to hit $70.
If you haven’t picked up the latest Zelda yet, what are you waiting for?
Of course, this deal leaves out those of us who are game collectors and prefer to buy the cartridges over the digital download. It would be nice if Nintendo extended the voucher program to cover these games. That said, I’ve always believed digital games should be cheaper than physical copies (why should a download cost as much as a cartridge or disk?) so, this deal finally gives us digital gamers a discount.
However, if you want to keep the latest Mario titles on your shelf, you can preorder both games for full-price from Amazon here:
