Digital Foundry – Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Digital Foundry – Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Digital Foundry thoroughly examined Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury for the Nintendo Switch.

The results are interesting as Super Mario 3D World uses dynamic resolution scaling in docked mode, so the game isn’t native 1080p. However, those of you wishing to play in portable mode will be pleased to hear it’s rendered at native 720p.

As you would expect both docked and portable modes run at 60fps. Bowser’s Fury is different as in docked mode its 1080p to usually hanging between 720p and 792p. Docked mode targets 60 frames per second, but the team states it isn’t perfect. Bowser’s Fury is 720p handheld but runs at 30fps. 

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Super Mario 3D World (Nintendo Switch)

“Technologically, the game is essentially identical to its Wii U outing, with identical assets, bolstered only by a mild boost to resolution. The Switch game uses dynamic resolution scaling with an apparent 720p to 1080p window, up against the straight 720p of the Wii U original. Portable mode maps to the native resolution of the screen, so it’s native 720p.

With that said though, I do think Nintendo has introduced some form of interlace style image reconstruction – a curious flicker presents that simply isn’t there on the Wii U version. This odd flicker isn’t really distracting, but it is certainly unexpected and suggests that just running the game at a higher native resolution might have been off the table.”

Bowser’s Fury

“Of course, the sacrifices are clear compared to 3D World. The resolution is reduced from near 1080p to usually hanging between 720p and 792p in docked mode.

Image quality is basically comparable to Super Mario Odyssey, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the increased draw distance and scope of the environment does reveal these flaws more easily. More interestingly, Bowser’s Fury does not seem to use the reconstruction mode featured in 3D World, so the slight flicker in that game is not present here.”

“But performance in Bowser’s Fury is where things get tricky: docked mode targets 60 frames per second, feeling mostly smooth but not quite perfect, with some momentary slowdown and what seems to be some minor hiccups from background asset streaming.”

“The reason for the higher rendering resolution comes down to frame-rate, with portable mode capped at 30 frames per second. This is the same frame-rate as Mario 3D Land on 3DS and various other 3D titles so it’s not necessarily a huge issue for this title but it is jarring to move from docked to portable mode in this case, and it’s the first time we’ve seen such an obvious divide on a Nintendo first-party title. Furthermore, while it’s mostly stable, busier moments also exhibit frame-pacing issues which is more surprising.”