Super Mario Odyssey Mods Add Retro Nintendo Levels to Game

Some new Super Mario Odyssey mods bring classic Nintendo levels to the Switch hit. 

These levels come from a modder named ItzSka who has been posting videos of his work on YouTube. He’s added levels to the game from titles like Banjo-Kazooie, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and more. So far, many of the levels added seem to retain the basic visual style and design principles of the ones they are based on.

That style choice results in some fascinating – if slightly disorienting – new areas. All of the areas have been upgraded in ways that incorporate Odyssey‘s core moon hunting gameplay (even if those moons have been changed to more area appropriate items), but areas like Clanker’s Cavern retain their original looks to an almost fault. Their mix of blurred textures and hi-res objects reads less like a stylistic choice and more like a by-product of the difficult process of incorporating these levels into the game. 

Still, there’s something undeniably charming and appealing about the whole idea of adding retro levels to the game. After all, Nintendo themselves did something similar with the surprise Mushroom Kingdom level from Mario 64 that can eventually be unlocked in Odyssey. While these modded levels don’t showcase quite the same level of craft as that official re-visit (nor would we expect them to), they do show that there’s a lot more that can be done with this concept. 

Will Nintendo ever actually add more retro-inspired levels to the game? We doubt it, but the company has been talking more and more recently about how they would like to add more DLC to their games. While that’s usually not a good sign, it’s not too far fetched to imagine Nintendo actually adding worthwhile content to a game post-release. They certainly at least tried to do so with Breath of the Wild‘s DLC (even if the results were somewhat mixed). 

Until Nintendo decides to give us more nostalgic levels, you can find the files and instructions for these modded levels here. Just be warned they’re not the easiest things to install (compared to PC mods) and Nintendo hasn’t exactly treated this kind of custom content fondly in the past. 

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.