People are Obsessed With This Level in *Super Mario Odyssey* 

Our souls have been ready for Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch since we saw the E3 presentation earlier this year. It was unlike any Super Mario we’d ever seen: real actual humans, Mario’s nipples?, and lots of levels that looked way different than a cave filled with piranha plants emerging from tubes.

Nintendo decided to pluck Mario out of the Mushroom Kingdom and whisk him away to other kingdoms, significantly expanding both our intrepid plumber’s worlds and our own. Also, you play with a Shiba Inu puppy, which is very crucial.

Super Mari Odyssey has received rave reviews from the gaming world — at press time, it has a 97 percent aggregated score on Metacritic.

Now that Odyssey has been released, fans are playing through the open-world levels and discovering all the goodies that Nintendo put into the game.

Inverse had a chance to check out the game at a press event last week and can confirm that Nintendo painstakingly labored over every small detail to make it as fun and imaginative as we hoped. One such detail is New Donk City, and players are obsessed with the level that is a spin on New York City.

What makes New Donk City so exciting? For starters, its mayor is a woman (take that, IRL politics) named Pauline. Yes, that Pauline, the character that Mario rescued in the original Donkey Kong arcade game. The level is full of Donkey Kong references too: the streets are named after characters who appear in Donkey Kong Country for SNES and Donkey Kong 64. There’s a Rambi Street, a bagel shop called Banana’s, and our personal favorite, Cranky Avenue. New Donk City is also now the official canon location of the first Donkey Kong game.

Players took to Twitter to express their delight with the adorable level, and we are in agreement with their feelings.