written by David Steffen
Uno: Super Mario Edition is a special edition version of the familiar Uno game much-beloved by generations (which in itself I’m guessing is based on the existing game Crazy Eights, but with trademarks and special cards).
For those not familiar, the goal of Uno is to get rid of all of the cards in your own hand. When it’s a players turn, they want to lay down a card in their hand based on the top card on the discard pile. They can lay one down if it has the same color (equivalent to a “suit” in a regular card deck) or the same number/value. In this way it’s very similar to Crazy Eights, but instead of the number “8” being wild, there is a special Wild card just for that purpose, which can be laid at any time, and allows the person to choose the color for the next turn. And there are also additional cards like “Skip” (skip a player) and “Draw Two” which forces the next player to draw two cards. If a player can’t play a card from their existing hand they keep drawing until they can. When they get down to one card, that player has to also shout “Uno” before another player does, or they have to draw two additional.
Mario Edition has most of the same deck, albeit with new artwork on the cards based on the Super Mario series of games. It also has a couple new cards: a Super Star card that can be played to reflect a “Draw Two” or “Draw Four” card back at the one who played it, and a Blank Wild card which lets you make up your own rule for a wild card (i.e. you could make it also act as a skip, or it could let the person playing it choose someone to draw a card, or it could make every other player draw a card).
Really it’s not that much different from the regular game, though I suppose if you really love Mario the artwork on the cards would be worth picking up a different game.
Audience
Uno has a pretty broad age group, which makes it a suitable game for playing with mixed-age groups.
Challenge
It’s pretty easy to learn how to play and most of the challenge comes from sheer chance–i.e. if you have bad luck and have to draw and draw and draw it sets you back significantly.
Session Time
Hard to tell, I’ve had some games drag on when no one seems to get the right cards.
Replayability
Can play it for quite a while though it does start to feel repetitive before too long.
Originality
This edition doesn’t add much beyond the original Uno, if you have Uno already, this isn’t exactly a significant expansion.
Overall
If you already own Uno, getting this game probably won’t be that exciting of an edition. If you don’t already own Uno, you could consider this one for its game-based artwork. I’ve seen the game for about $6 retail.
