Dark Horse to Publish 256-Page Super Mario Encyclopedia

Dark Horse publishing has a good history of releasing some premier nerdy stuff, but nothing has quite rivaled the epic three-part Legend of Zelda encyclopedias that lavished beautiful details on every imaginable fact surrounding the Legend of Zelda series up until that point (where the latest game in the series was Skyward Sword). And perhaps its due to their solid work history with Nintendo that the company just announced theyll be partnering with the Big N in the near future to release another encyclopedia: this one for Nintendos mascot, Mario himself.

Called the Super Mario Encyclopedia, it will contain an enormous amount of knowledge regarding nearly every Super Mario game Nintendos ever made. While Super Mario Odyssey wont be included, everything from Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario 3D World will be included; in other words, a solid 30 years of gaming magic fitted into a 256-page package.

And everything youll need to master these games will be included, such as enemy descriptions and placement, level layouts, tricks and glitches, and notes on how to find just about every collectible you can imagine.

The encyclopedia set to release on October 23^rd, and the standard edition will sell for about 40 bucks, although therell probably be a special edition announced. Its also worth noting that the book specifies that these are Super Mario games, which typically only includes the mainstream platforming titles. So if you were hoping for some killer strategies for, say, Yoshis Cookie or Paper Mario, youre probably gonna be out of luck, but if youve been as many games as Mario, that sort of vetting is pretty dang important.

I mean, for real, hes been featured in 353 games so far - each one would have less than a page if they were all stuffed into that book. It would still be a cool book, just significantly less informative.