'Super Mario Run' Characters: How to unlock Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Toad and Toadette

Super Mario Run, Nintendo's first smartphone game, is officially available for iOS. In addition to Mario, you can unlock five other classic Mario characters — Toad, Peach Yoshi, Luigi and Toadette — each of which have slightly different abilities.

Here's the full rundown on unlocking each one based on our own experience playing the game.

How to unlock Super Mario Run characters

One quick note before diving in: You can unlock three characters (Yoshi, Luigi and Toadette) by purchasing their house from within the Build mode. These structures require you to earn Toads of various colors (red, blue, purple, green and yellow) before you can buy them, which you unlock through playing Toad Rally.

As long as you're still within the first world in the Tour mode, you'll only be able to earn red Toads in Toad Rally. To unlock the Toads of other colors, you'll have to complete worlds in Tour mode. For example, after beating the first world, you'll start earning green and blue Toads in Toad Rally. 

OK, onto the specific requirements for each character.

Toad: Toad is by far the easiest character to unlock in Super Mario Run. He's also the only character you can unlock without paying $10 for the full game.

All you have to do is link your app to a My Nintendo account. Once you do so, Toad will show up as a reward in the My Nintendo window in the upper-right corner of the game's home screen. Once you complete all the necessary steps, you should see a confirmation window that looks like this:

Peach: Complete every level in the main tour mode, which consists of 24 levels total.

Yoshi: Build Yoshi's house. It costs 30 red and 30 yellow Toads, which you earn through the Toad Rally mode.

Luigi: Build Luigi's house. It costs 150 purple and 150 green Toads.

Toadette: Build Toadette's house. It costs 200 red Toads, 200 blue Toads, 200 green Toads, 200 purple Toads and 200 yellow Toads, which you earn through playing (a lot) of the Toad Rally mode.

How to change your character in Super Mario Run

Before hitting "start" in either the Tour mode or Toad Rally mode, select the icon of Mario with the two circular arrows that sits in the lower-right corner of the screen.

Tap the character you want to play, and then hit start!

More Super Mario Run news, updates, tips and tricks from Mic:

If you want to know more about Super Mario Run, walk calmly toward Mic's latest coverage, like a guide to making sure it doesn't demolish your data usage, our review of the demo, an explanation for why the game isn't free, early predictions about whether Nintendo's iPhone-first approach is helping or hurting its chances of success and a list of Android games to play while you wait.