This Mario smartwatch is for the Italian plumber's richest fans only

Tag Heuer, the famed Swiss watchmaker, tweeted out a mysterious teaser Monday morning about a Super Mario-themed collaboration. We’d expected something classic and luxurious with a gaming twist, along the lines of Seiko’s recent Pokémon collab, but Tag Heuer had some tricks up its well-tailored sleeves.

Today the company announced that the new watch isn’t a luxury timepiece at all — at least not in the traditional sense Tag Heuer is known for. Instead, the Super Mario collab is actually a limited-edition Connected Wear OS smartwatch.

The hardware here is pretty standard for Tag Heuer’s smartwatches, with a 45mm face and a rubber strap. The watch face and its software are really the selling point here; both are where Mario really shines through. The famed Italian plumber will pop up to help you celebrate meeting step-count goals throughout the day with cute little animations.

The watch is definitely cute — but it’s not exactly affordable. What we’re trying to say is it costs $2,050. The watch definitely wants you to wear it, but it’s more of a collector’s item than anything else.

Slight hardware tweaks — If you were to look at Tag Heuer’s Mario watch with the face completely off, it would still be relatively easy to understand the assignment.

That’s impressive, given that Tag Heuer has, for the most part, left its standard smartwatch hardware untouched here. There’s a red “M” on the crown, yes, and cute little icons around the digital face itself: a mushroom, a pipe, and that signature Mario star.

There’s also a cute travel case available in that iconic Super Mario red.

Life’s a game — The Super Mario Wear OS software is where this collab really comes through. As you go about your day, Mario will encourage you to be more active by showing up when you reach 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent of your step-count goal for the day.

Don’t worry, though — you can still feel Mario’s presence without all the walking, too. There are four custom watch faces available, all inspired by the classic game series.

It’s unclear whether or not the new watch uses Samsung and Google’s new Wear operating system or the old Wear OS of yore. If it’s the latter, it might not be possible to upgrade to the new Wear later on, given the specialized Mario interface here.

At $2,050, Tag Heuer’s new Super Mario watch is definitely for diehard fans only. But this really is a very limited run, with just 2,000 watches being produced, so it will surely be a hot collector’s item in the long run. And we all know hardcore Mario fans don’t sneer at a big price tag.