New Super Mario Bros. Wii Review

Recently I procured for myself a copy of the New Super Mario Bros. for Wii. It is the latest release in the Nintendo juggernaut that is the Mario Brothers. With this release mario has come back to his roots with an all new 2-D platformer that is reminiscent of the plumbers’ second foray into the console world in 1985. Super Mario Brothers was the highest selling video game of all time until Wii Sports outsold it in 2009.

So much fun!

I’m a big Mario fan. Huge fan of everything from mario tennis to mario paint. However, for me the platforming mario is the best mario. A lot of people consider Mario 64 to be among the best video games of all time, and whilst putting mario on the 3-D plane did wonders for the franchise I couldn’t help thinking that Super Mario Brothers 3 for the SNES was still a superior game. Indeed, if a save option was avaliable for Mario 3 it would rank as number 1 in my greatest video games of all time.)

New Super Mario Bros. Wii (NSMBW) is better than Super Mario Brothers 3 (SMB3). Where number 3 had the racoon suit NSMBW has the penguin suit allowing players to walk easily on ice and “torpedo” along it obliterating all enemies in the way. The game follows a very similar map style to that of SMB3 with the player navigating through worlds that progressively get harder and harder. Each world contains two castles each ruled over by a boss. Once a player defeats all eight bosses and rescues the princess we can all go home.

Mario goes underground

The game also introduces propeller mario and ice mario. Propeller mario shoots into the air when you shake the wii remote and ice mario can freeze enemies into blocks of ice that can then be picked up and thrown. A new bonus that is somewhat useless is the blue mushroom that makes mario tiny. Mario can now go down little pipes to bonus levels and can also jump higher with longer hang time. However when you are hit as tiny mario you die and as such it’s hardly a satisfying bonus to collect (also you can jump on enemies to kill them which is so frustrating).

Pow blocks abound and all the things you thought you should be able to do you now can, like stomping on blocks from above something not seen since Mario 2: 6 golden coins for the Gameboy.

As with all wii games Mario really comes into it’s own with the muliplayer functionality. Up to four people can play at any one time and the developers seem to have really made the game so that this experience is genuinely fun. You can work together but you also get in each other’s way so it’s not really harder or easier with more people but it is a lot more fun. You can pick up your team mates and throw them, or eat them up with your Yoshi (by the way Yoshi is amazing and he eats EVERYTHING).

The best thing about the multiplayer is what I call the “little-brother-bubble”. So many fights and frustrations come from playing co-op games with siblings that just aren’t very good. No matter how flawless you are in your excecution you’ve got to start all over again because your brother (or even girlfriend) can’t keep up. NSMBW gives you the ability to float in a bubble by simply pressing A anytime you are in a multiplayer game. While in the bubble you cannot be hurt by enemies and you cannot collect items. You can also travel through walls meaning that if you are about to fall into lava or just can’t get past a tricky bit you can bubble your way through it. The catch is you need to be popped by a team mate to resume playing. If all players are in bubbles then you all lose a life because there’s no one to pop you.

Penguin Slides

Finally if you loose all your lives you aren’t transported back to the start of the world, rather you resume from where you left off and are given 5 more lives with which to work.

The worst part of NSMBW is the length. I’ve been playing it for about a week with different people and therefore 3 different save files and already on two of the files I’m up to world 8. Its a game that seems (too) easy to finish but hard to complete with 100%. But I don’t want to go back and complete it 100% I just want a game that lasts at least to the end of my summer holidays.

8/10 if you buy it.

9.5/10 to play your mate’s copy on a casual basis.

Advertisement