"The true successor to Super Mario World."

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the follow up to the DS game entitled New Super Mario Bros. It was only a matter of time before having the word “new” in the title of a game would become terribly confusing. Despite what the poor naming choice might suggest, this is not a port of the DS game, but rather a completely new Mario game.

Like any 2D platformer in the franchise, the game will have you running and jumping on the heads of enemies through eight themed worlds before finally reaching Bowser and rescuing the princess yet again. But this time around, Mario has new powers, multiplayer, and some of the zaniest level design (in a good way) the series has ever seen.

If you’ve played the DS entry, controlling Mario feels almost identical. It can best be described as “if Mario 64 was on a 2D plane”. I refer mainly to the way your running momentum feels as opposed to the NES and SNES games as well as the presence of the “wall jump”. If you missed the previous New Super Mario Bros., it will take you a second to adjust, but will become natural quite quickly.

"Many familiar enemies make an appearance."

While the fire flower and mini mushroom make a return, there are also three new power-ups: the propeller suit, the ice flower, and the penguin suit. The propeller suit allows you to shoot up into the air by flicking the wiimote (which is held sideways like an NES controller throughout the course of the game). Once you’ve done that, you can glide downward or hold down on the d-pad to drill toward the ground. It allows you to get to high areas without giving you the game-breaking (but fun) flying abilities of the leaf (Super Mario Bros. 3) or cape (Super Mario World).

If you combined the fire flower with the ice beam from the Metroid series, you would get the ice flower. Hitting an enemy with an ice ball will put them in a block of ice that you can stand on, destroy, or throw at an unsuspecting enemy. You can even freeze enemies in midair and their blocks will stay suspended, effectively flipping gravity “the bird”.

The penguin suit can do everything the ice flower can and more. Besides not slipping on icy platforms, pushing down while running will allow you to slide great distances, breaking blocks along the way. It’s very similar to the blue shell in the DS game.

The level design in New Super Mario Bros. Wii is simply stellar. Most of its influence comes from Super Mario Bros. 3 and to a lesser extent, Super Mario World. You might know these best as “two of the greatest 2D Mario games ever created”. Combine that with the dynamic flair the DS game added, lots of new ideas, and heaping gobs of variety and you have one hell of a package.

"Toad houses and map screen enemies are back."

Each world is divided into eight or more levels including a mid-castle and a final castle. In both castles, you will fight one of the koopalings, though the second battle will be spiced up with Kamek’s magic. Ghost houses make a welcome return as do a few airship levels. Alternate paths and three giant coins hidden throughout every stage add even more enjoyment to the levels. Finding all the gold coins in a world will unlock a new level in the secret ninth world (after you’ve beaten the game).

One of the game’s biggest selling points is simultaneous multiplayer. At any point on the map screen, you can add or drop up to three additional players. Playing with friends is an entirely different experience than singleplayer. Players cannot occupy the same space which results in lots of jumping on heads. Sometimes this helps a player get to a higher location. Other times it causes the lower player to plummet to their death. Of course, these outcomes are not mutually exclusive.

To make multiplayer more balanced, the game will spit out more power-ups when there are more players. However, there’s nothing to stop other players from stealing them when they appear which can make things interesting. I found that the camera is very good at zooming out enough to see each player when we got separated. Occasionally though, a player who is left behind would die from being too far back.

"Motion controls are used very sparingly such as this ledge rotating with the wiimote."

The best way to describe multiplayer is utter chaos. The more players you add, the more ridiculous the game gets. What is so fascinating though, is that it is also exceptionally fun to play. I spent a lot of time laughing at the hilarious antics that resulted from multiplayer. There may be no online, but this isn’t the kind of experience I would want to share with a random person or a disembodied voice through a Wii Speak peripheral.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii isn’t particularly difficult in singleplayer, though there are a few tricky sections here and there that I spent a decent amount of lives on. You won’t find The Lost Levels style of difficulty here. Instead, it feels similar to what you’d find in Super Mario World. Strangely, multiplayer is much more difficult since you have the added requirement of working together. At the same time, multiplayer feels more rewarding to play (with the right people).

What makes New Super Mario Bros. Wii so great is that it feels like a loving tribute to the classic series as a whole while adding plenty of its own flavor. It manages to strike the perfect balance between old and new elements. While the original New Super Mario Bros. on DS was entertaining, the Wii iteration feels better by leaps and bounds. Unless you hate 2D platformers, this should be in your game library.

Tags: 2-D, Mario, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Nintendo, platformer, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Wii

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.