New Super Mario Bros.
Producer: Nintendo
Release Date: December 3, 2009
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Rating: Everyone
Genre: 2d Platforming
History Repeats Itself
Written by William Nadel
It’s not often that I, hardcore gamer extraordinaire, find many Wii games suitable for review at RUKUSmag.com. It wasn’t until I laid my eyes upon New Super Mario Bros. Wii that I saw an opportunity to get a hardcore Wii game on this relatively “M” for Mature minded site. This game was proclaimed as an old-school wet dream for Mario fans. Has Miyamoto and team given us an appropriately juicy product that delivers on 20+ years of potential promise??
Eh, sort of. I am a 2D Mario megafan. I’ve owned and played most everything related to Mario that I’ve come into contact with my entire conscious life. After this life filled with mostly good Mario experiences, and after the ingenuity of Mario Galaxy, I was filled with nostalgia and I was hoping for a very creative and innovative 2D Mario game. A game that would give me something fresh and new, while incorporating the gameplay mechanics we all know and love. There is only much of the same throughout this Mario experience. That isn’t to say that this aspect is a negative. The gameplay certainly retains the tight and sometimes frustratingly methodic platforming elements that made the series the addictive and long-lived franchise it is today. There are some new suits for mario and company to don, such as the Penguin Suit. The suit, similar to the Fire Flower, allows players to shoot an ice blast that will surround an enemy in an ice cube of sadness.
There is one new element of this game that I think worked well at what it was intended to do. The game includes four player local multiplayer co-op. All four players can run around and use team based maneuvers to accomplish some seriously complex objectives. Some objectives can only be done to perfection by utilizing four player co-op moves. Nintendo failed to think out of the box in certain aspects. For instance, they have four player co-op, but they have a very limited selection of playable characters. You can only select Mario, Luigi, and two Toad models with different colors. None of the colors are the classic Psychedellic Mushroom Red. The co-op gameplay works fine if you have friends who are platformer-savvy. Players can damage and bump each other, which can help you and frequently it annoyingly kills you. One major oversight, and one important reason this review isn’t as rosie as it could be, is that Nintendo failed to add any sort of Wi-Fi connectivity into the game. There is no way to hop on your Wii and connect to a friend across the street, country, or world. There is no way to share your experiences with your pen pal in Vancouver unless you get a passport and fly your ass up there. Nintendo needs to realize that we love the internet and we’re not all kids. Give us, the one’s asking to connect, our opportunity to do so in all of your major indeavors that involve multiplayer and co-op action.
The game’s graphics are what you’d expect. Very bright and colorful backgrounds with that classic Mario soundscape to give you the mental chills. I enjoyed playing through the game very much and I hope this isn’t their final attempt at 2D goodness. This was a happy rehash of the past. It is a solid experience on it’s own, but they need to look the future next time.