New Super Mario Bros Wii
New Super Mario Bros for Wii is both a retro gamers dream come true, and a great local multiplayer co-op game.
The gameplay mechanics closely resemble the prequel New Super Mario Bros for DS, but gamers who haven’t played that title will be surprised how much is leveraged from previous retro Mario titles. The New Super Mario Bros series is a update of the classic Super Mario Bros series. It’s a 2d platformer that plays similar to the 8 and 16bit Mario titles. You move around a map screen and select stages, you collect power-ups throughout the level, and you goal is simply to complete the levels and beat the boss in each castle.
The story is typical Mario, Bowser breaks up the Princess’ birthday party by kidnapping her and it’s Mario, Luigi and 2 toads to the rescue.
The big thing about this new title is that it supports 2-4 local co-op play. You can play through the game with up to 3 friends, and it’s a blast to do so. Because of how the game is designed it’s playing it is quite different from way multiplayer co-op games were in the past. The biggest change is that each character takes up it’s own space in the world, so two players can’t take up the same space. This can be annoying when you have to jump across small ledges and you have to wait for the player in front of you to move. In levels where everything is moving and there’s plenty of ways to die, this creates a huge sense of urgency. The plus is that you can work together to take advantage of this feature, you can jump off your friends head to jump to places you might not be able to reach otherwise.
The gameplay features a lot of mechanics from the previous games. Obviously, a lot still follows what was defined in Super Mario Bros. There’s above land, underground, and underwater levels. Each level ends with a flag pole, and of course the mushroom, star and flower power-ups return. The map screen, item huts, and inventory return from Mario 3. As well as the Koopa kids for bosses. Yoshi returns Super Mario Land, as well as his glide mechanics from Yoshi’s Island. The way that dead characters come back inside bubbles also resembles when baby Mario would fall off Yoshi. Even some gameplay aspects from Super Mario 64 come through like the ability to jump off walls, and the butt stomp mechanic.
New Super Mario Bros also adds new mechanics like a flower that shoots ice balls to freeze enemies. A propeller cap that lets you fly up in the air for a bit. For the co-op play the flying mechanic works much better than the leaf or cape would.
There’s also a new penguin suit which gives you a slide attack, and makes underwater and ice levels easier.
The game allows the player to hold the wiimote sideways like an NES controller, or use the nunchuck. The sideways approach is much preferred because the d-pad is much easier to play this game with than the analog stick. Also some maneuvers and a couple of in level elements can be manipulated with the wiimotes tilt controls.
If you play the story mode single player you’ll get access to the Super Guide. This is Nintendo way of helping players who are having a hard time. If you’ve failed a level 8 times, you’ll get the option to watch the compute play through the level.
The game features 2 modes in addition to story mode. You can play free mode which scores you and any other players base on several aspects of gameplay. You can compete for best score in each level. The coin battle mode is similar but only ranks players on how many coins they got.
All in all, this is definitely a must have for the wii. It reminds us what we used to love about the old Mario games, and give the 2d series a welcome update. It’s great fun for everyone, and alone or multiplayer is a great time. I can’t recommend it enough.
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