After Mario Galaxy and Mario Cart, Mario Sports, and a slew of other cameos, Mario is finally getting an exclusive side-scrolling adventure for the Wii, and it’s about time.
Nintendo’s game designers seem to have had an easy job with this title as all the best features of the game were ported over from the New Super Mario Bros. for DS. This means the triumphant return of warp zones, secret pipes, end of level flagpole jumps and fireworks to a home system! The developers have also stuck to the time tested level formula, keeping them to eight, each with their familiar themes like desert, ice, water and lava. A lot of the original baddies are back and some seem to have been hitting the steroid bag.
As always, the Mario franchise has also kept up the tradition of introducing new power-ups. Instead of the feather, this version features a propeller hat, or beanie, that lets you fly when you shake the Wiimote. Pressing down on the d-pad lets you spiral down in a corkscrew fashion, annihilating your enemies.
Also introduced is the Ice Flower, which lets you throw ice balls that freeze your enemies so that you can pick them up and shatter them against the wall, or use them for various other purposes, like getting over obstacles. Similar to the Ice Flower is the Penguin suit, which is more like the Frog suit from Super Mario World on SNES, allowing you to swim with more ease, slide on your belly on ice levels, throwing ice balls all the while.
If you’ve played the DS version, you may remember the Micro Mario mushroom, probably the most elusive of all power-ups in the new Mario Wii, only unlockable in mini-games or the spinning ‘roulette-style’ question marks. Micro Mario in the Wii title seems like more of an afterthought for elite gamers who want to unlock all the nitty-gritty secrets.
You can probably breeze through the game in 15 hours, but the real challenge is finding the three star coins hidden on every stage. Unlocking all the star coins on each level unlocks one of eight hidden stages, playable only after defeating Bowser. If you remember the Star Path from Mario World on the Super Nintendo, then this may sound a bit familiar. Other secret zones and pathways await.
As short as it may seem, the game is EXTREMELY unforgiving. The days of the typical platformer are long gone, and many of us older gamers have forgotten the keen attention span that is necessary to excel at Mario! Take your eyes off the screen to check your phone—boom, you’re dead. Jump without looking out for turtles, dead again. Running for a mushroom going off a cliff? Yeah, you’re probably going to regret that. The process can be agonizing, but it only makes success that much sweeter.
Being a multiplayer party game, with up to four players, this is probably the most interactive of all the Mario games. Players can pick each other up, toss each other across the stages, and even play keep away if you are on a Yoshi stage, using his tongue to swallow up your friends. In multiplayer mode, you can even put yourself into a protective bubble at the push of a button and coast along as your teammates do all the work. There are also a number of competitive mini-games included to keep you coming back for more.
There’s a good reason the New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii has been sold out for the past month. Anything you may have just read is really just the icing on the cake. Hours and hours of supplementary game play, frustration and elation are on their way. Now do whatever you can to own this game!
