New Super Mario Bros. Wii

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Super Mario. Bros Wii is a classic platform game for the wii that much resembles past mario games such as SMW for the Snes, Super Mario Bros, 3 for the NES, and The New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS.

Features

New Super Mario Bros. Wii offers a combination of cooperation and competition. Players can pick each other up to save them from danger or toss them into it.

Mario, Luigi and two Toads are all playable characters, while many others from the Mushroom Kingdom make appearances throughout the game. Players can even ride different Yoshi characters and use their tongues to swallow enemies – or their fellow players.

In some areas, players use the motion abilities of the Wii Remote controller. The first player to reach a seesaw might make it tilt to help his or her character reach a higher platform – and then tilt it incorrectly just to mess with other players.

New items include the propeller suit, which will shoot players high into the sky with just a shake of the Wii Remote and Mario’s new ability to transform into Penguin Mario.

At the end of each stage during the simultaneous multiplayer mode, players are ranked based on their score, the coins collected and the number of enemies defeated.

I think the most notable feature of this game is the fact that this is the first true Muliplayer Mario experience. You are able to have up to four players play at once.

Gamestop Review

You better bring your butt-stomping A-game to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Like the best Mario 2D games of decades past, this game is unashamedly and deliciously challenging. It will even test the most seasoned platforming veterans. And it's not just the difficulty that evokes comparisons with such classics as Super Mario Bros. 3. While New Super Mario Bros. Wii feels and plays like its esteemed side-scrolling forebears, there are enough additions here--such as the ability to have four players take on Bowser's minions at the same time--to make it a completely engaging game in its own right. Whether you decide to tackle it solo or submit yourself to the at-times fun, at-times frustrating multiplayer, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a thoroughly worthwhile experience.

It's an experience that will feel instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up with the mustachioed plumber's various adventures throughout the years. Nintendo hasn't fiddled with its successful formula too much in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with gameplay additions limited to tweaks rather than total revamps. Your task is still to make your way from point A to point B while avoiding various environmental obstacles and enemies, which requires increasingly accurate timing, intricate planning, and ninjalike reflexes as you progress through the game's eight varied worlds. Mario himself gets two new power-ups; first, there's the astoundingly useful penguin suit, which grants Mario the ability to hurl snowballs that can freeze opponents (as well gives him better traction on ice and the ability to navigate through water like a fish). Then, there's the just-as-useful helicopter suit, which allows Mario to shoot himself into the air and hover for short periods of time. All of Mario's other power-ups and abilities are old favorites--fire-flowers, ice-flowers (that can also hurl freezing snowballs), starmans, and more make a comeback. The loveable Yoshi also makes an all-too-brief appearance in a few levels.

You'll need to dig deep and mine whatever experience you have with previous Mario offerings because New Super Mario Bros. Wii is by far the most challenging game in the series for many years (certainly more so than New Super Mario Bros. on the DS or Super Mario Galaxy). It starts off innocuously enough, but by the start of the second world, things get noticeably more difficult. It doesn't let up as you make your way through to the fiery eighth world and a particularly epic Bowser boss battle. It's a welcome challenge because despite the fact that you'll no doubt lose plenty of lives and at times be tempted to throw the Wii Remote in frustration, the game never feels cheap, thanks to its consistently outstanding level design. Avoiding half a dozen Bullet Bills while navigating various shifting platforms may seem impossible to begin with, but patient study and fast reactions will always get you through (with enough practice, that is).

The game's high difficulty may initially scare off new players, but it wouldn't be the Nintendo of today if the game didn't try to make concessions for casual gamers. The Super Guide is the game's way of helping you past sections you may find tough and is activated as an option once you lose eight lives in any particular level. If you choose to use the guide, a computer-controlled Luigi will sub in for Mario and essentially run through the entire level for you (including any boss fights that may be part of the level). Once complete, you're given the option to either try the level again yourself or just skip it completely. It's an interesting addition, and while it initially seems to make the game too easy, the high lives count needed before it activates means that, for the most part, you'll probably be able to figure out the best way through a level on your own even before the Super Guide kicks in for you. And while it does show you the optimum path through levels, the AI Luigi doesn't uncover all the secret areas or star coins, which means Mario completionists will still have to figure out how to grab these bonuses on their own.

As with previous Mario games, there are plenty of these secret areas and bonuses to be found, which adds greatly to the replay value of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Each level features star and red coins to collect, as well as the usual warp pipes, hidden blocks, secret extra lives, and more. Collected star coins can be used to unlock bonus movies that show where hidden areas can be found, speed runs, and more. But more importantly, you'll need star coins to access a supersecret area that is only unlocked after you complete the game, giving you even more incentive to continue playing.

Your quest to find all those coins and save perennially kidnapped victim Princess Peach is backed up by mainly solid controls that have kept the simplicity of previous Mario games. You play with the Wii Remote held sideways, with the 2 button used for the all-important jump and the 1 button used to throw projectiles. It works fine for the most part, but some of the motion-control-based moves--such as shaking the Wii Remote to launch a spin attack or quickly jerking the Wii Remote down to pick up objects--can sometimes lead to unexpected lapses of control as your hands shift. It's not a game breaker, but there will be the occasional instance where a carefully planned and intricate sequence of jumps and attacks is undone by waggling-induced control loss. And while you can play with a nunchuk attached, for some odd reason, there's no Classic Controller support built into the game, which is a disappointing omission.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii's biggest new feature is the ability for four people to play the game at once. Players take on the role of Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad. Though technically they're different characters, they all share the same abilities and moves. Playing with friends is initially great fun--you can bounce off other characters, push each other into crevices, or even pick up and throw other characters. It's chaotic and can provide plenty of laughs; that is, as long as you're not actually serious about quickly reaching the end of a level. The ability to bounce off other's characters makes navigating most tough levels with more than one player a slow process, and it reaches frustration levels if you're partnered with Mario newcomers who will, more often than not, accidentally get in the way. That's not to say you should avoid multiplayer--with other experienced players at the helm, it can be fun, if a little tedious, to make it through a world. Multiplayer can also be a great teaching tool, with experienced players taking the lead and showing the ropes to platformer novices who want to build up their skills. Outside of the main game, players can also compete in two dedicated multiplayer modes--Free mode and Coin Battle. Both these modes allow you to play any level you've already unlocked, but while Free mode is just a straight-up replay, Coin Battle sees you competing with your friends to see who can make it to the end with the most coins collected.

While New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the second Mario platform game offering for the Nintendo home console, it pales in comparison to the looks of the first game: Super Mario Galaxy. This new Mario for the Wii features the usual bright colors and cartoon look of the series, but it lacks the sharpness and detail that Galaxy showed off. Sound is more a collection of nostalgia-inducing music and noises from previous Mario games than anything groundbreaking or new, including sounds from the 8-bit era, such as the distinctive noise made when Mario first grabs a super mushroom.

Thankfully, New Super Mario Bros. Wii has more than nostalgia to back it up. While it doesn't stray too far from what's come before it, New Super Mario Bros. Wii's tight gameplay, multitude of secrets, accessibility for newcomers thanks to the nifty Super Guide, and some fun multiplayer additions all add up to a great platformer that Mario fans and nonfans alike should enjoy.

Ign Review

November 13, 2009 - New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a great game, no question. This fresh platformer brings back all the gameplay elements that made the series such a noteworthy and inspiring franchise. And even though the series has made the successful leap from side-scroller to 3D platformer, the original formula still works extremely well today. New Super Mario Bros. Wii continues to prove that fact.

The Wii game lifts the efforts that went into the company's original revival on the Nintendo DS. That portable game brought the 2D platformer formula back for a new generation of gamers. The end product was a fantastic experience, mostly because -- for gamers like myself who grew up on Super Mario -- it was an incredible thrill to play through a fresh Nintendo-developed experience that captured everything we loved about the franchise. The 2006 release was docked a bit for being a bit on the easy side and offering some unbalanced Mario elements (two worlds are locked?), but ultimately it's still one of the Nintendo DS system's best titles.

Wii isn't a port of the DS game but it certainly has the DS game to thank for a lot of its production. The game brings back the classic platformer gameplay of the 8 and 16-bit designs of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World, and -- like the Nintendo DS game --introduces new gameplay mechanics that just wouldn't have been possible on the gaming hardware back in the day. You're going to get platforms that tilt and sway, cloud mists that obscure the levels, areas that are quite literally infested with dozens of enemies, and sizeable bosses that take up nearly the entire screen.

The game controls just as the original games: there's an option to plug in a Nunchuk for analog stick control, but this game plays best with a stock Wii Remote to mirror the original NES pad. The game features identical control to the 8-bit designs with a bit of a current generation twist. Not only are there gameplay elements where tilting the controller affects the game world, but players can give the remote a bit of a shake for contextual control: carry obstacles by holding the button and shaking the controller, or get a bit of a jump "pause" by thrusting the Wii remote at the peak of a leap.

New to the game are power-ups such as the Ice Flower, the opposite of the Fire Flower stand-by, that'll freeze enemies in place and turn them into slippery platforms or obstacles to pick up and throw and the Penguin Suit that enables non-slippery walking on ice and spectacular swimming underwater. These additions feel natural to the design, though the Penguin Suit doesn't look nearly as hip as the classic Raccoon wear of the original suit game, Super Mario 3.

The game is a great challenge. Not brutally hard, mind you, but it puts up a good fight especially compared to the Nintendo DS game. Expect to put in several hours just in getting through to the final boss, and then returning to the levels to score each of the three coins that'll unlock even more levels. And then, to give it even more replay, there's the multiplayer aspect.

The original Mario Bros., an arcade game released in 1983, revolved around the idea that there were two brothers working together towards a single goal. But when Nintendo created Super Mario Bros., that partnership sort of disappeared and the adventure became solo. New Super Mario Bros. Wii brings the camaraderie back in a big way: not only can you play two players at the same time during the adventure, but it can become a quartet if you've got the controllers on hand.

This multiplayer aspect works extremely well for the Super Mario Bros. design, and Nintendo clearly made sure that its team focused on balancing the gameplay so that each level can be fun not just for the lone gamer, but also for people who like to play in groups. Consider that at any time a player can join in at the start of any level, and then -- at any time -- choose to say "you know, this level is too hard for me" and tap a button to let the skilled player get through the challenge for them. That's just smart design, especially when you see just how vicious some of the levels can get.

It's tough to say whether New Super Mario Bros. Wii is easier or more difficult with two, three, or four players in the standard level progression. On the one hand, the level doesn't end and start over on a player's death -- as long as someone's still alive, the game continues, so the action can go much quicker with players unlocking the worlds and levels at a record pace. However, there's also the issue of chaos. More players means more things to manage: the players now have to work together to not get in each others' way and cause deaths where a single player wouldn't even blink. And some levels have been constructed with speed runs in mind, so if you get a straggler it'll ruin the pace and death will come swiftly.

The multiplayer is a fantastic addition, both in cooperative as well as in competitive. But in this generation it's extremely difficult to accept that a high profile game with a multiplayer focus completely dismisses any sort of online. This is aimed squarely at Nintendo and all the fanboys defending its decision: make any excuse you want, but any other first party publisher on any other current generation system would have ensured that a game as high a caliber as New Super Mario Bros Wii would have put focus on getting the game online. The fact that this game totally shuns online completely shows Wii owners just how unimportant internet play is to the company. Or rather, it continues to show how ignorant Nintendo is to the online demand.

And it's not just the online component where Nintendo misses with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Built into the game are real-time gameplay "videos" that people can unlock and watch. They're not exactly videos as they are replay files, controller input recordings that are played back in the game's engine. With all the Super Guide hint playbacks and clever Super Play videos it's clear that team members had a ball creating them. So with the code in the game, why didn't the team open this option up to the gamer? If I had a spectacular run-through of world 7-6, I would have loved the opportunity to save that session and upload it to a server or send it to a friend, much like an option that is already available to players of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It's certainly not a dealbreaker, but it shows just how safe Nintendo is playing it with the game -- New Super Mario Bros. Wii is status quo and barely goes beyond that.

That's the best way to describe New Super Mario Bros. Wii: the game plays it safe. It doesn't go crazy with presentation or options, it simply offers up a basic, decent and acceptable experience with conservative visuals and basic additions. In a sense, it's just a slight letdown when you consider how much Super Mario Galaxy, a 2007 release, completely wowed us with incredible graphics and innovative gameplay mechanics. It even had a crazy over-the-top introduction cutscene that really set the tone. Awesome as it is to play through classic Super Mario Bros. platform designs in a fresh experience, when you look at New Super Mario Bros. Wii from the perspective of a Super Mario Galaxy successor it's hard not to feel like this took a step backwards.

Closing Comments
I really, really like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I have no qualms with saying this is a far better game than the Nintendo DS version, and it could easily be the finest Super Mario Bros. 2D platformer Nintendo's ever created. You should absolutely get a copy, no question.

But, and it's a big "but," Nintendo did not use this opportunity wisely. For as big a project as this could have been, this game's impact is weakened by many factors. It plays it safe with established gameplay with very little in the way of new innovation. It also lacks online multiplayer in a generation where such a feature is expected.

I had a great time plowing through all eight worlds (and then some), but the nagging feeling of it seeming like a step backwards kept creeping in. As a gamer I love New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but as a critic I just couldn't let the issues slide.



IGN Ratings for New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)

7.5 Presentation
Nintendo gives us the status quo here, not going above and beyond in features.

7.5 Graphics
Very modest visuals: 3D characters, 2D backgrounds, with the occasional lighting effect.

8.0 Sound
The Mario soundtrack has some great old favorites and some fun new ditties.

9.5 Gameplay
Brilliant 2D platforming and challenges makes this the best of the 2D Mario best.

9.0 Lasting Appeal
The multiplayer aspect makes this a game you'll come back to again and again.

8.9
Great OVERALL
(out of 10 / not an average)

4 Players cooperating and trying to catch the moving platforms


Team surviving the pits of lava and the giant gears in Bowser's Castle


Nintendo brings back an old-school cave feel


The helicopter suit makes its debute


Dont lose your cool in this ice land


Nintendo has created some unique platforming challenges



So what do you think of this game? What are your likes and dislikes? Was it worth the money?