New Super Mario Bros. Wii Review

For those twenty-somethings and older, we most probably remember playing a game of Super Mario Bros. on the ol’ NES, and remembering that it was simply awesome. Basic, but awesome. Nintendo had finally brought true family gaming to the living room. All over the world, badly dressed 80s gamers were getting to grips with a character that was going to be stuck in the forefront of Nintendo’s marketing machine forever.

The controls were simple: Up, Down, Left, Right, A and B. It’s simplicity was acceptable and accessible. We all played it, and then Super Mario Bros. fell into the bargain bin or got shoved into storage. Nintendo counted their earnings and moved on to bigger things.

The appearance of New Super Mario Bros. Wii is both surprising and expected. Nintendo – after their decade-long gap of very basic marketing (which arguably crippled some success of the N64 and Gamecube) – are rolling out the family gaming fanfare once more, furiously advertising their Wii. And yep, they dug out Super Mario Bros.

So Mario, the family man.

According to Ant and Dec – Nintendo’s favourite couple – buck-trending 2D/3D side-scrolling New Super Mario Bros. Wii bridges the gap between generations of Mario fans. And to really pull on the heart strings, Nintendo have packed their new title full of little nostalgic nuggets to make us older folk mumble “Ohhh. I remember that music/sound/enemy/item” every five minutes. But that’s just the tip of the recycled iceberg.

Upon shoving the disc in and navigating your way to the map screen, you’re already holding your Wiimote like a NES controller. This may cause a subconscious half smirk as you reminisce. As mentioned earlier, the game is an extremely jolly and colourful mish mash of past Mario related glories: we see the return of classic enemies such as goombas, koopas, those friggin’ red spikey things, piranha plants and so on. If you’re a Mario freak like myself, you may even pick up on sounds from Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario World and beyond. But one classic has had a ridiculously huge influence – Super Mario Bros. 3.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii borrows A LOT from the third NES outing – and even that’s an understatement. From the jigging tress on the map screen, the sub bosses, the airship, the midway fortresses, the boomerang throwing and fire ball spitting koopas, a legion of it’s minor enemies and even tiny things like performing the signature cartwheel jump when Mario takes a juicy bite into a Star…In fact, those fire ball spitting piranha plants are from it too! The list really is colossal.

Acknowledging that simply porting Super Mario Bros. 3 wasn’t enough, Nintendo has mixed in some eye candy and some really cool features – such as using fire balls to light the path ahead in a pitch black cave and having music-syncing moving platforms speed up as the final 100 seconds kicks in and the music accelerates. The staple über jolly tunes are back, to which the enemies comically jig along on certain notes. And, with this being the Wii and all, a certain degree of flapping your limbs around is required to jump higher, aim cannons and tilt interactive platforms to help you reach coins. Which are pretty much pointless.

There’s also the inclusion of a Co-Op mode which can provide some enjoyment. It does become tiresome after a while, where the guy who played the game through and unlocked all the stages knows where all the items are. And – thanks to the ability to pick up fellow players – your so-called ‘friends’ can lob you into the path of an enemy. Thank goodness there’s a battle mode – go kick his/her ass.

But, are these extras enough? The answer isn’t straight forward. To a Mario newbie, the game must be pretty fun, but to some veterans, the joy of seeing old enemies you were clobbering almost 20 years ago gets old quite quickly, with little reward for your in game achievements. Secret areas are limited, item varieties are few and the levels are all relatively samey. And atypical of 80s games, the plot, while classic in itself, is wafer thin. This is new arcade gaming, which, while still very basic, is totally playable in short bursts.

The real plot of this title is to enlighten a new generation of gamers to Mario. Unfortunately, most of them have already had action packed gaming and may not see the appeal of continuously running to the right for 100 levels. It’s basic, but not so awesome these days. If you’re after a quick time killer and fancy some Mario action, give it a try, but this way off being another Mario side-scrolling classic.