New Super Mario Brothers Wii Review: All the Classic Mario Goodness of Old; All the Mario Baggage of Recent Titles
For our six and a half loyal readers that wonder if we gave up, we didn’t. Sorry for the lack of updates. Various things like income-providing jobs, child abuse and World of Warcraft have kept us from updating the last couple of weeks. We’ll get back to movies soon (the seemingly endless 17-hour run time of 2012 was enough to scare me away from theaters for a couple of weeks), but I do now have a better-late-than-never look at Nintendo’s latest rehash, New Super Mario Brothers Wii. You may feel that me calling this a rehash indicates I feel dredging up the old 2-D side scrolling platformer back up to the console world is unwelcome. However that would be harsh. After all, if you’re rehashing a tried and true genre, you might as well do it with the best of the best.
My first instinct was to assume that this was simply a console port of the Nintendo DS version of the same title, but it definitely is its own game. However, the theme and style are definitely rooted in the handheld version. For younger console gamers and those of us that are older but have adjusted our tastes beyond this classic side scrolling type of title, it may seem like a step back. For me, I admit that my patience and attention span are definitely tested when trying to dig into a game like this. But as I’ve found with NSMB Wii, a little patience pays off and I soon found myself as enthralled as I was with old flat Mario and friends as I was in the early 1990s.
I have to pause here to admit that Super Mario Brothers 3 is the single title that brought me back into the console world in the closing years of the life of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I was deep into my quest for my B.S. degree at the time and had forsaken console gaming in high school after my Atari 2600 had finally been relegated to a cardboard box in the back of a closet. I thought that video games were probably a thing of my past. But it was a series of fortuitous circumstances that put the NES and Mario squarely on my radar. Well, fortuitous for Nintendo, not so fortuitous for my wallet for the past 15 or so years.
Let me interrupt this aside with another aside by mentioning that Mario had always been the main man for me. It wasn’t long after my introduction to the origins of popular video games chugging mom’s quarters into the Pac-Man machine at the local supermarket or the old school Asteroids and Space Invaders machines at the local mall that I was introduced to the only man I’ve every loved in a romantic way, Mario the Plumber. Yes, amidst a joyous world of Inky, Blinky, Frogger and that little glowing triangle battling asteroids, Mario was love at first site for me.
Any trip to a public place with arcade machines always started with the hunt for the Donkey Kong machine. Mario was the man. A simple plumber who’s keen sense of timing, street smarts, super-human jumping ability and sense of justice was the man I loved. And though it would be years before I would lay with a woman in the biblical sense I knew that it was my duty to assist Mario in rescuing the Princess from the evil clutches of Donkey Kong to reunite him with his woman.
Donkey Kong was an art…IS an art (see the film The King of Kong, immediately after reading this review). It was definitely one of the earliest games that could be remotely called a “platformer.” It was one of first “intricate” or immersive video game experiences where you actually had a setting that somewhat resembled what it was supposed to be and required you to actually control something that resembled a human interacting with objects and characters the actually looked somewhat like what or who they were supposed to represent.
I stuck with Mario through his illustrious arcade history. Donkey Kong, Jr. was enjoyed but played under a protest of principle by forcing Mario into the role of the villain. Mario came and went but never disappeared. I never did figure out if Donkey Kong 3 was even supposed to be Mario in the hero role, but he came back with a vengeance in the original Mario Brothers, where we had the real first chance to grab a joystick as his brother Luigi. I could go on, but let’s just zip ahead to my college years where in a matter of 4 weeks I went from having absolutely no plans to enter the world of console gaming to plunking down about well over $100 to buy an NES, Super Mario Brothers 3 along with SMB2 and the original Super Mario Brothers. Since then, I have never had a single day where I did not have a console made by Nintendo connected to my television (along with various other console, admittedly).
Through it all, the best Mario game I ever played from a standpoint of sheer quantity of fun, quality of play and sheer addictive draw was Super Mario Brothers 3. It’s the best of the best. I’ve played it through many times. I’ve owned every re-release of it and played and beaten it on every re-release multiple times—well, with the exception of the Wii Virtual Console version. I’ve put many hours into the VC release, but cannot claim to have actually played through destroying Bowser in level 8 in that release. So, before I actually get into New Super Mario Brothers Wii, you at least now know that I’m terribly biased toward classic Mario platformers so you can fairly filter all my comments through that knowledge.
It’s also my duty to acknowledge that of all the Mario platformers 2-D and 3-D that have come and gone over the years, New Super Mario Brothers Wii definitely owes it’s heart, style of play, and much of it’s updated content directly to Super Mario Brothers 3. We have virtually every element that was key in SMB3 becoming a factor in the latest game up to and including a classic SMB3 Airship level. A side by side comparison of all the Mario side scrollers would definitely bring home the fact that this game is a graphically boosted version of the old NES classic with a fair sprinkling of elements from most of the Mario series. Some of those sprinklings are purely nostalgic and some directly integrated with the gameplay. It’s been an addictive nostalgic experience. Though I have to admit, it took me some time to get back in the mindset of committing to a 2-D platformer, as soon as I made the decision to go ahead play through the first world it became the game of the hour, so to speak. In my teeny world that simply means that it has the current position of being the disk that stays inside the console having the temporary responsibility of being the only reason to turn the Wii on until it’s complete. Of course, I’m still pounding my way through the last world, so I would be remiss to claim that this batch of first impressions is from someone who’s played through to the bitter end, beaten every boss and found every secret. I’ve still got quite a ways to go for that.
To answer some of the burning questions for lapsed Mario players that are still trying to justify the full price purchase of a game that’s using video game concepts and tech that are well over a decade and a half old here are some of the edited highlights and a few notable points of play. Afterwards I’ll turn away from this sycophantic Nintendo love-fest to examine the not-insignificant issues I have with the game.
Yoshi: yes, for love of Xenu, Yoshi is in this game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly okay with that infantile little beast who was great in Super Mario World (aka Super Mario Brothers 4 for SNES). However, Yoshi in New Super Mario Brothers Wii serves the game pretty much as a dynamic powerup. He’s a shield for damage and allows you some movement and ability while you have him, but once the level is complete he’s gone, and good riddance! You don’t take him with you and you don’t carry him over. He’s in a small percentage of the levels. Just the right amount, really.
Level Structure: Pretty standard Mario. Each world consists of self-contained levels with each world having one mid-castle after which you can save your progress and a final castle after which you can save your progress as you advance to the next world. Each world has a “Ghost House.” The ghost house concept has been around since Super Mario World and has never been something I cared for. 
The levels are annoying run-arounds, and in this case, completing them gains you little main game progress because you can’t save after defeating them. In each world there is a limited number of “mini-challenges” where you have to play a one screen level avoiding or killing the enemy of the hour to save Toad from a locked chest. There are also “mushroom house” bonus games that you can play at various times to earn powerups you can put in reserve and use before entering a level. One of my personal faves is the panel-flip matching game returning from Super Mario 3.
Life System and Level of Difficulty: I’ll get more into the difficulty level in my complaint section, but suffice to say it’s considerably less difficult than any previous Mario side-scroller. However, from a sheer challenge standpoint I’d have to rate it considerably more challenging on a level by level basis than Super Mario Galaxy, which quite simply was pretty much devoid of any substantial challenge through the first 20% or so of the levels faced. The life system is pretty familiar–you start with 5 lives. You have ample opportunity to earn extras through collecting coins and green 1-up mushrooms. If you lose all lives you have unlimited continues but you can at least see how many that you’ve used since you started the save file. Just the right thing to keep you modest.
And now the not-so-shiny side of the gold coin, so to speak. Most of my problems with New Super Mario Brothers Wii are not unique to this game, but representative of irritating trends that have been developing for years in the Super Mario series. The single exception to that is the newly introduced multiplayer element, which I’ll address first. One of the big marketing points of New Super Mario Brothers Wii is the multiplayer facet. While this is being billed as cooperative or competitive, it’s really designed as cooperative. 
I get the feeling that the “competitive” aspect only entered into the marketing plan after the developers quickly began to realize that no matter how hard you try, playing with more than one character on screen at a time is at best a complete and utter clusterf**k. The only real advantage it affords you is the luxury of working your life allotments in a manner so you can time your need for continues without having to work back to repeat levels over and over again. The real problem is that this game simply isn’t optimized for this type of play. At least it wasn’t designed for this type of play very well. Since the interplayer physics if full frontal collision-based the slightest touch of another player sends them jostling the opposite direction. Sounds cool right? Well not in a game where the difference between life and death is a nudge in either direction. I also can’t tell you what an immense joy it is (sarcasm) to play through ice levels where you can’t stop skidding even when you’re not being touched. With my two kids, I’ve played a substantial portion of the game with two or three total players, and while there is a certain amount of mischief-fun, the entire experience is by far more frustration and argument than multiplayer gaming fun. A noble attempt, but it’s definitely not a revolutionary new way to play a platformer. For the record, you can only play as Mario, Luigi or Toad by default in multiplayer. Okay, is this just weird shortsightedness to anyone else? Pimp up the fact that the game introduces revolutionary new 4-player simultaneous multiplayer and then restrict it in a manner that two of the players have to play the same character. And that character is only Toad. Granted, it’s Toad with a different colored mushroom hat, but it’s Mario, Luigi, Toad and Toad. Oh, and if you play single player you can only play as Mario. Wow! Welcome to Nintendo’s 21st century Mario. Fewer character choices than Super Mario Brothers 2! Granted, character options are a minor nitpick, but considering it’s something that we had over 15 years ago in Mario games, not doing something that’s seemingly simple seems silly. In addition, for my money, Toad is about the most dead-boring looking character model you can get, so why not double the blandness, eh?
Next on my list of Festivus grivances, why this series continues to rely on the antiquated “limited lives” system is beyond me. In this case, if you run out of lives before defeating a mid or final world castle you can continue forever, but have to go back and re-defeat all the levels since your last save. One thing that I find myself having little patience for these days is busting my butt to get through a series of levels only to have to go back and start again. Quite frankly, I was done with that style of play about the time the Nintendo 64 came out. There’s no reason in the 21st century that games should have to artificially extend the play time by making you go back and continually repeat the same levels, especially when so many of the challenges are strictly tests of timing and eye-hand coordination. It’s frustrating enough to have to start a level over half a dozen times while you try to work out just the right timing to pass a particular section only to completely erase all the effort you put into it. I’ve recently rehashed all those ill feelings with the most difficult and frustrating 2-D side scrollers of all time, the Super Star Wars series on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. The Super Star Wars series, while being some of the best games produced for the SNES were also probably by far the games that made gamers want to toss their consoles through a plate glass window the most.
In the realm of game difficulty, another questionable trend in the Mario series which continues to make the games easier as well as relates back to the limited lives issues, is that extra lives are almost ridiculously easy to get if you really want them. Back in my Super Mario 3 days, I hardly ever really spent much time attempting to collect every coin on the map. Sure, every few levels you could push the coin count over 100 and get your bonus life, but the real winner on extra lives were the mini-games, the hidden 1-up mushrooms and collecting the correct cards at the completion of each level. In the new game, the number of coins in each level is beyond insanity. You can easily gain 100 coins without much additional effort in virtually any standard level in the game. In addition, you still have all the hidden 1-ups and Mario standards. So while the limited lives issue is still perplexing, you have ample ability to pound out extra lives with moderate or low levels of effort, which makes the limited lives system seem even more antiquated. Adding to the “dumbing down” of the overall challenge of the game is the abundant amount of powerups on each map. Virtually every map has the powerup Nintendo deems optimal for navigating the level every handful of yards. It becomes half-smirkingly ridiculous once you actually become adequate at the game. You’ll open a level and play through it and literally pop up half a dozen fire flowers throughout the course of the game. And the powerups are strategically placed in a rather insulting manner. Basically, after every “tricky” patch in every map, the next power block gives you the “powerup of choice.” The one aspect I do like about the powerup system now is that if you are standard mushroomed “big” Mario with no “super” powerup like a fire or ice flower and you punch a super powerup out of a block, but take a hit before grabbing it, you still get the full super powerup and not just a boost back to “big” Mario. I’ll take that without complaint even if it does make it a tad easier.
While there are a ton of other nitpicks with the Mario games and this one in particular, the last one I’ll address is by far the most irritating tendency of this series and the only one that really gives me pause on the purchase of each additional one. This is the twisted path that the Mario games have taken to being overly dependant on secret paths and levels. Before I get flak on that comment, lets take a look at where we are with New Super Mario Brothers Wii. While there are easily over a dozen levels in each world in the game, in most worlds you can play straight through only 2 or 3 to get to the mid castle and then sometimes as few as couple from there to get to the final castle. While I admit I have not completed everything in the game, it certainly seems that by ignoring secret levels and alternate routes in levels, you can easily play the game from opening cut scene through defeat of the final boss while experiencing 60% or less of the games total content. Granted, in the good old days when the majority of gamers were high school-aged kids without jobs, college students or others that at least sometimes had extended periods of their week where they could focus on one game, we now live in a world where the average gamers are college-aged guys or middle-aged fully employed and/or married people who always end up owning more games than they have time to play. This isn’t 1991 where the average gamer has spent their two month budget (or their parent’s two month budget) on the game they’ll probably play exclusively for the next month so. We live in a world where the only people that play a game through 100% of the content day in and day out without strategy or hint guides are chronically unemployed or under-employed people with extra time and people that have paying jobs for gaming mags and websites reviewing video games. I’d really like a game that is challenging to play straight through and has a generous but not excessive amounts of secrets and extras to give the game some surprises and replayability. Unfortunately, with the Mario series Nintendo has created this monstrosity of a game style that is relatively short, low to moderately challenging straight game that only really opens up to a rich and rewarding gaming experience if you spend excessive amounts of time finding secrets through various means.
The issue that really accentuates the “secrets and extras” overload problem is that if you decide to even half-heartedly commit to working for the secrets you will quickly find warp cannons that propel you ahead to skipping multiple worlds in a ridiculously short spring to the final levels. Super Mario Galaxy really put a mathematical face on this. You could “beat” the game after officially “completing” just over 50% of the actual game. While secrets and extras are nice, they cease to become “secrets and extras” when they become the game’s primary content. There’s just something that is extremely demotivating about continuing to play a game for hours, days, weeks after you’ve already beaten the final boss. Does a race car driver want to run the last 90 laps of the Indianapolis 500 if he takes the checkered flag after lap 110? For those race care illiterates, the race is 200 laps.
As you can see from the majority of my review I can gush endlessly of my semi home-erotic man-love for Mario and his momentous stature. However, I would classify myself just shy of being a Mario-apologist. I believe that those that still play the Mario games feel pretty strongly that the there’s still a ton of quality, thoughtfulness and creativity in this series and there’s not a huge divide between Mario fans and “former” Mario fans. If you like the series you’ll like this game. Ultimately, though, the problems and issues I have with the game are terribly hard to defend. One day, I fully expect to pick up a Mario game that has an opening cut scene, one level, and then Bowser. But there will be 120 secret levels that you can putter through if you play through every nook and cranny of that one level. That will be my last Mario game. Until then, I’ll keep playing. New Super Mario Brothers Wii is definitely a worthwhile full price investment for Wii, but be warned if you have some of the same problems I do with the game. Still, at this juncture, I’m pretty happy to be spending time with the man in the red hat and overalls again.
I plunked my first quarter down to play as Mario when I was 12. My teenage son played his first Mario game when he was 5 years old. My 5-year old son played his first Mario game when he was 3 years old. It’s a family tradition. The big red warning just happens to be that this family tradition happens to be one that has caused these 3 Mario players to want to strangle each other repeatedly through this misguided multi-player experience.
Here’s a nice treat of some old school Mario Skills in NSMBW that I came across online. If you don’t own the game and you’re wondering after watching this: Yes the clapping sound effect IS part of the game.
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Tags: Game Reviews, Mario, Nintendo, Wii
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2 Responses to “New Super Mario Brothers Wii Review: All the Classic Mario Goodness of Old; All the Mario Baggage of Recent Titles”
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December 10th, 2009 at 11:07 am
My biggest complaint so far: the controller. That Wii remote just wasn’t meant to be used sideways, I don’t care what they say. They should have included the option to play it with the Classic controller. Easier on the hands, and you wouldn’t have to shake it like a ninny any time you wanted to pick things up. Heck, even the twisting-the-platform move would be easier with the Classic’s shoulder buttons.
And am I the only one that thinks when Toad screeches he sounds a lot like Bobby Hill doing his ventriloquist voice?
December 12th, 2009 at 12:42 am
I managed to pick up a plastic clip on grip for the wii mote to make it feel more traditional that really kind of mutes the shitty controller shape. I’m used to the wii mote, though. The thing that killed me with the VC Mario games though is that the layout of the Classic Controller by default was dead wrong. Any Mario player worth their salt always pressed the run button constantly and jumped by gently pressing the inner thumb bend down on the jump button. However, the classic controller reveresed those two on the opposite layout of the classic NES buttons making it impossible to do running jumps with on thumb.
In fairness to the Wiimote though, I remember thinking almost the exact same thing about the old classic square NES controller when I first played because I grew up with the classic Atari Joystick. I couldn’t believe people played games with a flat square pad.