New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe has maybe the most infuriating victory bonus I can remember in a game
By bigsocrates 2 Comments
New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe has a stupid name and I don't like it. Either the name or the game itself.
I got vaccinated Sunday and it knocked me flat on my back so I decided to finally finish Tears of the Kingdom, a game I played obsessively upon release but had to set down when life got too hectic.
That took longer than I thought (and I think that the back end of that game's main quest is not great, which is a separate issue) but after I finished I still had a couple hours before bed so I decided that since I was in a game finishing mood I might as well finally finish New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, a game that I bought near launch and quickly lost interest in. I've picked it up briefly a few times over the years and was on the last level of the second to last world, so not too far from defeating Bowser and getting Mario and Peach, those crazy kids, together to see if they could finally make it work.
The level I was on turned out to be pretty infuriating because of all the reasons I don't really like that game (slippery controls and imprecise movement being the chief issues, mixed with some very frustrating level design and enemy placement) and I died a bunch but finally finished it. From there on it was pretty smooth sailing to the end of the game, with a couple levels testing my patience and a few others that were total cakewalks.
I finally defeated Bowser, watched the boring cut scene, and after the credits rolled I was offered my rewards for winning. A little star on my save file to indicate my victory (fine), access to a "secret" island that isn't secret at all but contains a hut where you can view game stats like number of coins collected and number of Goombas stomped. Neat but unexciting. Access to Star Road, which I may mess around with at some point but have no interest in right now. Fair enough.
And...the ability to save at any time on the world map.
This instantly put me in a bad mood. The entire time I was playing New Super Mario Bros U I chaffed at the fact that you couldn't save whenever you wanted. It irritated me greatly. Not just because you can't save scum your stored power up items but more importantly because I generally only wanted to play a few levels at a time, meaning that I was relying on the "interrupt save" feature to make progress. This allows you to save anywhere, but it's not a true save and it gets erased whenever you load it, acting like a temporary bookmark. Beyond preventing save scumming the main problem with this system is that if the Switch or game crashes, or you accidentally close it while it's suspended, you lose your place and get reverted to the last permanent save, which only happens after defeating a boss or miniboss. This happened to me a couple times during my playthrough and I found it enraging. This is a 2019 game (a port of a 2012 title but they could have added saving anywhere) and limiting saves like that in a Mario game of all things just seemed insane to me.
Now I find out that the game actually features the ability to permanently save between levels, they just withhold it until you’ve beaten the game.
Why? Why?
I think I know why. After you beat the game there is still a fair amount to do (collect star coins, finish levels that you bypassed on the world map, Star Road etc…) but you are unlikely to hit one of those arbitrary save points and having to replay a specific level just to save would be extremely irritating. But this is a “you came so close to getting it” situation. If it’s too much of a pain to have to go to a specific level to save in the post game then…why restrict it in the normal game? This is a Mario game, not Dark Souls. It’s not really about grinding the player down and forcing repetition.
Again I think I have the answer, and that is lives.
Like every major 2D Mario game New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe (again, horrible name) has a “lives” mechanic. Every time you die you lose a life and lose them all and you get a game over and have to revert to your last save. We’re all familiar with this mechanic, it’s a holdover from the arcades and the early console days when forced repetition was how games provided “value,” and the vast majority of games have long since abandoned it.
Mario hasn’t, but instead seriously undermines it by handing out lives like they’re discount flyers at a supermarket. In NSMBUD the world map is littered with green toad houses that allow you to play a pretty boring minigame to build lives. There is at least one of these per world and they respawn, so if you are willing to do a circuit of the world map you can easily refill your life stock. I lost significant numbers of lives on some of the harder levels later in the game but as long as I went to these houses I never actually saw my stock go down. There are also, of course, some easier levels you can grind for lives if you want, including the typical Mario life grinding spots where you can use a koopa shell to kill a bunch of enemies resulting in a shower of lives, or other similar techniques. Finally the game gives you special items (if you want them, I never did) if you die a bunch of times, so it is designed to stop you from losing too many lives.
So you have a life mechanic that’s more of a minor irritation than any kind of obstruction forcing a save system that’s legitimately annoying, until the end of the game where the designers shrug and toss out the bad save system, calling it a reward.
And yet either nobody thought to just do away with the whole restriction, or worse someone did think of that and someone else stopped them.
This is in some ways the essence of the worst parts of Nintendo. A needless clinging to old outdated ideas just out of habit and tradition. Super Mario Wonder does improve this with a save anywhere on the overworld map feature and no time limit in levels (that one at least has plusses and minuses) but it still has lives for some reason, even though they are further trivialized.
I’m glad to have finished NSMBUD because I did buy it and now I can officially say it’s my least favorite Mario game, but that “hey you know that thing that’s been annoying you all game? It’s gone now that you’re done with it” moment really put an exclamation point on my dislike for NSMBUD. It’s not a terrible game and I don’t hate it but as a Mario game it just leaves me feeling annoyed and dissatisfied. Fortunately Super Mario Bros. Wonder has me optimistic for the series’ future, but I think I can leave this one in the dust bin. Metaphorically. I bought it digitally so there’s no real way to throw it out and I wouldn’t even if I had the physical. But metaphorically it goes right in the bin.
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