With all the recent Mario sports titles being spewed out by Nintendo, it’s hard to remember a time when Mario was just a mere plumber stomping on mushrooms to save the princess. New Super Mario Brothers brings us back to a better, happier time, before Mario was hitting more home runs than stomping goombas. New Super Mario Brothers takes the 2d platformer where it has never been before: the 3rd dimension; to a degree anyway. The game features some of the best Mario platforming of all time, a very pleasing visual combination of 2d and 3d, and more nostalgia than a Namco compilation game.
Super Mario World is regarded by some as one of the best games ever made because of some superb level design and the easy to get into gameplay. New Super Mario Brothers takes the wonderful gameplay of Super Mario World, stuffs it choc full of new content, and gives a truly remarkable game in the process. The gameplay is, at its core, the same as it was. Mario romps around different-themed worlds stomping on mushrooms, pulling flags down from castles, and eating flashy flowers so that allow you to spit fireballs. Mario still saves the princess and he still has the same-style boss battle at the end of every single castle and just like in Super Mario World, the level design is truly masterful. While it won’t win any points for difficulty, New Super Mario Brothers takes many ideas from the original games and mixes them up to create a familiar experience with many new elements. One level might have you run through a giant maze of piranha plant infested pipes and the next you’ll be dodging Lakitu and his spiny shells. While in yet another you’ll simply plow through wave after wave of koopas and floating brick boxes. It’s all so, so familiar.
So what can warrant declaring this game the best platformer in a decade? Nintendo took familiar Super Mario 64 mechanics as well as new ones and crammed them into the game. You can triple-jump, wall-kick, and ground pound to your hearts content now, and it will all be required to complete the 8 worlds. There is a new blue koopa shell suit that allows you to turn into a shell and spin, rather than run, across the levels. There is a new mushroom that supersizes Mario so he can plow through the levels, while another miniaturizes him so gravity somehow affects him less and lets him run on water and fit in tiny pipes. The worlds will seem familiar but on closer inspection there are tons of new elements. Mario can spring off of new jumping pads, bounce on mushrooms, swing from ropes, and balance on falling rocks and rolling logs. A new switch even allows things completely impossible before like changing the terrain of the level or flipping the entire level upside-down!
As always there are secret exits to certain levels that unlock new paths on the world map. There are 8 worlds, but it is easy to miss a world or 2 before beating the game, as there are so many different paths through the worlds. In each level there are three coins located in areas that are challenging to find or reach, and these coins can be spent to unlock new paths on the world map. The map is also filled with many of the returning baddies like the Hammer Brothers and includes warp pipes and cannons. If you use the warp pipes or the “easy” paths, it’s easy to breeze through New Super Mario Brothers in a day, but doing this will make you skip over most of the great content. Luckily, it’s a simple stylus tap to teleport between worlds and you can revisit any previous level quickly, granted you remember the location, since the levels aren’t named. All of the changes combined with the near perfection of cherry-picked elements from older games, leaves New Super Mario Brothers with the best of the best elements of platforming. There could not be a more perfect combination of mechanics and design.
