Month of Mario: New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)

This may sound a little odd, but I do not believe Nintendo was trying to make an excellent game when designing New Super Mario Bros. Wii. They were definitely trying to make something entertaining, but it also had a far greater purpose thanks to the monumental success of the Wii. With millions of people who had barely touched video games suddenly interested in the system, it’s easy to believe Nintendo wanted to introduce them to Mario’s 2D platforming adventures with something safe or at least rope back in those nostalgic adults who had previously put video games aside. It’s even possible the four player simultaneous multiplayer was part of making this game’s audience even broader, a whole family able to play together be they young or old, inexperienced or a long time Nintendo fan. To cast this net as wide as possible, the game couldn’t take the kind of big swings that make games excellent nor could it really try to advance the platforming formula much. Rather than pushing the envelope then, New Super Mario Bros. Wii settled snugly into it, and considering the game got over 30 million sales, it’s hard to say they were wrong with their approach of making the game good for most anyone to play over being an exceptional advancement over previous Mario adventures.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii’s platforming adventure begins with a short scene establishing the fairly familiar Mushroom Kingdom crisis of the princess getting kidnapped. On Princess Peach’s birthday, Mario, his brother Luigi, and two nameless mushroom-headed Toads are helping the Princess sort through her gifts, but a particularly large cake looks rather unusual. Hiding within is the turtle prince Bowser Jr. and his seven Koopaling lieutenants who quickly slam the giant cake down over top the princess and whisk her away to the prince’s airship. From there, the brothers and two Toads travel across the land trying to catch up, although notably this setup doesn’t make mention of what Bowser himself is up to, it seeming almost like Bowser Jr. is the one orchestrating the plan this time around. Regardless, it’ll be the Koopalings and Bowser Jr. you fight frequently across this journey across 8 main worlds, each one featuring a different theme for your platforming antics. While we view these world themes as a bit generic in retrospect, a desert, ice world, water world, and lava world being common concepts, it might be more because New Super Mario Bros. Wii helped kick off the Mario brand sanding itself down into simple and understandable archetypes to keep courting a wider ranger of players, and areas like the cloud world at least don’t feel like they’re basic ideas for diversifying your biomes.

The four playable characters in New Super Mario Bros. Wii all control in the same way and are functionally identical, which makes it easier for player 1 to accept they’ll be locked into Mario regardless of the player count. Mostly, the four heroes only really have their jumps to rely on, but the jumps can be extended with a little mid-air twirl, you can slam down for a ground pound after them, and there are other special uses like jumping off walls for extra height or doing three consecutive jumps for one last larger one. Depending on the level though, hitting question mark blocks can release special power-ups, the basic Mushroom just letting you take an additional hit before dying while the others are far more useful. Fire Flowers and Ice Flowers give you a new attack, a fireball able to quickly take out enemies while a lobbed ice ball will instead freeze them, letting you stand atop them or even throw them. The Penguin Suit is like an upgraded Ice Flower though, it giving you more speed when swimming and allowing you to slide on your belly to go at faster speeds. A Mini Mushroom exists mostly to get to special areas, but the most impactful power-up has to be the Propeller Mushroom. Grab this, and now your character’s little midair spin is upgraded to send them soaring up into the air. A perfect tool for people coming to grips with the run and jump play of a Mario game, it makes getting up and over danger much easier and helps you quickly slip out of a pit if you react in time. It’s hard to fault the featured power-ups besides the rather weak Mini Mushroom being a less than thrilling key to secret areas, but the Propeller Mushroom aids you in navigating the obstacle course design of the worlds so much more than the others. You do lose power-ups when taking damage or if you fail a level, but you can also earn power-ups through minigames that you can activate, the Propeller Mushroom a touch rare to prevent you from flying over most of the game’s challenges.

You can also ride the friendly dinosaur Yoshi in a few levels, although since it’s only six of the over seventy on offer, it feels more like a level’s gimmick at times rather than a power-up despite him adding a double jump and a tongue for eating enemies briefly to your repertoire. Across the game’s stages New Super Mario Bros. Wii does toy with a range of concepts to try and impede you, the player not just facing countless Goombas and Koopas. How effective these stage ideas can be though certainly varies. Most levels gradually easy you into the stage’s concept, but this can also limit how far the new design can be taken. One level features creatures called Bramballs who block your progress with their long thorny legs, but by the time the level starts using them to more deviously block platforms, you’re near the end. Some levels it can be a bit hard to identify what the unifying theme can be, but there is usually at least some enemy introduced or some trick to the stage’s layout and while not all stand out, they do at least usually provide an entertaining enough obstacle course to clear. Tower levels will often have you climbing upward, some stages have you riding moving platforms or even creatures as you avoid danger, but one thing that does become clear is many levels are quite spacious. This is meant to help handle the possible chaos of having four players running around in the same space and can lead to some levels feeling like they’re not trying to bar your progress as much as others, the game simply needing to accommodate the fact that not everyone can cram into too small of a space.

It should be noted there are definitely levels in New Super Mario Bros. Wii that show the design team still has a creative spark. The ghost houses are often playfully mischievous, with false doors, pillars that rise or fall depending on if anything stands on them, harmless background objects suddenly spring to life, and an elevator that moves at an inconsistent speed to try and smash you into the Boos that are floating closer and closer as you wait to escape. Motion controls get involved a fair bit, the player needing to tip or move platforms they’re standing on by moving their controller to match its desired orientation, and some levels like a raft where you’re trying to keep enemies from sinking it as they fall aboard definitely stand out a great deal. While not every stage is memorable, they are distinct enough from each other that repetition won’t set in. Even their layout feels spaced rather smartly, levels reaching a reasonable wrap up point even if they would have been more compelling if they had kept evolving. There is a talented team at work here, and while some ideas like the unexpected return of rock ledges you sidle on from New Super Mario Bros. lead to a level that is mostly slow rather than interestingly unique, there is one way New Super Mario Bros. Wii tries to ensure more skilled players will still find a challenge no matter the stage.

3 Star Coins are hidden in every normal level of the game, almost all of them requiring a little work to grab. Some are just hidden behind false walls meaning you need to keep a close eye on things that seem out of place, but others will require you to move quickly or throw yourself into a bit of optional danger to grab the coin. These are required to unlock the game’s set of secret levels that feature some much harder and more creative levels, the reward for your efforts feeling like an appropriate motivator and one that draws more out of each stage no matter how basic its gimmick might be. Poking around for these extras makes you drink in the level design more, and sometimes New Super Mario Bros. Wii does get a little inventive to make navigating the world map feel a touch more involved like having hidden level exits or something like the stage you play through twice but on the first visit it lacks many helpful platform blocks to stand on. Other times you might be made to fight a short battle with some enemies and the game puts hidden Toads in some levels from time to time, but the rewards for these are small so they’re not quite the substantial extras that Star Coins are. Not only do those lead to some of the game’s best stages, they also enrich every level by making them more than a sprint to the goal.

Boss battles in New Super Mario Bros. Wii are an interesting bunch though, because while they are all mostly against Koopalings or Bowser Jr., they range from very straightforward to ones that try to mix up the format a bit. Your first encounter with a Koopaling will play out similar no matter which one it is, the player and the boss locked in a small room where you need to jump on their head three times but avoid them when they’re in their spiked shell. Some like Lemmy Koopa or Wendy O. Koopa shift things up by firing balls or rings respectively, but this first encounter is usually pretty basic. The rematch at a world’s end can be a bit more special, Iggy Koopa for example riding around in a cart pulled by the enormous fanged Chain Chomp who perhaps rightfully should be the one considered the boss. The rematches can sometimes be hampered a touch by the fact you still just need to jump on your target three times to win and you can sometimes do it quickly if you’re in a good position, but these and Bowser Jr.’s fights at least feel like they’re playing with new formats a bit. The final boss though presents an incredible concept that makes great use of the platforming skills you developed over the journey, it beating out pretty much any other 2D Mario final boss before it because it implemented the game’s normal play into a challenging climactic boss battle.

While the main adventure is the focus of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the multiplayer can extend beyond just working together to take down Bowser Jr. and save the princess. Free-For-All lets you play through levels as you please without worrying about losing lives, and when a level is beaten, the points players earned across the stage are totaled up to pick a winner. Coin Battle instead makes it into a competition to grab the most coins in a stage, even featuring a set of five unique levels that remix elements from those found in the main game. In the normal adventure it can already feel a bit competitive mostly because you’ll often be bumping into each other already, it easy to pick up and throw a fellow player to their doom for a lark. At the same time you can work together by giving each other extra height with a throw or even press a button to enter a bubble to try and catch up in case someone is getting too far ahead. Thankfully the game has the good sense to make any block that spits out power-ups spit out one for each player, although also they’re not all going to be the same so you still might scramble to get the best one and leave one player feeling a touch bitter. A little more equality could make things go more smoothly, but at the same time, there can be fun in messing with each other in the same way cooperation can be entertaining, and it’s nice no greater compromises were made to incorporate the four player action since it might have made it less fun to play with friends if things were too limited.

THE VERDICT: New Super Mario Bros. Wii is just plain good, and that’s all it feels like it was trying to be. The levels are varied even if their individual concepts don’t feel overly impactful at times, the Star Coins give players looking for something a little tougher an extra goal to shoot for, and the stages hold up in multiplayer well with power-ups like the Penguin Suit and Propeller Mushroom being fun to use and good for novices. It is unambitious overall but it still whips up an incredible final boss and peppers bits of creativity throughout, but it elected to play it safe to appeal to as many players as possible, and that means most every level gets a passing grade, just not the kind that would usually put a 2D Mario platformer at the head of its class.

And so, I give New Super Mario Bros. Wii for Nintendo Wii…

A GOOD rating. New Super Mario Bros. Wii sanded away most things that would make it inaccessible to a large audience, and that includes the parts that could have come up as flaws. It’s a game where most everything you can point at is individually good, so it ends up a total package that is hard to complain about beyond saying it could have been so much more. It can be a tad easy but then it put in the Star Coins to make up for that, even unexceptional levels sometimes making you have to sit up and work to get those bonus collectibles. A power up like the Propeller Mushroom is a godsend for newbies, but levels do still work to force some navigation outside of flight so it doesn’t break open stage design too much. Bosses can be basic at times, but others whip out some new trick that again, doesn’t make things much harder, but does engage the player with something different. Rarely an idea doesn’t muster up much of interest like the rock ledges or a weak wind level, but others slip in naturally enough or briefly provide a unique experience that does make up for it. It’s a shame how much of it blends together because in isolation some of its ideas could be parts of an exceptional Mario game. You’ll get things like the final boss fight that really deserve to be a capstone to a more ambitious adventure, but New Super Mario Bros. Wii still likes to remind the player that running and jumping over baddies and obstacles can still be fun even when it’s not trotting out anything too wild to shake up that formula.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is 2D platforming refined, but not into a diamond so much as a smooth stone. It’s expertly crafted sure, but it’s not aiming high enough with what it’s trying to accomplish, leaving you with a game where it feels odd to complain because many games wish they could be as good as New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It’s just a matter of knowing what Mario has been, could be, and now years later, what we have seen it become. New Super Mario Bros. Wii also still has a purpose though, it feeling like a very enjoyable baseline Mario experience and appropriately a good first outing with the plumber. It doesn’t feel old and a bit basic like the original Super Mario Bros. might, it doesn’t do anything too strange like Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It’s an adventure with Mario, a comforting quality experience that knows how to lay out just enough danger to keep you involved but it doesn’t aim to scare anyone off. Like a Platonic ideal of a Super Mario Bros. game but still with some nice small touches, you won’t go wrong if you play New Super Mario Bros. Wii because it has been carefully crafted to be just plain good.