Review:
New Super Mario Bros Wii

Now here’s something very interesting. After a few years of pandering to families and casual gamers, at the expense of the ‘hardcore’ Nintendo fanbase, it seems like a few prayers have finally been answered. But, in traditional Nintendo style, they’re going to go about it their own way – by giving its audience both a ‘hardcore’ title and a family-friendly one at the same time.

New Super Mario Bros Wii is pretty much the same as the DS version that was released a couple of years ago (itself a spangly new update of the SNES masterpiece Super Mario World), and returning gamers will lap it up. Everything is here that you’d expect – multiple routes through each course are laced delicately through the traditionally themed worlds, like grass, desert, ice, swamp, water, etc, with bundles of hidden exits in a few worlds that will blast you on to later worlds or uncover deviously hidden secrets. You even control it by turning the Wii Remote on its side like a NES pad.

Play the game solo and it becomes immediately obvious that it’s actually a lot easier than the DS version. 1-Ups are more plentiful and easier to seek out, the levels are shorter and more focussed and the hidden secrets aren’t that difficult to snare. Sometimes you’ll see something strange on a level – a bit of rock with an indent, a patch of grass all on its own, a single coin floating high above you – and you’ll just know there’s something hidden there – an exit or secret Mario Coin. This is a game that rewards the slow tortoise and the observant eye.

There have been a fair few changes to the formula since the DS, though, and all of them for the better. The ridiculously hard to control Shell Mario power up has been given the boot, replaced with the far more satisfying (and utterly adorable) Penguin Mario, who shoots ice that freezes enemies and slides along on his belly. Also joining the established power up crew are the Ice Flower (like Penguin Mario but without the sliding belly) and the Helicopter Mushroom. The latter is the more interesting power up, allowing Mario to ascend to hidden heights by simply shaking the remote, seeing the plumber bombard the Goombas and Koopas from above.