New Super Mario Bros. Review

I often herald Super Mario All-Stars as my absolute favorite game ever made. Granted, Mario All-Stars is just a compilation of all previous Super Mario games, but that little SNES cartridge encapsulates the peak of creativity and fun. No video game before or since even comes close. Not even Mario’s jump into 3D has found that same level of joy. So New Super Mario Bros. is actually a very important release. It marks Mario’s first original 2D adventure since Super Mario World ten years ago. That’s a long time without a Mario…

On the DS, our plumber friend looks much different than he did before. All previous Mario games were drawn in sprites. While most of the backgrounds, bricks, and pipes retain the same look, Mario and friends have turned into full 3D models. As such, there is a certain amount of charm which is lost, but this new rendering allows Mario to be more expressive and animated. Don’t be fooled by the screenshots, either. This game looks really slick in motion. Besides, halfway through the game, the new 3D becomes very comfortable.

The DS hardware also lends to interesting uses of old 2D gameplay by being able to easily bend and warp parts of the level in real-time. The developers really got a kick out of messing around with the mushroom platforms, making them expand, shrink, tilt, and rotate in ways sprites wouldn’t have been able to pull off nearly as well. However, the DS’s second screen isn’t put to much use. It features a line and a picture of Mario’s head to show where the player is in any given level. It may seem like a nice asset to gauge how close you are to the exit, but I always enjoyed not knowing how much of the level was left.

Alongside the graphics, Mario’s aural quality also received a makeover. The composer of every prior Mario game, Koji Kondo, isn’t credited for scoring New Super Mario Bros. The game still features a lot of recognizable tunes from past Mario games, but there’s plenty of new music… most of which isn’t very exciting. You won’t find anything comparable to those darn catchy melodies from Super Mario Bros. 3, but the new overworld theme definitely fits the Mario universe perfectly. Mario himself still has his voice, too, but it isn’t overused and overkilled like it was in the Super Mario Advance games. The inclusion of just about every classic Mario sound effect is also appreciated.

And that’s what New Super Mario Bros. is all about, really: nostalgia. Fans of the Mario games will feel right at home as soon as World 1-1 starts up. Levels are back in linear form with all the mushrooms, fire flowers, goombas, koopas, coin blocks, and underground pipes you remember so well. There’s even a flagpole at the end of each level! It’s instantly recognizable how to play, and it’s a lot of fun to see Mario running through familiar territory again. But don’t think this is just a prettied-up version of an older Mario game. This is New Super Mario. No level feels like a retread, although a lot of elements from previous games make it in here, like the climbable cages and movable trampolines from Super Mario World.

Unfortunately, New Super Mario Bros. tries to be too much like Super Mario Bros. 1. That’s not necessarily bad, but it also means the power-ups from Mario 3 and World are nowhere to be seen. No Yoshi. No feather cape. No raccoon suit. The game is slimmed down to the very basics: mushrooms and fire flowers. It’s crazy how much fun you can have with just those available to you. I was just really hoping for something more. But New Super Mario Bros. does introduce a few new tricks of its own. Mario now has access to a mega mushroom and a mini mushroom, power-ups that make Mario super big or super small, respectively. The mini mushroom comes in handy a lot as a way to uncover secret tunnels and pipes normal Mario can’t fit through. While secrets don’t seem as plentiful as they did in Super Mario Bros. 3 (what with all those whistles and bouncy music notes), there are still a lot of surprises.