Nerd Mentality

New Super Mario Bros.

Posted July 22nd 2006 by J Edison Thomas.

Three weeks ago I was surprised to find myself in a long line in the middle of Nintendo's E3 display (not far from the devastatingly long line to play the Wii) to play the newest Mario and Luigi adventure on a beckoning DS Lite. New Super Mario Bros.: the game would be released to the American public within a week, yet the line to play the Mario Brothers' latest excursion into the Mushroom Kingdom dwarfed all others – Kirby, Yoshi, Star Fox, Castlevania, other "big name" titles. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why.

Now yes, it is a Super Mario Bros. game, the first of its kind in well over ten years. I get that. What I don't get is how this simple premise, the pedigree of the game's title alone and the inherent power of suggestion in such a title, could be the reason for continued interest. I mean, they even named the game NEW Super Mario Bros. seemingly to send gamers into a near-involuntary nostalgia-induced clamor: "Oh man, Mario Bros. is BACK!!" So far, Nintendo seems to have hit their mark pretty accurately – with gamers, at least. As for the game itself, not so much.

It's not that the game isn't fun. It is fun. Kind of. For a little while.

This is where I'll center this review: the essence of what is "fun", as its clear the game's creators centered their development around this very question. How do you make a game that captures the fun of the original cosmically successful series without either alienating or boring fans, all while making a grab at new fans? Is it even possible for a developer to just pick up where they left off and take the next step in an old franchise without stumbling? Well let's just look at how Nintendo tried to pull it off, and how well they did.

Now, the meat-and-potatoes of the game aren't a problem. If you're wondering if New Mario "stacks up" to its predecessors in terms of control or gameplay, don't worry. It plays almost exactly like the first three Super Mario Bros. games. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they used the engine from the original NES classic and tweaked it heavily, which provides a comfortable if not entirely inspiring control scheme.

In many ways Nintendo's aim was to "go back to Mario's roots" by modeling the game after the original Super Mario Bros.. Ignoring Mario World almost entirely, the game looks and plays like a hypothetical scenario of plugging Super Mario 64's Mario into the original Mushroom Kingdom. While graphically the game possesses the 3D look of an N64 game, in art direction and setting it borrows most heavily from the early installments in franchise. To add to this, the game's play mechanics are largely based on the idea that maybe it'd be more fun to pretend Nintendo didn't once offer gamers such virtual decadence as a Tanooki Suit or a flying Blue Yoshi, or even the basic convenience of flight, which by now is just about a Mario staple.

Instead, Mario fights his way through hordes of age-old enemies such as Koopas, Goombas, and Hammer Bros. (and not much else) almost exclusively with the aid of Mushrooms and Fire Flowers. Sure, there are a few new goodies to be had, but nothing that breathes much new life into the series. The Blue Shell is probably the most clever addition to Mario's arsenal and feels the most natural, while providing the most use out of any other item other than the Fire Flower itself; it's a good-time outfit whether you're bowling through enemies on land or making use of heightened maneuverability in water. But all that's left is the Mini Mushroom, which serves really no purpose other than adding challenge for gamers who think they're hot stuff (although the item is milked in that it's necessary to be small to access certain parts of the game, even entire worlds, but I'll get to that later) and the Mega Mushroom, an item seemingly born out of a "what if" scenario that, in my opinion, didn't ever need to be realized. It's fun the first two times you grow large enough to smash everything in your way, but afterwards it's pretty forgettable, even without taking into account how in many situations it can either get Mario stuck or just fails to work. Overall, the Fire Flower is somehow the best item to get by far, and it's also the only item beside the Mushroom that appears with any determinable frequency; through most of the game I just as well forgot that there were other power-ups to use. You can, of course, stock up (which may be the wrong word to describe this action, as you can only really carry one item with you) on items at any of the dozen or so Mushroom Houses that are scattered about each world.

The Mushroom Houses present to me another of the numerous facsimiles of past Mario games' concepts that don't do very well when smashed into this one. As I said before, you can only carry one auxiliary item with you at one time – much like the single extra item one can carry in Mario World and working exactly as well – which means you should go visit one of these houses every time you need a new item rather than simply passing them as you journey onward and adding whatever items they hold to your stockpile. Most of these houses charge an admission fee of 5 Star Coins to access, as do the few snaking pathways for Mario to take in each map. I rarely visited the Mushroom Houses, especially after visiting a special Mushroom House that allowed me to purchase game content (which I consider a fairly unimaginative vehicle for supplying "extras" to gamers, which goes double for the snaking pathways) and finding myself the proud owner of a new goddamn wallpaper for the bottom screen. I think it cost something like 20 Star Coins. The main reason I so rarely visited the Mushroom Houses, however, was simply that I was never in a dire need for items to get me through the levels.

Suffice to say, the game is both short and simple. I beat it without catching myself in a single Game Over, and this isn't because I'm just that good. I died plenty of times, most often out of carelessness, but it was all I could do to recklessly expend the plethora of 1-up Mushrooms the game so generously lauded upon me. Really, I dare you to play through the game without getting an extra life, even disqualifying coin-based 1-ups. And while the game has a modest set of challenging circumstances (though not even one level that is thoroughly difficult) more often than not I had the impression that the game design was taking mercy on me. In a castle, for instance, I'd be met with sliding stone tablets that moved to and fro, often threatening to slam Mario into a wall of spikes, and while the task always looked daunting at first, a second glance would reveal that the entire machine worked so conveniently that there were nearly no instances where I could only avoid death through steel-trap reflexes or precise platforming; all that was needed was patience to slowly and surely guide Mario along his way. There's just something unsatisfying about a game like this. The difficulty curve is gradual, and before it really peaks, the game is already done.

See, rather than offering bonus worlds that could be accessed with some sort of advanced maneuvering, New Mario simply schucks two worlds off the eight-world-standard and makes them entirely optional. So it only takes running through six levels to reach the ending, at which point you can go back and play through the other worlds, just because. It's a startling shift in philosophy: why offer MORE content when we can simply withhold a quarter of the game until they jump through special hoops? Maybe they never realized that if gamers were forced into playing these levels through the "natural order of things" they'd get nearly exactly the same amount of replay out of it as they would by playing the worlds after beating the game? The two worlds in question can be accessed by beating the bosses as Mini Mario and then taking a fork in Mario's road, which is exactly what I did after beating the game and wondering why the hell it was so short.

The answer to my question, I believe, is the "multiplayer unbalancing syndrome": when a game has a wealth of effort poured into its multiplayer mode – and even more so if this is a major selling point of the game – the main adventure suffers the minimal effort treatment, as if single-player mode is grudgingly coded simply as a conveyance for the multiplayer experience. Luckily, the multiplayer makes for a good time, and if I were to recommend this game to anyone it would be primarily for the purpose of Mario vs. Luigi mania. While I'll probably always favor the original Mario Bros. for plumber-on-plumber action, New Mario's multiplayer is a blast if you have a willing opponent, either in the race to the finish or the even more frenzied Star battles. A little more work on the level designs would work wonders, but as it is the multiplayer is solid and definitely worth your while.

Of course, if you're sans-friends (or if those friends are sans-DS, which really means they're no friends at all) then you'll probably wonder what all the hubbub is about. Nearly all of the worthwhile gameplay in New Mario was borrowed from its predecessors, and it was usually done better in those earlier chapters. Some of the borrowed features – such as the Mario 64-inspired wall kicks and butt stomps – were a blessing, but unfortunately most of the game doesn't have the same focus of taking these concepts to the next level. The presentation doesn't exactly smack of pride in craftsmanship, either, right down to the startlingly forgetful maps (grass land, desert land, grass land part deux) which call to mind the brilliance of Mario World's near-overworld of a map or even the simple ambition of Super Mario Bros. 3's The Sky. I kind of wondered why they even bothered to use a map, as simply advancing Mario from one level to the next would have worked just as well while avoiding what seemed to the game creators to be a terrific chore of designing world maps. Then there are the 43 different encounters with Bowser Jr. that only result in him picking himself up post-defeat and running away for another incredibly similar battle. It's these little things that give the game a rehash feeling to it, though it does draw into sharper focus why it's named NEW Super Mario Bros. rather than Super Mario Bros. 4: An All New Standalone Adventure. Basically, if this game had been made over a decade ago, or, even better, before all the games it borrows from without improving upon, then it would have been something. But here in the now in 2006, it's outdated. By its own predecessors.

Slight Pulse - A Frankenstein monster of long-buried concepts with barely enough new life pumped through the veins to help it limp to an all-too-soon finale.

I could reiterate the problems with the game that I've already mentioned, repackaging the same ideas with new words and all (which would actually be pretty appropriate for a New Super Mario Bros. review), but what it really comes down to is this: have you played a Super Mario platformer in the past five years? If you're even remotely familiar you probably won't really find very much here. The game is meant for people who are new to Mario games (these people exist, maybe) to get them into the series and for people who forgot about Mario a decade ago who are thirsty for some ready-made nostalgia, with just enough new fun to be had to entice actual gamers but not enough to make them happy. Just like every lukewarm game that Nintendo has put out in the past five years, or will put out in the next five. The multiplayer should put a smile on your face if you have DS-toting friends and don't own any better multiplayer games, and if you never played Super Mario 64 DS then the mini-games will be yet another treat.

So that's the word: if you're unaccustomed to Mario, have a friend with a DS for multiplayer, and don't own Super Mario 64 DS, you're in for a good time. If not, not.

Posted in: Reviews

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