Nintendo has gone back to its roots with New Super Mario Bros Wii but is this a trip down memory lane that’s worth taking or will it leave you hankering for more modern thrills? Read our full New Super Mario Bros Wii review to find out.
If you’re a gamer with a long and proud heritage then chances are you’ll vividly remember the first time you jumped on a goomba’s bonce or collected your first Power-Up mushroom. Nintendo’s Super Mario series is a certified video gaming legend and has entertained and enthralled millions of fans the world over.
Following on from the astonishingly successful DS outing New Super Mario Bros, New Super Mario Bros Wii is all about taking the tired-and-tested gameplay found in the 8-bit and 16-bit entries of Nintendo’s million-selling franchise and dressing it up in a more modern visual package.
The world that New Super Mario Bros Wii inhabits will therefore be instantly familiar to hardcore retro addicts, with many of the same conventions – such as mushrooms which make you grow, flowers which imbue fire-throwing abilities and wacky costumes that allow you to fly – all being present and correct.
Read our Wii Sports Resort review now
However, Nintendo has multiplied the fun factor of New Super Mario Bros Wii by including a multiplayer mode which sees four different characters tackling a level simultaneously. Because players can both help and hinder each other during play, gaming sessions invariably end up being more amusing than a 24-hour marathon of Harry Hill’s TV Burp; just as was the case with the evergreen Wii Sports, Nintendo’s paragon of social gaming more than proves its worth here.
Mean-spirited pessimists may point out that despite the welcome inclusion of the manic multiplayer mode, New Super Mario Bros Wii represents precious little in the way of innovation and the tiresome “waggle” controls are just as ineffective here as they are in practically every other Wii title that chooses to feature them. Thankfully, Nintendo’s title is so fantastically enjoyable it’s easy to disregard these concerns.
The best way to describe New Super Mario Bros Wii is something of a “Best of” compilation that skilfully cherry-picks the best elements of the entire Mario lineage and wraps them all up in a delicious multiplayer-themed package. It may not feature guns, cars or girls, but Nintendo’s latest platform classic has that signature gameplay that has made Mario’s outings so essential in the past. If you own a Wii then you need to have this game in your life – it really is that simple.
