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From The Entertainment Depot - http://www.entdepot.com Handheld
Some of this should ring a bell: eight worlds, each with several stages, a map to guide you through them, mushrooms, flowers, stars, plumbers, goombas, turtles, copious amounts of jumping, breakable blocks, warp pipes and a damsel in distress with an evil king (or prince) who won't quit. The formula is familiar, but New Super Mario Bros. is noteworthy both for what it retains, that “spirit” of the original series, and for what it adds. Mario’s expanded repertoire gets a lot of mileage out of the traditional two-button control scheme without feeling out-of-place in a 2D context. I was afraid that the ground pound and wall kick would simply complicate a classic formula, but they're both integrated well. The wall kick remains sickeningly easy to perform (when falling toward a wall, you only have to press toward it and Mario will scrape against the side, then you just have to press the jump button to kick), a regression which began in Sunshine, but I don't complain when it saves me from an ill-considered leap into oblivion or opens up new coin-hunting possibilities. The ground pound is similarly generative, especially since it allows you to break blocks from above rather than just below. Pro tip: you can actually drain the multiple-coin question boxes with a single stomp – Mario physics! By an almost divine demonstration of good judgment, Nintendo omitted the now-standard tutorials, trusting veterans to know what they’re doing and inexperienced players to be able to find the instruction booklet. Toad never jumps out from behind a bush to suggest touching that mushroom, no signs extol the virtues of avoiding spikes or oddly-colored liquids (purple water is bad, so is magma), and no one instructs you on how to open a door or squash a goomba. It’s an incredibly refreshing change to be able to dive right in; hopefully this will start a trend. The 3D facelift also turned out surprisingly well. Mario and Luigi (you can pick, even in single-player) look great and animate with the usual personality you’d expect from Nintendo’s flagship series. The regular versions of each plumber (pre-mushroom ingestion) look oddly scrunched, but I suppose that is intended. Bowser Jr. and the usual suspects all look equally good, but I do worry about the new cast. A lot of the enemies are either ripped directly from Mario 64 or inspired by the same school of design, and the new faces don't really mesh with the old. Even the characters established in the 3D games look a little ugly and out of place. Remember the giant eel from Mario 64's Jolly Roger Bay or the stealthy clam-like creatures who could disguise themselves as coins in the later snow level? They're both back, but they don't seem to belong. The new critters are equally dubious, though I hate to question the universal appeal of “ghost with boxing gloves” or “snail with horn.” That aside, personality abounds. The sound effects are almost all old school and the 2D backgrounds look pretty good, blending right in with the 3D character models. The recent reveal of Mario Galaxy's development had me hoping for a more diverse set of world themes, maybe even a hidden series of stages on an asteroid belt or something, but I'm content with the usual locales. My only major aesthetic gripe is with the music. None of the new tunes are nearly as memorable as the originals, or those from World for that matter, though most of them are passable. The only exception is the normal music that plays throughout the standard field levels. I don't know how to describe it except to say that it's chipper, and a bit slow. And annoying. At least the beloved Starman jingle has returned, as do the Starmen themselves. Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers are also back, but there’s a distinct lack of variety beyond them: there's no Yoshi, no flying, no Hammer Bros. Suit and definitely no Tanookis or Kuriba's Shoes (and nor should there be, I would argue, as that shoe is special). I'm a fan of the Fire Flower and I happen to think that flying upgrades just encourage players to skip a lot of game, so I'm alright with this set-up. I’m slightly disappointed with the new items though: the much-touted Mega Mushroom is cool, but obviously limited in its application, and so is the incredible shrinking Mini Mushroom, which is useful for finding secrets and taking extra floaty leaps, but not much else. Mini Mario is fun, but the power-up’s scarcity makes it difficult to play through large sections of the game in tiny form. The equally-seldom Blue Shell lets Mario ricochet around like a kicked troopa, but it proves a little awkward to control and ultimately much less effective than fireballs. The power-ups also seem to work within a bizarre hierarchy where the shell will replace the fireballs if collected, but not vice versa. Thus you can’t switch at will, not by using the stored item nor by simply running into the item you want. Of course, you could just run into the nearest sharp object should you want to ditch the shell, as the first hit only forces you to revert to Super Mario and items are a dime-a-dozen this time around. Bowser has always fallen before the might of the fireball, but retaining that kind of power through the end of World 8 used to be much trickier. Now there simply aren't enough enemies between one mushroom and the next, and the items are practically thrown at you before and after even the most remotely difficult sections. The Fire Flower is not a boring power-up, but it losses its edge when it's as common as coins. Additionally, most of the traditionally troublesome obstacles are no longer very intimidating: the bottomless pits aren't very wide, spikes don't kill in one hit and the wall kick can bail you out of a lot of tight spots. Oddly enough, despite their short length, the levels still have a midway point so that you aren't sent back to the beginning when you die. My first time through the game was expectedly brief and unchallenging. Each level seems based around a particular gimmick, with exceptions. What used to be sections of a level in World or Mario 3 are now whole stages. Ludwig’s and Iggy’s castles in World, for example, both had fence-climbing elements followed with or preceded by something else, like a forced scrolling section. In New Super Mario Bros. you’ll run into a castle that’s nothing but a series of fences (although perhaps made more dramatic by rising lava). The same goes for the floating multi-block platform from World that moves through the air like a snake or the new giant wiggler stage: fairly short levels reliant upon one particular dynamic. They're still entertaining, but they don’t seem as fleshed-out as they could be, and there is a noticeable lack of straightforward open field levels. These are the tried-and-true, forgettable-but-enjoyable stages that would blend the more gimmicky ones together, if they were there. The level devices themselves tend to be variations on familiar themes. Part of what made Mario 3 so endearing was the simple joy of discovering new things: flight, airships, those giant-sized koopas in World 4, the militarized stages of World 8, the Hammer Bros. Suit and on and on. That feeling is missing here, as almost everything is homage to previous games in the series (it’s basically We Love Super Mario Bros.). The difference in level design is probably the most significant distinction between this game and the classics. Barring a few of the later lava-themed stages, I mostly repeat levels to unlock secrets or collect star coins, whereas I'm compelled to replay the NES games just for the sake of playing them. That may change over time, especially as my proficiency with Mini Mario improves, but for now the emphasis is on collection and exploration; fortunately the three star coins hidden in each level are more than just filler. Not every stage has three interesting nooks, but some coins are deviously out-of-reach. One castle stage has a moving platform shaped like an upside-down “U”: Mario can't get on top of it because it's too high, but he can wall kick between the two prongs while it carries him to his destination. Other puzzles call for expert bob-omb placement or ace shellsmanship. Grabbing every coin and finding every alternate exit (these lead to new stages) calls for a lot of neat tricks and good old perseverance, as is the case when you discover an obscured warp pipe that requires Mini Mario and no Mini Mushroom is in sight. There’s no one set method for a lot of the coins: you can attempt the improbable jump, bank an aimed shell, or get frustrated and procure a Mega Mushroom from the nearest Toad House. Collecting the star coins makes the game feel as difficult as it should be, though it does require you to repeat the few stand-out dull levels (many of the water stages proved less than engaging, at least for me). The coins themselves aren’t worth much – they grant access to Toad Houses with items, a few touch screen wallpapers and a disappointing 1-Up mini-game – but hunting them down is its own reward. Those differences notwithstanding, the bulk of the game is simply Mario. The inertia's been tweaked and it seems to take our hero a few extra milliseconds to hit his stride (there's a few more steps of transition between walking and running) but you get used to it. I hate to give those changes the short shrift because they’re significant, but they’re also difficult to precisely articulate. At least on whole, the feeling is “right” for Mario, and familiar enough. As a bonus, the multiplayer modes are solid. There are a number of competitive, stylus-based mini-games, some clever and addictive and some poorly conceived, along with a new mode: Mario vs. Luigi. It’s not quite the journeyman cooperative traipse through the whole game early footage had people desperately hoping it would be, rather it’s an impressive, if somewhat limited, extension of the old Mario Bros. arcade game. Players pick a brother and then one of five stages to compete in and the object is to collect a set amount of “big stars” before your opponent through whatever means possible. The stars pop up randomly and their positions are revealed on a progress bar on the bottom screen. The stages are a few screens long, resemble regular levels in appearance and layout, and loop so that if you run to the right end of the stage you’ll emerge on the left. To steal stars, you can attack your opponent directly: fireballs, squashing and shell attacks are all fair game. Items can be found in the environment by killing enemies or breaking blocks, or summoned at random above your character’s head by collecting eight of the many coins spread across each map. The Mini Mushroom is almost a booby prize, but no one is safe from the Starman or the Mega Mushroom. Most matches revolve around racing to the nearest star while attempting to steal whatever the other guy has. It’s fun and frantic, though more of an entertaining diversion than anything else. There should have been a few more levels to cover themes like lava or mushroom platforms, but what is there works very well and shows potential for a New Mario Bros., or at least room for expansion should the mode be retooled and repackaged with the next handheld release.
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I have, since about the release of Mario 64, viewed King Koopa with a certain degree of sympathy.