Super Mario Bros. Wonder is Almost Peak

gustavo

MILD SPOILERS, PLEASE BE ADVISED!

Super Mario Bros. started out as a 2D platformer that paved the way for everything game related. And so, a great game series was born. From reskinning other games to making fun and creative levels that are held in the highest regards, Mario was doing astoundingly great. This all changed when the first 3D console for Nintendo was released—The Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64 paved another way for 3D games, some being Mario related. 2D Mario had been discarded of… until New Super Mario Bros. on the DS reintroduced Mario in 2 dimensions. 2D was brought back into Mario mainstream and more New Super Mario games were released. However, the similarities shared between them all ended it off with the final New Super Mario game in 2013. From here, no new 2D Mario games were being released (Mario Maker doesn’t count). Fortunately, some Nintendo employees during the pandemic were doing some tinkering around with 2D Mario and then development started on Super Mario Bros. Wonder. There was no deadline and creativity shone. 3 years of development later, Super Mario Bros. Wonder was revealed to the world and it’s pretty good.

In previous 2D Mario games, everything was very linear with no crazy gimmicks. Of course, move sets and things of that nature were developed, but nothing but plain old Mario making his way through courses. This was ultimately what ended the New Soup series. Mario Wonder, however, finally breaks away from these overdone premises with the newest and best feature— the wonder flower. With the wonder flower, the whole level gets a magical new feature that spices stuff up. Because of this, I can probably name every level off the top of my head. Everything is so fun and memorable. I would say that this is the best 2D Mario game of all time, and a lot of people would agree. However, it has some major flaws that aren't enough for other players renounce the older games. Even after this, get Mario Wonder because it is INCREDIBLE, but see both sides before playing.

I’m going to start off with the first red flag which everybody knows—the bosses are really bad. Every fight but the final is with Bowser Jr. and utilizes the wonder effects really poorly. To put more salt on the wound, Bowser Jr. is the only proper boss before the end game! Most of the fights are way too easy and/or not engaging. And if you’re glad to even have boss battles, remember that there are 6 normal worlds and 4 Bowser Jr. fights >:(. The two worlds without Bowser Jr. were my most anticipated ones too, a jungle-like world with some really pretty visuals called Shining Falls and a creepy, mystical mushroom world called Fungi Mines. Both of these worlds were extremely lackluster in the amount of levels and had no bosses! They also both followed the pattern of having a wonder effect where you transform into an enemy you would see in the levels for pretty much half of the levels there. Don’t get me wrong, the levels that are good are REALLY good, but it just feels pitiful compared to the other worlds which have all been seen in past Mario games.

Now when Takashi Tezuka, the director of Mario Wonder, was interviewed, he said that he couldn’t beat some of the harder levels in Mario Wonder. This got everybody’s hopes high that the game would be decently challenging. This is not the case. The game has very few challenges, most of which are after you beat the final boss. While this boosts the replayability of the game, everything ends up feeling a little unrewarded. However, the stage design is stellar and more than makes up for this. But still, I wish that there was at least an optional hard mode you could force onto yourself, maybe some extra harder levels out of the way which utilize the open-world aspect of the world map. But still, the game is good. At least we have Yoshi right? NO!! There is a wide selection of characters in Mario Wonder, a lot of them being easy mode characters who cannot take damage, but also cannot use power ups. This is another example of great game design as power ups are usually used to get extra bonuses and will make little kids go out of their way to become better at the game, but the easy mode can't be switched off! This restricts Yoshi, a character with the unique abilities of eating and flutter jumping, to not be able to be played with by players who still want the slight challenge of Mario Wonder. While yes, one could argue that Yoshi was (mostly) unkillable in the other games and it would be hard to implement a system for Yoshi’s health, but I still want yoshi.

Overall, Mario Wonder is the best, most polished 2D Mario game in existence. You’ve probably heard it a million times, but it is great and buy it now. However, nothing goes without flaws and Mario Wonder is no exception. I’m just being nitpicky though, go buy it. I wasn’t asking.