Its harder to find bigger Mario fans than us, but after Augusts New Super Mario Bros 2, it felt like we could really use a little break from Marios platforming. Fast forward two months to when weve played more than half of the upcoming New Super Mario Bros U and are dying to finish it. Why are we so sold on the Wii U launch game? Because of our endless love for Super Mario World.

After beating the first five worlds, we couldnt help but notice all the lessons New Super Mario Bros U learned from Super Mario World. Beyond surface level references, NSMBU is a tribute to whats great about the SNES original. Lets start with