I’ve always stood behind Nintendo’s over-milking of their franchises. This is because they take each sequel seriously and change gameplay, plotlines, worlds and characters with every iteration. They see every title as a chance for improvement and innovation that just happens to have a built in audience. So I’m more than a little perplexed as to why they took the Wii as an opportunity to revisit the gaming dark ages.

New Super Mario Wii is a 2.5D side scroller starring the world’s only Italian plumbers to never touch a plunger or go to Italy. The title “New” is a misnomer because I’m sure in five years everyone who played it will have forgotten it and everyone who made it will start to feel silly because it’s based on outdated gameplay mechanics. A more appropriate name would have been “Original Super Mario Brothers,” or perhaps “Super Nostalgia Brothers” because that’s really all it is.

I’d have been more leery of asking someone who’s never left his flying broomstick to design a good walkway, but to each his own.

Don’t get me wrong; when Nintendo sets out to stamp the name Mario on a game, they do it up right. The control scheme is flawless, the difficulty curve is the best I’ve seen in recent memory, the levels are crafted with loving attention to detail and it’s chalked full of enough secret passages, level skips and hidden levels to keep the pros and speed-runners busy. My criticism for this game can’t be expressed mechanically or objectively. But if you’re playing it for nostalgia, understand that it really isn’t a better game than Super Mario World for the SNES. The only reasons children will be more receptive to this game than the golden oldies are the cheery music and the fat little guy with a mushroom addiction who talks like a G-rated Borat.

The game kicks off with the kidnapping of the Princess at her own birthday party, no surprise there. Bowser Jr. and his brothers from Super Mario World are the antagonists this time around. Also added to the cast of baddies are the genetic clones of the original Koopa kids only painted grey and black because they’ve all been watching Twilight and started dressing from Hot Topic. Naturally, most of the Mushroom Kingdom is under the control of Bowser’s Minions because the Shrooms can’t be bothered to create a military force to hold the map after any of Mario’s repeated genocides. And Bowser has yet to fire his lead architect, Magikoopa, who has designed all the lands castles to be entirely handicap inaccessible. By handicap I of course mean anyone who can’t jump six times his own height, including the entirety of Bowser’s junior staff. I’d have been more leery asking someone whose never left his flying broomstick to design a good walkway, but to each his own.

NSMB starts off in ordinary grasslands and quickly moves to icy terrains, deserts, mountains, archipelagos and an active volcano as Mario follows Bowser Jr.’s airship from castle to castle. Each world has its own unique terrain challenges and set of monsters to deal with, while all of them build upon existing monsters and challenges to create a steady and entertaining difficulty curve. Every new hazard is introduced in a low stress environment then made more difficult later by the addition of cliffs or moving platforms to require precise movements. There are safe houses run by the Mushroom people where you can obtain power-ups, which can be used between levels, or extra lives. However, every level starts with predictable power up boxes and there’s no limit on continues, so every one of these safe houses can be skipped and you wont find the game any more difficult or time consuming. Now if one of them had given me an item that let me skip the level selection screen every time I died, the idea may have had merit.

The items in the game have seen some changes. The flight cap this time is a helicopter helmet which zooms into the air with a shake of the controller. The fireflower also has a a counterpart ice flower which freezes enemies to be thrown and shattered or used as platforms. The wildcard is the penguin suit which allows ice flower abilities but also the ability to slide on your belly and destroy things in front of you. Fun though flightless waterfowl are, there is no use for this past the second world which feels like a missed opportunity.

The game’s biggest selling feature over its predecessors is the multiplayer functions. This experience can best be described as the Mario brothers spending six hours trying to occupy the same space in the least homoerotic way possible. Nintendo has taken extreme measures to ensure that a less experienced player doesn’t drag a better one down, as is the case with little siblings. A player can always hit a button to put themselves in a bubble and drift around in safety until the other player pops them. This way any given player can skip challenges they find too difficult provided one player can accomplish the task. Lives are not shared, though again, since continues are infinite I’m not sure why they bother keeping track other than to get players to endanger themselves in the pursuit of coins. You can assist each other in jumping by bouncing off of each other’s heads, but since the game must be beatable single player, there is no point at which this maneuver is necessary and several points at which it is a liability. At no point does having a second, third or fourth player actually help you, it’s just an excuse to get two people playing the same game in the same room. The experience would be greatly improved were the player’s also playing separate games on separate screens.

Of course what’s a Mario game without a climax involving a fight with a two story tall, fire-breathing dragon turtle thing. And what’s a boss fight without that serious design flaw built into all of Bowser’s personal castles where a brightly colored, clearly labeled button collapses the only platform big enough to hold the monster. It’s not like this made any sort of sense the first time they did it, the only reason it’s still here is because it was there the first time around and Nintendo knows full well they’re only selling this game on nostalgia.

So if you were planning to buy a game to please the kiddies this holiday season, this is no disappointment to be sure, though the siblings may have some arguments about who knocked who into the lava. But if you’re a twenty something gamer who got started on an SNES, like me, and you’re looking for a nostalgic good time, go pick up Mario All-Star or Super Mario World on Game Boy Advance.

Lucky 3/5