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New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Mario and Luigi, Back to the Wii: The More Players, the Deadlier
Here’s a warning that I hope will prevent a lot of frustration: Unless you are a serious console gamer with skills honed over years of play, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is probably not the game you think it is.
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More Arts NewsDespite the adorable, world-famous Mario and Luigi, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is nothing close to a casual party game. Despite its cartoony presentation, it will drive many children into a tantrum or a sulk.
Instead it is an extremely demanding, well-honed test of reflexes and coordination. Like the arcade and hard-core console games of the 1980s and ’90s New Super Mario Bros. Wii does not coddle the player. Like those games of yore it is best played alone in intense concentration. It can feel diabolical and punishing at times. Much of the game requires meticulous practice. As you complete each segment, you will feel as if you have truly earned your bragging rights. Whether this all sounds like fun is a matter of personal perspective. If you bought a Wii over the last few years to play casually with family and friends, New Super Mario Bros. is not the game for you. If, however, you are an old-school Nintendo fan who laments that the company has spent so much time and money chasing soccer moms and grandparents with so many recent concessions to accessibility, New Super Mario Bros. is just what you’ve been waiting for.
The Super Mario Bros. recipe remains one of the simplest possible: rescue the princess by traversing ever more challenging two-dimensional levels. Jump at the wrong time, land in the wrong place, move in the wrong direction or touch the wrong thing, and you die. If you die, you start over. If you die too many times, you start over even further back.
This is how it has always been, and so it apparently shall remain. Yet New Super Mario Bros. Wii is far more difficult than the most recent major Mario title, Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Many of the same children and parents who enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy will be crushed into submission by New Super Mario Bros. Wii as they lose over and over again.
In that sense the new game feels trapped uncomfortably among Nintendo’s past, present and future. Nintendo clearly wants this game to appease grumbling longtime fans who resent the company’s move toward the mainstream. And for some it will do so.
At the same time, however, the Wii has been marketed quite brilliantly as casual living room entertainment for groups of friends who aren’t necessarily longtime gamers. And so New Super Mario Bros. includes the ability for up to four players to control separate characters simultaneously in the game, a first for the series.
The problem is that the multiplayer mode is nearly a complete disaster for nonexperts who might actually want to get through each level. With each person who joins the action, the game becomes even more difficult.
That is because the various player-controlled characters, including the brothers themselves, bounce off one another to their doom, push one another off ledges and shove one another into killer monsters. It can be very difficult for players (like the people I invited to my home to play) to keep track of their characters on the screen. In a game that requires precise control and punishes the slightest mistake with death, the multiplayer mode generates exponential confusion.
Even worse, the one concession the game makes to newer players does not even work in multiplayer. Perhaps the best addition to the new game is a feature that guides players past a level if they have died on it repeatedly. But inexplicably, it only works in solo play.
So New Super Mario Bros. Wii offers multiplayer support, but the actual design of the game encourages most people to play by themselves. That is not what Nintendo is supposed to be all about these days.
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