New Super Mario Bros
Originally released on: Nintendo DS
Played on: Nintendo 3DS
Release date: 2006
This game was, when it was announced, one of my most eagerly awaited games of all time. Super Mario World is one of my favourite games ever, and there had been no proper Mario 2D platformer released since then (and no, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island doesn't count because that's a Yoshi game with different mechanics and gameplay). I was so excited about this game that I actually bought it as an import because it came out in the US almost 2 months before it's release date here, and I couldn't wait.
As I may have mentioned several times on this blog (and by 'may have' I mean, I have mentioned it lots already, but I'm trying not to make you realise this), I am a big fan of 2D platformers and while I've already sung the praises of Sonic 2, Mario games are generally just as much fun. And they're pleasantly different. I maintain that the primary reason that there have been no genre-defining 2D platformers since the inception of Sonic and Mario, is because they both managed to define the two extremes of the genre - Sonic is the speedy platformer, whereas Mario embraces the more cautious, precise areas of platforming - and I like them both equally, depending on my mood.
And when I got New Super Mario Bros? Well my excitement was deserved, for a while, and then I remember finding it a little repetitive. I mean, it was still great, it's still Mario, it just felt like I'd played it all before. So I wondered what my response would be when I started it up nowadays.
You know what? It's a lot of fun. Granted, it is missing a little of the innovation that populated the earlier mario platformers, but I can forgive that. It almost feels like it was a dry run to see if the average person would pick up and play a 2D mario platformer in this day and age (and as an experiment, that was a huge success, as the game had sold over 18,000,000 copies worldwide as of March 2009).
So what is wrong with it? Well firstly, in a change for the games I've played so far on this giant playthrough, it's bloody easy. I remember completing it in no time at all when I first got the game and even on this playthrough I managed to get through to the end of World 3 in one hour. The replay value is slightly annoying as the only reason to replay through the game is to gain the Star Coins, (of which there are 3 in each level), which don't really gain you anything and, most annoyingly, if you are re-playing through, you can still only save at designated save points, which are only when you complete a castle or unlock a fence by spending star coins! Once you've unlocked all the fences it becomes very tedious having to complete castles all the time to save because you managed to gain an extra 2 star coins and you don't want to waste them.
Also, there's no Yoshi, and some of the new power-ups are pretty rubbish. The Mega Mushroom is fun carnage, but means you tend to have to go back through the level again to locate the star coins, the Mini Mushroom is a good idea but it puts you in a very vulnerable position, and the Blue Shell suit is only useful if you particularly enjoy speeding across the screen in an out-of-control fashion, before falling down a bottomless pit because you couldn't stop yourself in time.
I'm not criticising this game too much, as it is a lot of fun, and it is partially responsible for the current resurgence in 2D platformers, and hopefully some of the mario innovativeness (is that a word? I think it is now, for the purposes of this blog anyway) will return in the future. But for now, I rate New Super Mario Bros as a solid and fun game which, while not up to the standards of the original mario platformers, is still an entertaining and fun way to spend a couple of hours - and maybe, if you'd never played a mario 2D platformer before, you'd find this game to be more astounding than I do.
Rating: 8/10
Time played: Pretty much exactly one hour
Would I play it again? Yeah - it'll stay in my 3DS case, and get played every so often.
Next time? We're sticking with handheld gaming and my downloaded ambassador games - it's Balloon Fight...
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