New Super Mario Bros. - Review

Nintendo DS
New Release
$35

In 1985 Super Mario Bros. was a nuclear bomb of gaming. This game was a revolution, attractive, innovative, and brilliantly designed, Super Mario Bros. established the side scrolling platform genre of gaming, single-handedly reversed the fortunes of an industry that had gone terminal, and made Nintendo the face of video gaming.

The game was that good and that important. It invented dozens of gameplay conventions that continue to be copied to this day. To date, it is the best selling video game of all time, at the time it was arguably the best video game ever made.

Weirdly, it was followed up by not one, but two games called Super Mario Bros. 2, and even weirder, neither of them exactly are remembered as true Mario games. While they were both solid games, the Japanese one never had wide exposure, and the American one crowbarred Mario in a port of a different game.

However, in 1988, Super Mario Bros. 3 was released, and once again Mario was starring in what could be argued the greatest video game ever. With more and larger stages, vertical (and diagonal) scrolling, an assload of innovation, and a grand scope (Mario can freaking fly!), this game made the genius original game look quaint.

In 1990 Mario starred in one more side-scrolling masterpiece: Super Mario World. Considered by many to be the best platform game of all time, Super Mario World added further depth and size to the formula, with hidden exits, secret worlds, hell you could even replace the appearance of the entire world with an entirely different set of backrounds and sprites. This was the high point, for Mario, and for 2d platformers. After this game, the Mario franchise would transition to the 3d platform genre. Many people prefer these 3d games, but purists such as my self had been abandoned. Sixteen years would pass before there was another Super Mario Bros. game.

Finally in 2006, a new Mario Bros. game was released, called matter-of-factly, New Super Mario Bros. Given the legacy of the series, compounded by the very large time delay, this game had high expectations to meet. This game was expected to be the fourth great Mario game.

It isn’t. It doesn’t come close to meeting the expectations created by the franchise. This game, the one that compelled me to purchase the only true handheld system I own, is a complete disappointment, and a horrible waste of potential.

The game’s designers clearly love the old Mario games as much as I do. It is a love poem to earlier Mario games, calling back numerous elements from all the installments and also the 3d games. And while that may sound good, really it is a horrible thing. They spend so much time recreating elements of earlier games that they don’t leave room for what made the earlier games great, namely creativity and innovation. This game feels like an amateur remix of the original, 3, World, and 64. It has no voice of its own.

The game’s big addition to the formula is a pair of new mushrooms: one that makes Mario absurdly tiny and one that makes him absurdly large. This is a decent enough idea, worth exploring, but it isn’t given space to develop. These elements don’t feel integral to the gameplay, rather they feel tacked on and unnecessary.

I don’t know if the developers were concerned about the smaller screen of the DS or if they thought the portable market had a short attention span, or if they were just lazy developers, but the whole gameplay experience is short, subdued, and unambitious. Mario has lost his ability to fly, and with it he has lost most of the exploration elements. The stages are shorter, and unlike past games, they aren’t packed with secrets to discover. You follow a straight line from start to flagpole. You can actually see how far along the line you’ve progressed, because the bottom screen has the line and a pointer showing your location on it.

The game has ditched 2d sprites for 3d characters on a 2d map, and the models look uniform to how they do in established 3d games. It looks awful. Mario’s 1, 3, and World each had a distinctive, attractive art style that oozed charm and personality, whereas this game looks sterile, forced to fit a corporate dictated stylesheet.

Now, I may hate this game, but it isn’t crap. The levels are competently designed, there is some fun to be had, it is worth a play through once, especially if you love Mario. Actually, there are a few really good stages in there, a few points where the game briefly seems interested in doing something that hasn’t been done before. But only a few. The game just lacks spark, a decent game in a franchise of brilliant ones.