Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the game fans and critics have been waiting for. The art style of 2D Mario titles has remained stagnant since 2006’s New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS. Even at the time, the 2.5D graphics obviously lacked the personality of the Mario titles released for the NES and Super Nintendo. The New Super Mario Bros. games played well, with solid platforming and a unique-at-the-time co-op feature for the Wii and Wii U releases. But all the titles followed the same formula, rescuing Peach again and again by venturing across the Mushroom Kingdom. Fans clamored for something new, and this year Nintendo delivered.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a fresh coat of paint for the series. It trades the stale animation of the New Super Mario Bros. series for a more expressive, joyful take on Mario and friends. Plus, the game finally takes the characters out of the Mushroom Kingdom. Wonder’s visual makeover is easily the most noteworthy improvement over the New series, resulting in not just a better looking but a better feeling game.
The New Super Mario Bros. series are consistently entertaining, but they lack creativity. All four games feature not just the same animation style but also almost-identical level and world design. Their development became so formulaic that the studio created the tools for Super Mario Maker by accident. Developers originally designed them for use internal use before developers recognized their potential for players. After two Super Mario Maker games, Nintendo clearly needed to make a change. The result is a game so full of character and imagination it could only have come from Nintendo.
The new art style for Super Mario Bros. is still 2.5D, but far richer and imbued with personality. Producer Takashi Tezuka told NPR that the team poured more development costs into the animation, which shows in the final product. The Flower Kingdom levels feature beautiful pastel-tinted backgrounds and colorful, inviting environments, not to mention the talking flowers. Most importantly, the characters express themselves. The character models of the New Super Mario Bros. series are lifeless. Mario and friends wear the same hollow smiles at all times, and the enemies wear the same scowls. In Wonder, the heroes and the enemies actually react to their surroundings. When a Goomba sees Mario coming, it panics. The simple act of going through a pipe is magical, due to the animation of Mario squirming to get in and out. The vibrancy of the world and characters leaves players marveling at the events on the screen, the same way they might react to a particularly well-made animated feature.
The only negative stylistic change is in the new voices for Mario and Luigi. Their new voice actor, Kevin Afghani, is talented, but his rendition of Mario lacks the richness and fullness of the performances of Charles Martinet. Maybe it takes time to grow comfortable with a change like this, but the removal of Martinet feels like a huge loss.
Players might be surprised to learn that the platforming in Super Mario Bros. Wonder is nearly identical to the platforming of the New titles. An excellent comparison video by Good Vibes Gaming shows that the only meaningful adjustment is how Mario now loses momentum upon landing on the ground. Even so, the platforming slightly suffers due to Wonder’s focus on other elements of the experience. Developers sacrificed the meticulous design from the New series for stages that put creativity first. However, fans seem comfortable with that shift, and Nintendo will undoubtably address the problem. Wonder is a first draft of a new kind of Mario. Now that Nintendo knows the shape and feel of its refreshed approach to Super Mario Bros., developers will have ample opportunity to refine the platforming in future ventures.
The game’s new art style is transformative, but it’s not the only change to the formula. Nintendo literally built the game around creating wonder, filling it with moments designed to surprise and delight. I won’t spoil any of them here. All I’ll say is the best moments are reminders that a game can be more than a series of challenges. A stage can transform into a theatrical experience.
The game is also full of new mechanics, including badges that alter gameplay and the scene-shifting Wonder Flowers. While not always additive to the gameplay, the sheer inventiveness on display matches the ingenuity of the best 3D Mario games. The abundance of new power-ups and badges featured in Super Mario Bros. Wonder are a mixed bag. They’re often entertaining, filling the game with creativity and customization, but sometimes feel excessive, distracting from the elegance of past 2D Mario design.
The actual power-ups in Wonder are satisfactory, but nothing special. The Elephant Fruit earns points for the sheer charm of turning Mario into an elephant, but simply gives Mario the ability to hit enemies and sometimes throw water at them. The Bubble Flower can occasionally result in fun outcomes, but mostly just operates like a Fire Flower. The Drill Mushroom may bring the ability to burrow underground to Mario for the first time, but that ability is commonplace in other titles.
The Wonder Flower, however, encapsulate Super Mario Bros. Wonder at its best. Collecting the Flower transform Mario’s surroundings and sometimes Mario himself. Examples of the transformations include causing all the pipes to spray water in symphony, turning Mario into a gooey creature who sticks to every surface, and reorienting the stage so Mario can traverse it like a top-down level. You never know what will happen when you reach the Wonder Flower. Occasionally, the results are underwhelming, but those brief disappointments are overshadowed by many more moments of creativity and ingenuity. There really is no adjective better to describe the game in those instances than wondrous.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder has some shortcomings, but Nintendo recaptured the spark missing from 2D Mario since Yoshi’s Island released on the SNES. It’s hard to ask for much more than that.
Review code provided by Nintendo.
