We experienced the delirium of Super Mario Bros Wonder first-hand: here’s what we thought of it in our truly… wonderful preview!
The Milanese metropolis hardly stands out for its association with greenery, but leave it to Nintendo and as if by magic, on the occasion ofpreview that you are reading, a corner of Milan suddenly becomes an embassy of the Kingdom of Flowers, directly from Super Mario Bros Wonder. Nothing is really missing: gaming stations, guests of all ages, a screen designed to mark all the stages in the evolution of the mustache and, why not, a receptionist’s counter with the round features of a green tube. But for what is the plumber’s latest effort, you are hardly here for pleasantries.
Let’s imagine instead having to leave the field free to the undisputed protagonist: the game itself, which promises to modernize a formula brought back into fashion in the mid-2000s on the Nintendo DS. And this can be considered a very pleasant anomaly: for what seem to be evident parallels with the sunset avenue of Nintendo 3DS, with ports and remakes ready to invade Switch, the swan song of the console aims to give its best. A suddenly new gameplay, with an equally new artistic style to dance the tango with him, left us (at the risk of sounding obvious) a real sense of wonder.
Nintendo did it under the hood | Super Mario Bros Wonder Preview
Believe it or not, we were ready to compile this preview within the first few minutes of Super Mario Bros Wonder. This is it demo immediately wanted to make it clear: a very modern feel in its sense of innovation at the expense of a very traditional level design. We understand if the idea has an aftertaste of oxymoron, but we really have no other words to describe such a visceral sensation. It only happens twice that you approach a side-scrolling Mario feeling a game design driven by the desire to innovate: once with New Super Mario Bros. in 2006, and the other this Friday 13 October which has just ended.
You’ll have to wait for a review before you have a less intoxicated reaction from us, but absorb and process everything that a demo of ten minutes has to offer is not at all simple. We’ll try starting from personages: there are eight of them, including Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toad (plus colors), Toadette, Yoshi (like Toad) and Ruboniglio. The last two act as an easy mode by not taking damage, but they cannot enjoy the powerups (with associated fluttering jumps and a long tongue for Yoshi), while the others work as always… or almost, given the addition of the Play with which to tackle the levels with new abilities.
Oh mama! | Super Mario Bros Wonder Preview
Mentre però Brooches cannot be combined with each other (they are divided into “active” and “passive”, an irrelevant difference in terms of simultaneous equipment), it is however possible to exploit them in tandem with the power-up. We “tasted” three of them: the classic Fiore di Fuoco and the new Elefante and Trivella shapes. The Bolla transformation is unjustifiably absent, but we assume that this is due to the levels examined. Fire and flames aside, the other two entirely change our way of approaching level design, from the possibility of storing water with the trunk to digging underground and on the ceilings with the drill.
And what about the level design itself, when it in turn turns the rules upside down thanks to the Wonder Flower? Finding one basically means being at a crossroads: it’s up to the player to decide whether to touch it and be ready for the curveballs that the game intends to throw at him, or whether to replay everything in a “clean” version. Depending on the case, we may have to deal with dancing tubes, collapsing ceilings or herds to ride until the secret exit, marked by the inevitable red flag. Bear in mind that this is only what was seen in the demo, given that there was everything in the trailers.
Long live the plumber | Super Mario Bros Wonder Preview
In those five levels that we have thoroughly explored, we have had the opportunity to observe a considerable amount of secrets. The latter vary from the aforementioned “crossroads” entailed by the Wonder Flower and range up to the classic inaccessible places without a specific power-up: of course, the game allows you to carry a spare one with you (which, in the New series, only happened on consoles portable), but seeing already in the first levels such an explicit invitation to replay them gives us hope for what will be there longevity overall adventure that awaits us next week.
Let’s consider, then, that the already notable variety of Pins expands as the game progresses with the appropriate ones challenges to unlock new ones. Similarly to the challenge levels of Kirby and the Lost Land (and, more/less recently, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe), here we are “given” a specific Pin at the beginning of the stage, only to be definitively awarded to us once we touch the flag pole. Considering then that the Brooches can also be obtained in Poplin stores by spending the purple coins collected in the levels, the general picture that seems to be glimpsed is that of a game that will keep us engaged even beyond the simple pleasure of replaying it.
The (side) road to the future?
The press event focused on the appetizing appeal of the plumber himself (and the appetite appeased by the refreshments), but what made us love Super Mario Bros Wonder more was not so much the costumed mascot but, above all, the demo enjoyed preview. The detractors of the Big N often speak of an attachment to nostalgia comparable to a metaphorical stone age, forgetting however that the roads are paved with stones. And the latest put together by the Kyoto Colossus is, without any shadow of a doubt, aimed at a (always at the risk of sounding obvious) wonderful future.
Even the artistic style, vaguely similar to the 3D models seen in the various New but decidedly more expressive, in some ways harks back to the past. The occasional frame skipping in plastic poses is reminiscent not only of the stop motion animation style, but even of the historic first cover of Nintendo Power. Combining this with gameplay where the development team took inspiration from the imagination of fans in Maker 2, the result is a bright horizon that we can’t wait to reach. Appointment, in this sense, for next Friday: on October 20th!
Now it’s up to you to tell us yours: what expectations do you have? Let us know below, and as always don’t forget to stay on techgameworld.com for all the most important news for gamers and beyond. For your purely gaming needs, you can instead find the best discounts in digital format on Instant Gaming.