NOW PLAYING: Super Mario Bros Wii
A 2D Mario platformer on a console. It has been several Ice Ages (though 3 sucked) since the last one came off the shelf in the early 90′s. Since the DS version came out in 2005 and has sold more copies than even Nintendo expected, the Wii version, rather sensibly builds on the foundations of the handheld game. In fact it does little more than iterate on the DS version, which is a shame, but it doe it in a way that the Wii desperately needed- something old skool from Nintendo that’s fun for people who enjoy playing games rather than toys.
I’ll assume you’ve played the DS game (or even Super Mario World on the SNES). Here you hold a wiimote sideways with two hands like an NES controller that’s even less comfortable (D pad on the left, 1 and 2 buttons on the right) with 2 being the jump button, 1 being the do everything else button. Some actions do require motion control (mainly just waving the controller up and down). Nothing suss. There is a control scheme that uses the nunchuk but the classic controller is not supported- which is a shame.
It looks crisp enough on a HDTV, but it’s still got that Wii Blur (of course, it will really pop on an old fashioned CRT TV). Colours are vibrant and music is bouncy. How does it play, you ask? Like a 2D Mario where you hold a Wiimote on it’s side. You could in a pinch use the Mario Kart wheel if that’s your fancy- which is a shame. The first world does trick you into thinking it’s an easy game but world 2 is where it starts to get hard. Bloody hard. Since Mario games use a green 1up mushroom as currency, Nintendo still insists on Mario having lives. If you die eight times doing the same thing you get prompted if you want Luigi to play a level for you/ This is great if you have more than 8 lives on a tricky bit. Of course, if you have fewer than eight, and if you’re likely to need Luigi’s assistance, chances are you won’t have many lives up your sleeve.
A nice touch is now you can store more or less as many power-ups as you like, these are accessible from the map screen (where you get booted to after every death). So if you keep dieing because of a particularly hard piranha plant, you can pop a flame ball in his ass to get you by. Other than that, It plays like the DS game in so many ways that if you close your eyes and pretend your 46-inch HDTV is a new DS, you might have the long awaited sequel. Just don’t put your fingers on the screen to activate a power-up.
