New Super Mario Bros. Wii Hands-on

Oct 7, 2009

Nintendo of America is ramping up the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii for its November 15th release date, and earlier today I had the opportunity to swing by the company's office to toy around with a near final version of the game. The last time I tinkered with New Super Mario Bros. Wii was at its debut at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in LA back in June of this year, but that was only in its cooperative/competitive "Coin Battle " mode. This was the first opportunity I had to experience the Wii game in its single player progression, even if I only had enough time to blast through a couple of levels.

First thing to note: Nintendo's not yet ready to reveal how many worlds and levels there are in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but at the very least every level in the game is 100% original – even though the game looks and plays similarly to New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS, Nintendo didn't lift any of those levels for the console version.

The game's overall storyline is so simple it's silly, and the designers definitely treat it as a bit of a joke: New Super Mario Bros. Wii's opening cinematic starts out in Peach's castle during a celebration, when in comes an absolutely ginormous (and highly suspicious) cake sliding in from stage left. It gets thrown into the room, right on top of the Princess, and wanders out of the room with the princess trapped inside: the Koopa Kids kidnap her, leaving Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad and Yellow Toad to run after her – and in the cinematic, the toads fire off a couple of presents that send a shower of Penguin Suits and Propeller Helmets (the "new" power-ups in the design) all over the Mushroom Kingdom. And that's when the game begins.

The game itself is designed in the same style as the DS game, so you'll get a near identical overworld to progress through. In this map you'll select your level and complete the challenge, which will then open the path (or paths) to the next batch of level challenges. This overworld may have a fixed camera but the elements are completely 3D – you'll even see Bowser's ship hovering around the world's castle to show you where you'll need to go.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is pure 2D Mario platforming that uses the DS game as its foundation. You use the Wii remote in its NES-style orientation, 1 button to run, 2 button to jump. Shaking the Wii remote has different contextual effects as does tilting it. You can even shake the remote at the peak of a jump to get a bit of an airborne stall for better timing at landing on platforms and enemies.

The game does utilize more advanced visual tricks and techniques that just weren't possible back in the 8 and 16-bit days when the side-scrolling platformer design was in its prime. There are levels where you'll have to deal with enormous platforms that look like Tetris pieces that sloooooowly rotate, putting the characters' wall clinging and wall jumping abilities to use as they try to stay on top without falling off. There are levels with gigantic gears that rotate and you'll have to wedge your way between the "teeth" to advance through the hazards or to snag some of the coins wedged in there. In some of the desert stages you'll have to deal with geysers that blast waves of sand to climb, an effect that's clearly using some of the more advanced graphical effects of the Wii hardware. And, of course, the camera will zoom in and out of the action at specific points so the player or players can keep track of the levels in a wider view.

Even with the more capable hardware, the designers have kept the visual experience a bit of a low key one. It's almost hard to believe that most of the in-game elements are 3D, but keep an eye on things like the 2D-like polkadotted hills way off into the distance: even though they look like flat backdrops they're actually moving in perspective.

I do have to mention that early in my demo I noticed a bit of slowdown in places: for the most part the game ran perfectly smooth, but on occasion (usually during a particle effect) there was a slight half-second hitch in the framerate. However, as we were playing we noticed that the Wii system wasn't set in progressive mode, and after we switched the Wii into that mode the framerate drops never happened in the rest of our game demo. The version I was playing wasn't entirely final – according to Bill Trinen running the demo it was a build about three weeks old. It's definitely possible that the version we were playing didn't have the non-progressive widescreen option optimized. At any rate, running at 480p widescreen New Super Mario Bros. Wii ran flawlessly.

Now, one of the cooler things about New Super Mario Bros. Wii is its "drop in/drop out" multiplayer feature of the normal game progression. We've already had a sampling of the multiplayer at E3, but that was in the competitive and cooperative mode. In the standard Super Mario single player mode, you can let your buddies jump in and help using Luigi, Blue Toad or Yellow Toad in a fully cooperative option. Enabling this option has to be done on the overworld and not in the middle of a level, but at any place within the single player you can have two, three, or four players join in. Players can choose who their player is -- they're not stuck as Luigi in the Player Two slot if they want to play as Blue or Yellow Toad.

The game won't reward players any different nor will it note when a game has brought in buddies to help complete the game, but the cooperative option in New Super Mario Bros. Wii definitely changes things up quite a bit – it doesn't make beating the game easier or harder – you still have to work together to finish the level, and while you have the opportunity for more power-ups thanks to question blocks spitting out multiple items, you have to deal with the mayhem of other players getting in your way. If a player runs out of lives in a level he's out until the other players either finish the level or die themselves – when the game kicks back to the overworld it will replenish the lives of the fallen player with five more tries, but then stamp the save file with "Continues Used: 1." Yes, the game will keep track of how many times the player loses all his lives and needed a 1up boost.

Yoshi makes an appearance in some of the levels in New Super Mario Bros., and he'll be in different colors depending on how many players are in a level. Players can use Yoshi's "eating" ability to their advantage: throw a fireball at another Yoshi-riding player, for example, and he can "gulp" the fireball and spit it out as a much larger flame at opponents.

Classic Super Mario Bros. elements are here, as are items introduced in New Super Mario Bros. DS. The "tiny" mushroom is in play on the Wii, so keep an eye out for that mushroom that will shrink Mario to mouse-size, giving him the ability to run across the surface of water spots. I saw plenty of "tiny" pipes leading to secret areas of the Mushroom Kingdom, so that tiny mushroom will be scattered in strategic places in certain levels, no doubt. There's a new Ice Flower in the game that has similar effect to the Penguin Suit without the really heavy waddle handling: you can turn enemies into ice blocks that can be picked up by holding the 1 button and shaking the controller, then throwing it as a weapon.

Not only can you play multiplayer in the single player progression and in the Coin Battle mode (the mode we saw at E3), but there's also a mode called "Free for All" that enables players to simply jump into any unlocked level and play without affecting the normal game progression. The menu makes it easy to leap into challenges, even offering the ability to sort by "Favorites" thanks to an option that tracks the levels players seem to play the most.

On the overworld, you'll also encounter Toad Houses that feature mini-games for power-up opportunities. I played one where you play the "flip the card and match a pair" type, but the twist was that you had to climb up an entire wall of tiles to punch and flip to reveal what's on the other side. In multiplayer, each player takes a turn flipping the tiles. The power-ups earned get stored, and players can enable any earned power-up on the overworld map before they jump into the action. Also on the overworld map are giant goombas wandering around that offer other specific power-up challenges. The one I played had players collecting "Toad Balls" in a non-scrolling platform level filled with Goombas wandering the floor.

There's so much more to New Super Mario Bros. Wii that I just didn't get a chance to experience in my short 30 minutes with the game. Luckily I won't have long to wait as Nintendo promises we'll get the game in-hand in a few short days. I'm really looking forward to sitting down with the game for a much more in-depth experience, but for now you'll just have to deal with these "brief" impressions to hold you over.