New Super Mario Bros. Wii [Wii]

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.