New Super Mario Bros. Wii [Wii]

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.

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