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Reviews » New Super Mario Bros. [DS]

New Super Mario Bros has been a subject of many great arguments recently in #jedi-knight, stately internet home of DirectionalPad's staff and associates. The base argument boils down to two distinct sides:

Against: "New Super Mario Bros is dead to me because Nintendo has long-since exhausted every possible mad-libs style 'MARIO [NOUN / ACTIVITY]' game."

For: "New Super Mario Bros is worth playing because unlike all those 'MARIO [NOUN / ACTIVITY]' games, it's back to being what a Mario game should be - a 2D platformer."

The last new Mario 2D platformer was Super Mario Land 2, released in 1992. You could make an argument that Yoshi's Island should qualify as a "Mario Platformer", or possibly that the assorted Wario Land games should count too, but they weren't. Hell, you might even argue that Super Princess Peach was pretty close, but these all lack specific features I consider essential to a Mario platformer, most notably of which is "You need to actually play as Mario".

It was somewhat of a risk for Nintendo to go back after ~15 years to resurrect a game format their first parties had more or less stayed away from ever since Mario 64, but luckily they understood that New Super Mario Bros would have a lot to live up to.

Amazingly enough, they delivered.

The plot in NSMB is entirely inconsequential. You're Mario, you break things, you save the Princess. But this is how it should be. The focus of the game is squarely on gameplay, which, again, is exactly how it should be. NSMB is divided up into 8 different worlds, each with a wide variety of levels littered with secrets, alternate pathways, bonus levels, and so on. This was actually one of my main concerns, one of my favorite things about Mario platformers is finding all the secret exits and bonus areas and unlockable alternate areas and such.

The overworld is like a big 3D version of SMB3. You've got levels, optional levels, unlockable paths, Toad houses and roaming Hammer Bros. Near the middle of each world is a Tower and down at the end is a Castle. There are a couple new things to the mix, though. First is a secondary roaming item: Red flying ? blocks. If you start a level with one of those, you'll get a free decent power up right at the start. Also new: Toad house variations. In SMB3 Toad houses scored you a random reserve powerup or a Warp Whistle or something. In NSMB there are normal Red & White ones that get you a random reserve powerup, Green & White ones that let you play for 1ups and Red & Yellow ones that get you an Ultra Mushroom.

This is as good of a time as ever to talk about all the new powerups in NSMB. First, standard powerups are back. Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, Super Star, all back, all do exactly what you expect. Taken out are all flying power-ups: Leaf, P-wing, Feather, all gone. Comedy-option stuff is out too like the Tanooki, Hammer Bros. and Frog Suits. New stuff has been brought in to replace flight. First up is the previously-mentioned Ultra Mushroom, which makes Mario huge (roughly the height of the screen) and invincible to everything but insta-death lava or bottomless pits. Ultra Mushrooms are a timed effect, and during that time you can smash your way through everything, bricks, pipes, assorted critters, and everything counts towards a 1up damage meter that ends up awarding you up to 4 1up mushrooms at the end of your run.

Another new one is the Mini Mushroom which does the opposite of the Ultra Mushroom, but has a lasting effect of making you about 1/3 the size of normal small Mario. This is primarily used for accessing secret areas through smaller-than-usual pipes, but sometimes it's useful for the form's altered physics. Mini Mario can jump higher and farther than usual, and can also run along the surface of water. This is useful for coin hunting, which I'll discuss shortly. Last new powerup is the Blue Shell, which is a standard blue Koopa Troopa shell that Mario can wear. Its main ability is a dash-attack. If you get up to dashing speed Mario will retreat into the shell, giving you a slightly controllable version of a kicked shell. This is useful for taking out large numbers of enemies and for getting into hard-to-reach areas that may otherwise require tricky shell work.

Along with these new power-ups there are also new intrinsic abilities, most of which have been appropriated from Mario games released in those past 15 years. The two most notable ones are Ground-Pounding and Wall-Kicking. Ground-Pounding is standard Mario 64-style, hold down and hit jump while in the air to smash through stuff below you. One notable change is that if you can sustain a Ground-Pound, which is useful for tackling multi-hit coin blocks without having to constantly jump to hit them. Wall-Kicking lets you hold onto a wall and then jump off from it at a 45-ish degree angle, as seen in many other games. Another acrobatic added to NSMB is the triple-jump, which unfortunately is not as flexible or as useful as it is in Mario 64. The NSMB triple-jump only works while dashing at full-speed, unlike the back-and-forth flips and jumps available in Mario 64. It's neat and all, but really not worth worrying about.

As for actual gameplay, levels work like Mario platformer levels. You cruise through them hopping on things and doing some minor puzzle / maze work and hop from platform to platform until a SMB1-style flag at the end. Near the middle of the level is a checkpoint which isn't visible like in previous games like SMW or Yoshi's Island, but still lets you restart from the midpoint. Also as you go through you'll get all those great powerups I listed off above, and if you get one that's a duplicate or "lesser" powerup of what you currently have, it'll go into your reserve slot which is accessable through your touchscreen. All very standard things. The only really new things gameplay-wise are a couple unique level features and Star Coins. One-off level features aren't really something incredibly new to the Mario series, but there are some in NSMB that haven't shown up before. These tend to show up in Towers mostly, with things like tightropes, giant spiked balls, spinning . . cup . . things . . and so on.

Star Coins are the other main new thing to gameplay. Every level in the game - towers, castles and ghost-houses included - has three Star Coins hidden in it. These coins have two effects, first, they work as currency out on the world map. Most Toad houses have a cost to unlock them, generally of five coins. You also might need to cough up some Star Coins to unlock a second path through a level. Secondly, Star Coins are where a lot of the game's replayability comes from, since hunting them down and then actually getting them is not always an easy procedure.

Now, despite all these great things, there are some disappointments. First: Difficulty. Some bits of the game are just broken when it comes to difficulty. The most notable of which is the Fire Flower, which works on all but a couple enemies, bosses included. Most things are insta-kill with the Fire Flower, bosses and sub-bosses take a couple hits, but go down just as easy. Most levels also just aren't that difficult. Sure, you'll lose some lives due to stupidity, or misunderstanding how a level-specific device works, but never so much that you'll see a game over screen, or even be worried about seeing a game-over screen. This is seriously aided by the fact that there are so many ways to get 1ups. There's 1ups in ? blocks, 1ups in 1up toad houses (where you can get over TEN in one-go), 1ups from the mega-shroom damage meter, 1ups from collecting 100 coins, etc. It's like at every turn the game is desperately trying to cram you full of 1ups, which is great and all, but absolutely trashes the difficulty of the game.

Second issue: Length. Somewhat an extension of the first. The game just isn't that long. It isn't in "beat-it-in-one-sitting" land like so many classic NES games, and it isn't quite in "beat-it-in-one-super-long-marathon-session" land like SMB 3 (assuming you don't warp all over the place), but it isn't long by any stretch of the imagination. I stretched it out to about five days of gameplay by trying to limit myself to one or two worlds per sitting. Unfortunately, the game forces you to play in these long stretches, since you can only initially save your game by beating a tower, castle or unlocking a pathway. So unless you want to use up a bunch of coins you're pretty much forced to soldier on through to the middle or end of a world.

Third problem: Inane Unlockables. There are, to my knowledge, four unlockable features in NSMB. Play-as-Luigi (which you are told how to do after beating the game, but can do whenever), Save Whenever (which you get AFTER you beat the game), Reusable Toad-Houses (which you get AFTER you beat every level) and Alternate Sub-Screen Wallpapers (which you can buy after you beat the game). You also get a third star by your savegame after you acquire and spend all the Star Coins. So why am I so disappointed by these? You get them when you have no use for them.

Fourth gripe: Canned Minigames. NSMB features a ton of multiplayer minigames. Problem? They're all reused from Mario 64 DS. At least you don't have to unlock them, they're all just handed to you.

Sadly, I can't comment on normal Vs Mode multiplayer. In it, both Mario and Luigi have to fight over stars in a level. Pretty standard uncompelling stuff that seems like it was tacked on just to say "HEY GUYS MULTIPLAYER!" after they realized that tossing in reused stuff from Mario 64 DS probably wouldn't cut it on their own.

Did I like it? Yeah. Should I have waited til it hit the bargain bin? Probably, but I don't feel like I was screwed or anything. You just sorta have to remember that this is more of a sequel to SMB3 than Super Mario World. It doesn't really make sense to me as to why they decided to forget about SMW, but the end result was still enjoyable.

Screenshots © Nintendo

New Super Mario Bros - DS

Presentation

As anyone should expect from a first-party Nintendo game, NSMB looks and feels great.

Gameplay

The gameplay is absolutely wonderful, it's just fleeting and a bit too easy.

Replayability

Please try not to burn through it in one sitting. There's stuff to unlock and secrets to find, but this won't be one you puzzle over for months.

Value

Short, Shallow and still selling for full price. Go for it if you're itching for new games to play.

Overall

It's pretty, it's fun, but it's also short and not one you'll be coming back to after you're done.