Super Mario Bros. Wonder

[Nester the Lark]

Thought I'd go ahead and create a thread for Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Not sure how much we'll use it, but I wanted a place to post the Ask the Developer interview. I'll also probably post my impressions after I play the game.

Here is Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview.

Some interesting bits:

- Players and journalists felt that Super Mario Maker 2 made it unnecessary to ever create another 2D Mario game, but Tekashi Tezuka felt optimistic they could create something completely different.

- There was no deadline set for development so that the entire team would be free to come up with whatever ideas they wanted.

- They wanted the characters and enemies to be more expressive. This was not directly influenced by the movie, but they wanted to make a game that wouldn't disappoint players who had seen the movie.

- Koji Kondo was the sound director, and also composed some of the music himself.

- Working remotely from home may have added to the creativity because there was no limit to the number of people that could participate in meetings.

[Nester the Lark]

Here are Part 3 and Part 4.

Highlights:

- The game took inspiration from the 3D Mario games in that they wanted players to be creative and come up with their own ways of getting through a stage rather than relying entirely on skill to get through them the way the developers intended.

- The talking flowers came from an idea to include a live running commentary in the game. At one point in development, they had a tsundere commentator. I love the idea of a commentator that "riffs" on the player in a humorous way as they play through the game, maybe something like the secret sarcastic commentator in Wave Race: Blue Storm. I don't think the flowers ended up quite like that, though, but it's still a fun idea.

- The "casual connection" online mode was intended to avoid negative experiences with other players, such as differences in skill level, or players that deliberately want to troll other players.

- There's a secret character from the 3D Mario games. I'm guessing maybe Rosalina.

[Nester the Lark]

So, I’ve rolled the credits on Super Mario Bros Wonder. I simply did a casual playthrough. I did not get 100 percent, but I’m going back through it to do that now. Here are my spoiler-free impressions.

This game was exactly what I hoped it would be.

As you probably know, I prefer the 2D Mario games to the 3D ones. For many years, I watched as the 3D games were filled with creativity and exuberance. Meanwhile the 2D “New” series, while admittedly solid platform games, felt a bit dry. I always wondered why the 2D games couldn’t have the same level of inspiration as the 3D ones. But Wonder finally takes the 2D series into that realm.

There is debate about whether Yoshi’s Island counts as a true Mario game or not, despite being branded as Super Mario World 2. I love Yoshi’s Island – it’s a 10/10 game for me – but I never felt like it fit in with the other Super Mario Bros games. It feels more like its own thing. Wonder, on the other hand, feels like the *real* Super Mario World 2. It’s a true evolution of what that game was, but with the same level of creativity that Yoshi’s Island had, and feels like it belongs among other Super Mario Bros games.

There are two other aspects that added a lot more to the game than I expected. One is the online mode where the ghosts of other players appear in the same level as you in real time. While each player is in their own version of the level, and not directly affecting others, there’s some minor, yet meaningful interaction. There are four emotes that you can display for communication. You earn heart points for helping other players, or for jumping on the flagpole at the same time. It makes the game feel lively and collaborative without being intrusive. These little interactions were some of the coolest moments I’ve had with the game.

The other aspect is the talking flowers. I guess your mileage will vary on this, but I found them charming and funny, and they added a lot to the game’s personality.

Super Mario Bros Wonder is the 2D Mario game I’ve been wanting for 30 years. It lives up to the classics from my childhood. I was starting to think that maybe it was just my age, and 2D Mario was just too familiar for me to be impressed by it anymore, but Wonder proves that isn’t the case. This is the Super Mario that I fell in love with as a kid, and I’m falling in love with it again.

[Nester the Lark]

After posting my impressions yesterday, I started to wonder what I had said about the New Super Mario Bros games back when they were, uh, actually new. So, I spent entirely too much time searching through old threads and posts, and aside from the 2D Mario game rankings I posted a few months ago, it turns out, not that much.

I actually started a thread about NSMB on the DS (there were a few of them, actually), and I mention that playing it made me feel like a kid again, and that it reminded me of a mix between SMB3 and Yoshi's Island. That's quite high praise considering that I recently ranked it as my least favorite 2D Mario game. I think maybe I was enamored with the novelty of the series returning to 2D, but I also remember that it failed to hold my attention when I tried to replay it sometime later.

It was harder to find my comments about NSMB Wii due to them being scattered in different threads (none of which were the dedicated thread for the game), but I was far more disparaging about it, even at the time I bought it. However, I was also not speaking very highly of the classic Mario games, either. I guess my gaming preferences had just changed during this time.

Oddly, I couldn't find any direct comments about NSMBU. I remember enjoying it a lot more than the previous NSMB games, but maybe I thought my feelings were influenced by the fact that it was a pack-in with my Wii U, and I was happy just to be playing a new game on a new console. But I do consider it the best of the NSMB games, as reflected by how highly I ranked it.

In 2020, I started the thread Reflecting on Super Mario Bros. in which I discussed my changing feelings towards the series, and how I've warmed back up to it in recent years. It's funny how game preferences can change over time. It's like an appetite: a certain food always tastes better when you're hungry for it. I do think Super Mario Bros Wonder is much better than those other games, but I guess it's also true that I feel warmer towards 2D Mario now than I did then.

(Side note: Looking back at older threads reminded me of how much busier this forum used to be. But seeing all the things we used to argue about also made me appreciate how much quieter this place is now. )