Preview Super Mario Bros Wonder: the best game in the series in over ten years? We played there! on Switch

Preview Super Mario Bros Wonder: the best game in the series in over ten years? We played there!

We had to wait more than ten years to see Mario, Nintendo’s timeless mascot, back in the flesh in a new Mario Bros game. In 2013, the platform game formula had lost some of its appeal due to a lack of real innovation and an increasingly competitive environment. We could even see in Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2 a kind of resignation on the part of Nintendo: “We have no more ideas, it’s the players’ turn to surprise each other”. It was ultimately just to give him time to recharge Mario Bros’ creative batteries, perhaps flat after more than 30 years of full throttle. Because almost 40 years after its first episode, Mario Bros has all the weapons in hand to seduce its world.

Mario in Wonderland

During several dedicated videos, Nintendo made the mouths of many players water… or rather stars in their eyes. Like the animated film Super Mario Bros released earlier this year, Super Mario Bros. Wonder takes a warm, colorful but above all very explosive artistic direction. There is often something happening on the screen that provokes the “Wow” effect when it is not the backgrounds or the humorous phrases of the cancan flowers that attract the eyes and ears.

Prince Florian had his flower of wonders stolen by Bowser. Mario, accompanied by Luigi, Daisy, Peach, Toad, Toadette, Yoshi and Nabbit, agrees to help the monarch of the kingdom of flowers. The mustachioed plumber therefore explores this new region for the first time. They must then collect prodigy seeds, necessary to free the passages from the influence of the King of Koopas. These are often hidden in Prodigy Flowers: flowers (sometimes hidden) to collect throughout the levels. Without changing the architecture of the level itself, they dress it up with all kinds of effects allowing the player to approach it with a new perspective. It’s a bit like Mario meets the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Mario? Always aces in his overalls

But if Super Mario Bros was propelled to the rooftops of the world in 1985, it was above all because of its accessibility and fun and effective gameplay. Wonder continues the tradition of its predecessor: it’s always about getting to the end of the levels by dodging as much as possible the obstacles on our way thanks to our jumps and powers. It therefore integrates three new costumes, that of the elephant, the drill, and the bubbles but above all tries to innovate with a system of badges conferring powers. The parahat allows you to glide, the dolphin stroke makes you swim faster… Enough to appreciate the courses differently or even to complete them definitively: it is possible to redo the courses already completed with badges recovered afterwards.

Of course, the journey is just as entertaining as there are hidden paths, which one discovers voluntarily or not. Nintendo also surprises with different types of courses. We note the existence of Interlude type levels, which once again provide a different way of playing. Others are dedicated to badge mastery, real provocations to fierce players. This is good since Super Mario Bros. Wonder is also aimed at them: each level is assigned a difficulty with an amount of stars. The higher it is, the harder the level will be. Without being blocking, the stages that can be considered the most difficult will give even seasoned players a lot of trouble. . Generally speaking, Nintendo seems to have succeeded in its big facelift. Mario, initially known for his red hat and blue overalls, dressed up to the nines with Wonder. He manages to surpass his own codes without transfiguring them to provoke in the player this exceptional desire to want to know more. And to think that we haven’t even seen everything…