Super Mario Bros. on Wii

I mentioned in a previous post that we recently got a Nintendo Wii. We bought the Wii to play the "Just Dance" series of games - not the type of games I would enjoy but I have to admit they are fun, and a workout to boot.

The Wii came bundled with "New Super Mario Bros. Wii," which is a heck of a mouthful. [Why they felt the need to put "New" in the title is beyond me.] At first I wasn't looking forward to this game at all. My reservations about this game were based upon the controller. To play the game you must use the Wii remote held sideways, you cannot use the Wii classic controller. To me the Wii remote is best described as "brick shaped." It does not look like a comfortable controller in the least. As such, I had no interest in playing the game.



As it turns out, I'm glad our console came bundled with this game because otherwise I would have never played it. This game is easily one of the best games of all times. I grew up in the 8-bit and 16-bit video game era. This is a time when the 2-D "platform" genre of games, like Mario and Sonic, were king. I personally feel that Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES and Super Mario World on the SNES are probably the 2 best games of all time. Well this game takes everything that's awesome about those games and improves upon it. It is a true 2-D platform game, but the entire environment is rendered in 3-D. The graphics and animations are very fluid and sharp. And I have to say, for being a low-resolution system (640 x 480) the graphics are very sharp and clear.

I think one of the things I love about this game is the level of effort and thought that went into its production. One of the great things about this game (as well as SMB3 and SMW) is almost every level has something new, something you don't see on any other level. For example, one level has these giant caterpillars that you can jump on the backs of. No other level has these. So they programmed these caterpillars for one and only one level. I don't know how many levels there are, but it's a lot. So there's a lot of variety.

Now I'm not saying this game is perfect. I still feel like the controller could be better. The Wii remote held sideways is a lot better than I was expecting, but it's far from perfect. Probably my biggest gripe with this game is a feature found in Super Mario World. You could kick turtle shells straight up to knock out flying enemies or open high up question mark boxes. But alas this feature was not added to this game. But it's a small complaint given how great this game is.

In short; if you own a Wii and you don't own this game, you owe it to yourself to buy it. Especially if you are a fan of retro platforming games. If you don't own a Wii, I would argue this one game is good enough to justify buying a Wii! That's how much fun it is!