Welcome to World Zero - Reviews for the hardcore gamer

New Super Mario Brothers

DS - Nintendo - Platformer - E

Man9child: Like many a gamer of my generation, the original Super Mario Brothers was my introduction to video games. The significance of this one game in establishing the home console market can’t be underestimated. I’ll spare you the history lesson on the great video game crash of ‘84, but rest assured, the gaming industry would not be where it is now if it wasn’t allowed to develop for the last twenty years, and Super Mario Brothers is one of the things that gave it the chance to do so. But Super Mario Brothers is more than that. Super Mario Brothers was for me and for many others, I imagine, our collective childhood.

Man9child: And so, for me writing about New Super Mario Brothers without comparisons to previous Mario titles is something hard to do. It takes a great deal of restraint for me to hold back my gushing nostalgia, believe me. But for all intents and purposes, these comparisons would prove irrelevant. The last traditional 2D Mario platformer, Super Mario World, came out in 1991. Christ. That was 15 years ago. I couldn’t even read in 1991, people. So for this game’s target audience (more on that later), these comparisons would not provide a useful frame of reference.

S-Hiryu: I’m in the same boat as my fellow co-reviewer; gushing with nostalgia. This is a throw-back title, no doubt about it. Sure, there is arguably an entire other side to New Super Mario Brothers intended to lure in a group of gamers that were too young to experience the originals during their prime, but how few gamers (old enough or not) still haven’t experienced a 2D Mario at some point in their life? Though I do have to admit there was a different aspect to playing Super Mario Brothers in the “pre-Mario 3 era”, reminiscence is reminiscence, right? But enough with the nostalgia already.

S-Hiryu: Throw back title or not, New Super Mario Brothers is still a brand spanking new platformer. The fact that it’s a completely 2D one at that makes this, at least in my mind, a truly important release. Hopefully this will prove that developers need not be so reluctant in releasing more 2D titles in the future. Despite being utterly “old-school” and comparatively archaic in design in contrast to the upcoming flood of nex-gen gaming we have just recently witnessed via E3 2006, New Super Mario Brothers somehow still holds it’s own. I’m not sure if the classic 2D platforming has been near perfected, but sans nostalgia, I was continually surprised at how well NSMB holds up as a new release during a borderline technological renaissance.

Man9child: This year's E3 featured a lot of focus on the future of gaming, Nintendo's Wii and its unorthodox method of player interaction being just one of them (I don't think I'll ever be able to talk about Nintendo's Wii without cracking a juvenile smirk. It's like being in fifth grade Sex Ed all over again). But more than that, and in a broader sense, the general vibe I got from this year’s show was an emphasis seems to be placed on creating games that, rather than being content to be videogames, strive to be an experience. New Super Mario Brothers on the other hand, despite its almost modern polygonal appearance, is built entirely out of tried and true gameplay mechanics that were arguably perfected years ago. What makes Mario's new adventure so refreshing then isn't innovation of any sort, because at its core, NSMB is a game that harkens back most to the now 21 year-old original SMB. The thing is that 2D platformers - -that is good 2D platformers -- have become such a rare occurrence as of late that when someone finally gets it right, it almost feels new again. There's nothing in NSMB that you haven't seen, heard, or done before, and in some cases, done better. But it's been a long time, and Lord knows, it's good to come home.

S-Hiryu: Said tried and true gameplay mechanics are honestly what makes this game so inherently great. There’s virtually nothing you haven’t seen in New Super Mario Brothers that you haven’t seen in a previous Mario title, and the game is all the better for it. Had Nintendo implemented some new gimmick (see: Sunshine) or tried to take Mario in a new, unwarranted, and perhaps unwelcomed direction, New Super Mario Brothers would have been worse off, no question. NSMB is successful because it is, literally, a New Super Mario Brothers. In and of itself, I think the title goes beyond appropriate to, dare I say, brilliance.

S-Hiryu: New Super Mario Brothers is composed of eight overworlds, as previously seen in Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, but within each zone, you’re given shorter, primarily horizontal stages a la the original Super Mario Brothers. Simplicity is the name of the game here. NSMB’s stage progression is right to the point; no–frills, classic Mario Brothers complete with a flagpole ending. Occasionally, you’ll see something that might take you aback (if only for a fraction of a second) such as descending a pipe that actually places your playing field on the DS’s lower screen. But for the most part this is predicable Super Mario which, and I can’t stress this enough despite sounding like a broken record, is a good thing.

Man9child: And despite advertising Mario's new power-ups heavily during pre-production, in the final product Mario's new abilities take a back seat to the classic mushroom and fire flower. The new abilities -- the coolest of which slaps a Koopa shell on Mario’s back -- are interesting to mess around with but about as consequential to the whole of the NSMB experience as the Frog Suit or the Hammer Bros suit were to SMB3; and that is to say not very much. You'll hardly even notice though, as NSMB was designed in such a way where flower power was all you'll ever need. And being a throwback to the original, I wouldn't have it any other way.

S-Hiryu: Since New Super Mario Brothers is primarily based off of the original Super Mario Brothers, there is one glaring inconsistency that is hard to overlook, and that is the overabundance of extra lives. The biggest culprits being coins and general 1-up mushrooms are handed out in excess, but the real kicker is the mushroom house, which there are multiples of in each world, that reward you with about a dozen extra lives on any given visit. You will have most likely accumulated 30 plus lives by the end of the first world, and since the original Super Mario Brothers was the closest thing to being the only legitimately challenging game in the series, this takes away from the experience, be it nostalgia or just as a balanced game, if only a little.

Man9child: But aside from there being an inexcusable abundance of extra lives, NSMB's problem with difficulty (or lack thereof) is compounded by the fact that even with all those extra lives, you never even need them. NSMB retains the trait the series took on starting with SMB3 of reverting you back to big Mario whenever you take a hit whilst sporting a more advanced power up. This approach, in my opinion, should have been scrapped for the less lenient "one hit and you're small" style of the original. It probably wouldn't have even of made a difference though as each level is so jam packed full of item blocks containing power ups that this is probably beside the point. And though NSMB is as much of a return to form as we can expect from Nintendo's portly plumber, if you're expecting many late nights in your near future trying to land that one impossible jump, it's just not going to happen. Still, Nintendo games have never had to be difficult to be fun, and this just drives that point home.

S-Hiryu: And that sums up New Super Mario Brothers nicely; fun. It’s not challenging, it’s not intricate, it’s not revolutionary. It’s fun. It’s old-school Mario, and it delivers exactly what you would expect from such a title. And because Nintendo took the return to form, simpler is better approach, the end result is not only a great nostalgic reminder of why we started to game in the first place, but a solid platformer as well. Regardless of its history, or the debatable stigma attached to such a concept, getting a brand spanking new 2D platformer in this day and age is damn cool.

Rating	The rating scale in detail
8.5	+ Seeing 8-bit themes revisited with a new polygonal coat of paint just makes one feel all kinds of fuzzy inside. - The character models themselves aren't as clean as they could be, but retain a good amount of personality regardless.
9.0	++ Remixes are tasteful and used appropriately.
8.5	+ The classic 2D platforming still feels very solid and is quite enjoyable in its simplicity.
7.0	+ The typical Nintendo style and presentation one probably comes to expect at this point. -- The overworld maps, in comparison to those present in SMB3 and SMW, are uninteresting.
6.9	- A relatively short game with very little extras to enhance replayability... + ...But anything beyond a solid adventure and a few hidden worlds isn’t really expected. - The few added mini-games that you’ve probably already seen from Mario 64 come off as unnecessary filler.
8.6	+ While not the undeniable classic that its precursors were, New Super Mario Brothers still manages to push all your nostalgic buttons just right and is exactly what we should expect from modern day revivals of classic franchises.