New Super Mario Bros

It's been an awfully long time since he slid down a flagpole. Has Mario lost his bounce? Our review tells all.

	Version DS	Developer Nintendo	Publisher Nintendo	Genre Platform

By Carl Johnson

Make no mistake about it; Nintendo has conditioned all of our minds. Many of us were practically born into mushroom kingdom in the 1980's with fond memories of koopa smashing, shell shooting, and Bowser bashing. Executive Producer Satoru Iwata and game Supervisor Shigeru Miyamoto are undoubtedly aware that we are all hopeless Marioheads. And so as these Nintendo Gods have willed it to be, New Super Mario Bros is a joyful adventure romp that will make the retro gamer in all of us dance a little jig as we play through its 80+ levels.

The first side-scrolling Mario game in more than a decade comes to you in the form of 8 worlds, each with its own Mario Party-style overworld map and a handful of levels that correspond to it. The levels all end with a Super Mario Bros. 1-style flagpole and like that game, the higher up you catch the flag the more points you accumulate. Perhaps the biggest difference between this and good ol' Mario of yesteryear is that all the characters here are in the form of full polygon 3D, a difference that takes a bit of getting used to but makes up for it by adding a ton of flexibility to the game.

The 2D backgrounds maintain the retro feel while the game's 3D objects make almost anything possible, such as a volcano erupting in the background, causing an intimidating 3D boulder to fall from the sky in the foreground, crumbling the ground beneath it. Very cool. Great 3D effects are sprinkled throughout the game kind of random-like, each one feeling like a reward of sorts.

Most of the baddies that populate the worlds are veterans of past adventures, with massive variations and some original offerings as well. Think of New Super Mario Bros as every Mario adventure ever made, remixed. Power-ups in the game often fall into the remixed category; Mega Mushrooms that make Mario full-screen size thus destroying everything in his path, Mini Mushrooms to make Mario just a few pixels wide, and the super-nifty Blue Shell that allows Mario to become koopa-like in every way.

Familar power-ups include the Fire Flower, Invincible Starman, and the standard Super Mushroom. Full-screen Mario might be the coolest thing ever in a side-scroller. Ev-er. With lots of classic Mario tunes re-imagined and a myriad of nostalgic sound effects, the game deserves the use of headphones as well.

We'd love to know the plumber's secret, because with each passing year Mario gains flexibility. Moves this time around are more of the Super Mario 64 era, including wall jumps, triple jumps, and ground pounds. The classics are here as well, such as super-run (the only way for pros to play!)

What the game lacks in challenge it makes up for in extras. The game can be played through with ease, but it takes some skill and dedication to collect all of the 240 Star Coins (3 in each level) which allow you to open up new levels as well as buy wallpaper for your lower DS screen. And the extras don't stop there. With a multiplayer Mario verses Luigi game, a hidden Challenge Mode, and all the mini-games from Super Mario 64 DS reworked for multiplayer, this cart just keeps delivering the goods. We're especially fond of 'Sort or 'Splode,' a minigame that has you sort pink and black Bob-ombs with the stylus at an increasingly rapid pace.