Hands-on with Mario Wonder, which freshens up one of Nintendo’s oldest formulas

Enlarge / Super Mario Bros. Wonder looks familiar, but it does more to change the 2D Mario formula than older New Super Mario Bros. games. (credit: Nintendo)

I have 100 percent cleared all four New Super Mario Bros. games, including the Super Luigi U expansion, so I’d say that I have enjoyed them all. But that “New” in the title could feel unearned; most of the games, especially the Wii and Wii U/Switch versions, felt like remixes of ideas that had been dreamed up for Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World decades before. Three-dimensional Mario was for experimentation and pushing boundaries; two-dimensional Mario was for playing a (thoughtfully designed, fun) riff on a thing that children of the '80s and '90s had probably played before.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is not that kind of 2D Mario game. Yes, it’s still a side-scrolling platformer, and yes, anyone who has played a New SMB game will immediately be familiar with the basics. But the rules of movement and progression have been changed through a combination of new power-ups, additive “badges” that customize your character, and “Wonder Flowers” that fling every single level into a state of psychedelic chaos. It’s two-dimensional Mario that, for the first time in a very long time, is trying something that feels new.

Nintendo set up a demo session for previewers to get around 25 minutes of guided hands-on time with the game, during which I played a handful of levels from early in the game and a couple of levels from later worlds. I was only able to play a small and pre-selected sliver of what is in the game, but that's enough to say that it definitely doesn't just feel like another New Super Mario Bros. sequel.