Although there isn’t a ton of new content, Mario looks better than ever. The worlds appear crisp and clean, and there is a surprising amount of detail in the backgrounds. Fine lines appear vividly, and the monsters look great! Finally a goomba has a body instead of being portrayed as an odd-shaped block moving towards you. Also, Bowser really has spines! Spiny Bowser is much more intimidating than wee, turtle Bowser.
Again, the music is mostly the same stuff we’ve all heard before. There are some new overworld themes, but nothing spectacular. I will give kudos to the game for revamping some of the old themes, but largely they’re exactly the same.
The game is short too. There is only so many goombas to stomp or stars to collect. It does offer around five to seven hours of solid gameplay, but that’s if you’re headed straight through. The game does not demand that you finish all of the levels in the game to get to World 8, and on my first time through, I skipped two of the levels all together. If you are a perfectionist and want to collect all of the golden stars, you can go back and replay each level until you have every last one of them.
The stylus is not integrated well into the single player of New Super Mario Bros. The stylus is used only to tap your reserve item on the lower screen, but it’s a pain to hold your stylus while playing the game. If you’re not holding it, you’ll have to either hit the screen with your thumb (eewwww… greasy thumbprints!) or grab it out of the holder each time.
Access to the reserve items is necessary, and I wish it would have been left the way it’s been for years… when you downgrade in size or level, you get your reserve. I believe the selective reserve function was created so you could save those mega/shrinking mushrooms for a special time, but besides that, it’s a big pain in the ass.
New Super Mario Bros. does offer several great multiplayers! In a two-player, one person picks Mario and the other Luigi, and they each race through worlds while trying to collect more stars than the other. However, you can make your partner lose stars by jumping on him and then stealing them. Whoever ends with the most stars wins the match.
Also, as many as four players can compete in minigames utilizing the microphone and stylus. Players choose between one-on-one, puzzles, tables, or “action”. Pick one or several genres, and then choose either “shuffle” or “free-play”. Shuffle does exactly what you would guess, it shuffles between different levels.
Free-play works a little differently, as the loser of the match chooses the next game. Each participant needs a copy of the game (duh) and the built in Nintendo WiFi. Unfortunately, you cannot compete with people that aren’t sitting within a short distance from each other. It would be great if Nintendo could expand the WiFi to somewhere outside of the same frickin’ room.
