New Super Mario Bros: Wii

Cory, Travis and I all got together with a random fourth dude (he is of no consequence. Let us call him “Doug”) and played New Super Mario Bros: Wii this afternoon. The line was surprisingly short, because they had a whole slew of playable kiosks. Also, Charles Martinet was just standing around talking to people, because he is awesome. I danced with him, and there will be a video forthcoming. Anyway, the game supports four players, the first one playing Mario (Doug), the second Luigi (me), and then the third and fourth are blue (Cory) and yellow Toad (Travis “what are you…yellow?” Woodside), respectively. It is confusing that out of Nintendo’s oft-whored lineup of characters, they chose Blue and Yellow Toad for the game, but I guess they’re sticking with what worked in NSMB? After a kindly woman wearing green and red shell earrings taught us how to play the game (after I complimented her on her earrings, Travis gave me a look like I was a sick fuck), we jumped right in. If you want to know what happens, click on the link below to go to another page where I will write more. More that does not clutter up the main page.

So, the game is hectic. I keep saying to people that it is kind of a Four Swords Adventures but with Mario Bros., because that is essentially where the game is coming from. You can be cooperative and make your way through the level together, or you can be what I call a “Doug” and you can jump constantly on my fucking head like a shit. To the point where he would target me and be a jagoff through every goddamn level…this Doug was a punk. A rotten punk of a punk. Anyway, you collect coins, and hitting blocks caused multiple versions of items to sprout out for collecting. We saw the mushroom and fire flower, but other levels included a silly little propellor suit and a penguin suit. It was weird to see Toad’s in suits. It felt uneasy, in bad parts of my body.

The jumping was pretty floaty, and wiggling the joystick let you do the spin jump. Walljumping was in the game and very useful, especially since many of the stages featured crazy wobbling platforms where Doug would camp on the top and be a fuck goddamn him. I hate him so much. You can pick up smaller non-super versions of the characters, which can be hilarious if you are the one doing the carrying, but obnoxious if Doug has picked you up and is tossing you off the goddamit Doug.

We played three levels. The first was the one that was demoed at the press conference, which was your straightforward World 1-1 style Mario level. There were some “secret” areas which you found similar to how they are found in Yoshi’s Island. We uncovered a few accidentally, and it becomes a kind of free-for all for the coins and items. The second level was an underground gear level, with lava flows. This was my favorite of the three, and the level was much taller than the screen, allowing for fun secret hunting. The camera zooms in and out with a lot of ease, and it can be a little obnoxious when Doug is on the right side of the level and progressing and dragging the slower, more meticulous, less hateful players along. The final level was like a Super Mario Galaxy-style level with rotating and teetering large blocks. This was hectic – trying to do precision jumps when everyone else was bouncing around can be a little tough, but in the end if you died, you just show up as a bubble. Shaking the remote caused your bubble to fly to the nearest character, and you pop out of the bubble and are ready for action.

So, all in all – we all agreed it was a lot of fun. No online (sad), but playing with four local players allows you to follow Doug around a public convention hall and then brutally murder him next to a Tony Hawk game with a Tony Hawk Ride controller. Hey, whoa I am in jail how did I get here?