Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023) [Switch] review

“Hey Paisanos! It’s the Super Mario Brothers Super Show!”

Every Saturday morning as a kid, I would wake up early and run into the living room for my favorite part of the week: watching cartoons ‘til dad took over the TV at noon to watch college football. I got to pick the shows while my parents prepared breakfast. Each week, it was the same: Sonic the Hedgehog (SonicSATAM) and The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, but my favorite was always Mario. I was carefree for a few hours, only concerned with the side content of my favorite video games. I would sit mere feet from the TV, my Mario comics and Sonic plush at my side, enrapt and delighted by the animation as the pleasant scents of slightly overcooked cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs filled the house. Then, when the cartoons ended, I would immediately boot up Super Mario Bros. 3, experiencing the familiar levels anew with fresh stories still in my mind. I credit those cartoons for making me love Mario games as more than just platformers where you “save the princess.” Super Mario Bros Wonder is like playing those Saturday morning cartoons.

Every Level a New Episode

Every level feels like a different episode of a kid’s show, introducing new creatures to encounter and power-ups to master. In the first world alone, Mario and friends meet a skittish scurry of chipmunks fleeing to protect their treasured acorns, trigger a buffalo stampede, and march in a singing Piranha Plant Parade (which has gone viral across video social media). Entire games could have been made from some of these ideas but Wonder only plays with each for one stage before moving on to the next, making levels memorable and never redundant.

Comic, Cartoony Fun

EveryMario game is known for its cartoonish tone, and  Super Mario Bros Wonder levels up all the trappings of what makes this tonality great. Gameplay is tight, revisiting the approachable challenge of the early days of Mario with modern mechanics, including a new “badge” system that allows the player to select helpful abilities (like a “Dolphin Kick” that makes these water levels some of the least irritating in the series). Music is catchy, fun, and often incorporated into gameplay. Sound effects are comedic and dynamic.

But the star of this game is the character and facial animations. Mario and friends have never felt so alive in a 2D side-scroller. They look at new enemies with curiosity, shiver in the cold, shudder at the ghost houses, and more. The artists for this game clearly had a great time bringing these characters to life. I chuckled every time Mario and Luigi reached back to grab their hats when getting sucked into a pipe or the way the characters struggled to fit into tight spaces when using the elephant power-up. One of my favorite animations is when Mario heroically poses after grabbing a fire flower power-up. When he started spitting flames at enemies, they’d all panic and flee. Koopas, goombas… you name it, all bowed down to the almighty Fire Mario. I would target new enemies just to see their fearful faces. It was a blast, if not a little dark!

Cooperative, Not Competitive

While I could play as several characters—Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Blue and Yellow Toad, as well as the easy-mode characters, the Yoshis and Nabbit— I always tend to choose Mario (probably because I’m a firstborn, naturally making me Player 1). However,  Super Mario Bros. Wonder made me want to choose other characters, despite the fact they all play the same, just to see the unique animations. Fortunately, thanks to couch co-op, friends would select other characters and I could see a variety of reactions to whatever was happening on screen.

Co-op also has been enhanced since the New Super Mario Bros. installments. For better or worse, gone are the days of bouncing into or tossing other players to their doom. The game becomes immensely more playable without this, especially in the tight platforming levels, but I can’t help but miss the element of betrayal and sabotage. Instead, this game offers a slight competitive angle, giving the camera’s focus and control to the player that “wins” by either staying alive or reaching the highest point on the flagpole first. This created an unspoken level of sabotage with my clearly toxic friend group.

New Standard for 2D Mario?

Super Mario Bros Wonder thrilled me from beginning to end. On the surface, some might criticize it as just more 2D Mario, but this game is not simple “business as usual.” It injects creativity into everything that has made Mario great since the beginning, now with technology that can innovate it even further. Because of this, it may very well be the new standard for 2D Mario games. So, regardless of how critics may stack Wonder against Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World’s level design and boss fights (Nintendo: bring back the koopalings!), Wonder does the one thing that matters most to me in this franchise: it takes me back to those early-90s Saturday mornings when I was just a carefree kid. I can’t help but smile knowing that today’s kids will cherish  Super Mario Bros Wonder that same way.

PIXEL PERFECT

Recommended

Editor-in-Chief of The Pixels, Wade (aka ProfNoctis) teaches and plays video games at the University of Alabama. His dissertation combined Judeo-Christian kingship and Final Fantasy XV. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, and Twitch.