I beat the final bonus level of Mario Bros. Wonder today, and I just HAD to do a writeup on this gem:
Mario is the undisputed king of vidya, but when it comes to his trademark platforming games, the 2D and the 3D games have over the years definitely diverged in terms of quality. Mario absolutely DOMINATES when it comes to 3D platformers, with any sensible list of the genre’s all-time greats being dominated by the portly plumber (the Galaxy games and Mario Odyssey especially being God-Tier). When it comes to the 2D platformers though….sure, back when Mario Bros. 3 and Mario World were still hot, new releases, no other 2D platformers could compare. But later during the SNES’s lifetime, both the Donkey Kong Country games and Yoshi’s Island would in my opinion end up dethroning Mario World. And on the Game Boy, the Wario Land games would easily surpass Mario’s earlier GB efforts.
It got even worse when the “New” Super Mario Bros. games failed to really elevate 2D Mario in any meaningful way, instead sticking to the tried and true formula, as well as a healthy (?) dose of nostalgia. While this proved to be an extremely commercially successful approach to 2D Mario, it ended up producing a series of games that were merely good rather than truly great. Meanwhile, more and more of Mario’s competitors kept surpassing him on his 2D home turf, including the likes of Kirby, Rayman (poor guy, we were just talking about him in a far more unpleasant context…), young upstarts like Shovel Knight, and even arguably Sonic (due to Sonic Mania being so damn good). When Sonic has better games than Mario, you know something has gone horribly wrong!
Apparently Nintendo themselves agreed, because after New Super Mario Bros. U in 2012, mainline 2D Mario platformers went on a looong break. They did however put out Mario Maker in 2015, and a Switch sequel in 2019. These games, giving millions of people the world over the chance to create any kind of 2D Mario level they wanted, unleashed a crap-ton of, well, crap levels, but also thousands upon thousands of brilliant 2D Mario levels that were ridiculously creative, finding countless brand new uses for long-established mechanics and completely redefining what 2D Mario gameplay could be. For me at least, vanilla 2D Mario games seemed painfully basic and even boring when compared to the cream of the Mario Maker crop. Some people even started arguing that Mario Maker rendered regular 2D Mario platformers obsolete. I should know, I was Some people.
However, there was also the faint hope that all the amazing levels being crafted in Mario Maker would end up inspiring Nintendo to finally step up their game. After all, why can’t 2D Mario games have the same kind of passion and effort put into them as the 3D Mario games, when for example modern 2D Donkey Kong games *do* get that kind of royal treatment? Mario Maker also reminded us of just how FUN 2D Mario is at its core, especially with modern, refined controls – running and jumping, collecting coins, stomping on Goombas, crushing turts, bouncing from enemy to enemy, at its core it’s all just so. damn. fun! And Nintendo can basically make fun Mario levels in their sleep at this point – so imagine how good 2D Mario gameplay could be if they actually went all out?
Well, now we no longer have to imagine, because that’s EXACTLY what Mario Bros. Wonder is – a 2D Mario platformer that got the Top-Tier 3D Mario treatment, and which is very clearly a product of the post-Mario Maker era. The fantastic 2D Mario core is still here, pristinely preserved, but now surrounded by an absolute embarrassment of riches when it comes to new ideas, additions and improvements. This feels like a supremely luxurious, decadent 2D Mario platformer, and I mean that in the best way possible, as a food critic evaluating a delicious desert.
In fact, let’s stick with the food analogy for a bit longer, because Mario Wonder’s greatness is due to so many different ingredients, any one of which could have served as the sole foundation of and justification for a new 2D Mario game if Nintendo were in one of their lazier moods – the vastly increased characters roster, the great new Power-Ups, the radically improved presentation, a fantastic new Flower Kingdom setting, by far the best 2D Mario world map ever, so many brand new, stunning vistas and environments, a ridiculous number of new enemies, creatures and game mechanics, the brand new badge system, and of course, all the weird, wild and wacky Wonder Flower effects. Take them all together, and you get a 2D Mario that feels startlingly fresh and exciting.
Let’s start with the visuals – while I’m very much a gameplay over graphics guy normally, it actually makes sense to focus a bit on the shallower side of things in this writeup, not only because, as I alluded to earlier, 2D Mario gameplay is ALWAYS going to be good unless you actively screw it up, but because a game from a big developer suffering from a shoddy presentation is a clear sign of laziness, lack of effort and lack of passion. It’s for example no coincidence that the mainline Switch Pokemon games look like shit. And when New Super Mario Bros. U on a HD console didn’t look all that much better than NSMB Wii, which itself didn’t look all that much better than a DS game, which wasn’t even among the more visually impressive games on that handheld, it told you loud and clear that Nintendo wasn’t putting as much effort into modern 2D Mario games as they ought to.
Meanwhile, Mario Bros. Wonder is a straight up gorgeous game! It’s not just that Wonder is graphically far superior to something like NSMBU on an objective level, with DRAMATICALLY improved animations, backgrounds, attention to detail and the like; it’s just SO much prettier in terms of all the environments, which are incomparably more colorful, creative and straight up interesting than anything ever seen in NSMBU, save for maybe Painted Swampland (the van Gogh level). It’s not just that the game is extremely colorful either, it’s how strong, vibrant and beautiful the colors are, and how good the art direction is, with even the levels utilizing a far more restrained color scheme looking simply beautiful. The game is just loaded with pure eye candy through and through, even before taking you on all sorts of acid trips from heaven. Honestly, I find it almost shocking for a 2D Mario game to look *this* good, and no wonder, because given how Mario Wonder represents such a massive graphical AND artistic improvement over NSMBU, it’s kinda like going directly from Mario 64 to Mario Galaxy, with the two games somehow sharing the same system.
Mario is the undisputed king of vidya, but when it comes to his trademark platforming games, the 2D and the 3D games have over the years definitely diverged in terms of quality. Mario absolutely DOMINATES when it comes to 3D platformers, with any sensible list of the genre’s all-time greats being dominated by the portly plumber (the Galaxy games and Mario Odyssey especially being God-Tier). When it comes to the 2D platformers though….sure, back when Mario Bros. 3 and Mario World were still hot, new releases, no other 2D platformers could compare. But later during the SNES’s lifetime, both the Donkey Kong Country games and Yoshi’s Island would in my opinion end up dethroning Mario World. And on the Game Boy, the Wario Land games would easily surpass Mario’s earlier GB efforts.
It got even worse when the “New” Super Mario Bros. games failed to really elevate 2D Mario in any meaningful way, instead sticking to the tried and true formula, as well as a healthy (?) dose of nostalgia. While this proved to be an extremely commercially successful approach to 2D Mario, it ended up producing a series of games that were merely good rather than truly great. Meanwhile, more and more of Mario’s competitors kept surpassing him on his 2D home turf, including the likes of Kirby, Rayman (poor guy, we were just talking about him in a far more unpleasant context…), young upstarts like Shovel Knight, and even arguably Sonic (due to Sonic Mania being so damn good). When Sonic has better games than Mario, you know something has gone horribly wrong!
Apparently Nintendo themselves agreed, because after New Super Mario Bros. U in 2012, mainline 2D Mario platformers went on a looong break. They did however put out Mario Maker in 2015, and a Switch sequel in 2019. These games, giving millions of people the world over the chance to create any kind of 2D Mario level they wanted, unleashed a crap-ton of, well, crap levels, but also thousands upon thousands of brilliant 2D Mario levels that were ridiculously creative, finding countless brand new uses for long-established mechanics and completely redefining what 2D Mario gameplay could be. For me at least, vanilla 2D Mario games seemed painfully basic and even boring when compared to the cream of the Mario Maker crop. Some people even started arguing that Mario Maker rendered regular 2D Mario platformers obsolete. I should know, I was Some people.
However, there was also the faint hope that all the amazing levels being crafted in Mario Maker would end up inspiring Nintendo to finally step up their game. After all, why can’t 2D Mario games have the same kind of passion and effort put into them as the 3D Mario games, when for example modern 2D Donkey Kong games *do* get that kind of royal treatment? Mario Maker also reminded us of just how FUN 2D Mario is at its core, especially with modern, refined controls – running and jumping, collecting coins, stomping on Goombas, crushing turts, bouncing from enemy to enemy, at its core it’s all just so. damn. fun! And Nintendo can basically make fun Mario levels in their sleep at this point – so imagine how good 2D Mario gameplay could be if they actually went all out?
Well, now we no longer have to imagine, because that’s EXACTLY what Mario Bros. Wonder is – a 2D Mario platformer that got the Top-Tier 3D Mario treatment, and which is very clearly a product of the post-Mario Maker era. The fantastic 2D Mario core is still here, pristinely preserved, but now surrounded by an absolute embarrassment of riches when it comes to new ideas, additions and improvements. This feels like a supremely luxurious, decadent 2D Mario platformer, and I mean that in the best way possible, as a food critic evaluating a delicious desert.
In fact, let’s stick with the food analogy for a bit longer, because Mario Wonder’s greatness is due to so many different ingredients, any one of which could have served as the sole foundation of and justification for a new 2D Mario game if Nintendo were in one of their lazier moods – the vastly increased characters roster, the great new Power-Ups, the radically improved presentation, a fantastic new Flower Kingdom setting, by far the best 2D Mario world map ever, so many brand new, stunning vistas and environments, a ridiculous number of new enemies, creatures and game mechanics, the brand new badge system, and of course, all the weird, wild and wacky Wonder Flower effects. Take them all together, and you get a 2D Mario that feels startlingly fresh and exciting.
Let’s start with the visuals – while I’m very much a gameplay over graphics guy normally, it actually makes sense to focus a bit on the shallower side of things in this writeup, not only because, as I alluded to earlier, 2D Mario gameplay is ALWAYS going to be good unless you actively screw it up, but because a game from a big developer suffering from a shoddy presentation is a clear sign of laziness, lack of effort and lack of passion. It’s for example no coincidence that the mainline Switch Pokemon games look like shit. And when New Super Mario Bros. U on a HD console didn’t look all that much better than NSMB Wii, which itself didn’t look all that much better than a DS game, which wasn’t even among the more visually impressive games on that handheld, it told you loud and clear that Nintendo wasn’t putting as much effort into modern 2D Mario games as they ought to.
Meanwhile, Mario Bros. Wonder is a straight up gorgeous game! It’s not just that Wonder is graphically far superior to something like NSMBU on an objective level, with DRAMATICALLY improved animations, backgrounds, attention to detail and the like; it’s just SO much prettier in terms of all the environments, which are incomparably more colorful, creative and straight up interesting than anything ever seen in NSMBU, save for maybe Painted Swampland (the van Gogh level). It’s not just that the game is extremely colorful either, it’s how strong, vibrant and beautiful the colors are, and how good the art direction is, with even the levels utilizing a far more restrained color scheme looking simply beautiful. The game is just loaded with pure eye candy through and through, even before taking you on all sorts of acid trips from heaven. Honestly, I find it almost shocking for a 2D Mario game to look *this* good, and no wonder, because given how Mario Wonder represents such a massive graphical AND artistic improvement over NSMBU, it’s kinda like going directly from Mario 64 to Mario Galaxy, with the two games somehow sharing the same system.
Of course, the gameplay is exceptional too – after playing it safe for so long, Nintendo this time decided to fill seemingly every level of Mario Wonder with new ideas, enemies and mechanics, to the point where you just never know what to expect, only that it’s bound to be great – it’s like being a kid again, with each new level you try out being like unwrapping a present on Christmas Day! Before its release, Nintendo claimed to have come up with more than 2000 new ideas while brainstorming for Mario Wonder, and after nearly hundred percenting the game, I believe them – not since Mario Galaxy 1 have I been this blown away by the level of creativity on display in a Mario game. That’s not to say that the game doesn’t blatantly steal ideas from other 2D platformers – in fact, it proudly steals from the best, as I saw various ideas and mechanics from the likes of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Rayman Legends and the 3D Kirby games popping up here and there, not only being brilliantly utilized, but expanded upon and taken to the next level.
Like in Yoshi’s Island, practically every level in Mario Wonder is so unique, beautiful, clever and well-designed that it almost feels like a miniature work of art. The levels are meticulously, painstakingly crafted, as you keep seeing great new mechanics be introduced, utilized in various fun and interesting ways, expanded upon and reinvented within the span of a couple of minutes, time and time again. Each enemy, each platform is placed with a purpose, creating levels that just as fun to carefully explore as they are to speedrun. One obvious example of this design philosophy at work is any level that requires you ride a platform (which in Wonder can take a great many different forms) – normally in 2D platformers, these kinds of levels are pretty boring due to being slow-paced, but Wonder is excellent in terms of constantly coming up with interesting obstacles and challenges to keep the experience fun and engaging. But what if you *still* don’t feel like riding the platform? Every time I decided to test it out, it turned out that precise platforming and lengthy leaps achieved by bouncing off various enemies would enable you ignore your intended ride altogether! You DO miss out on a bunch of secrets by playing such levels in this way, but it’s really cool nonetheless that you turn out to have that option.
I haven’t even mentioned that Wonder Flower, the defining feature of Mario Wonder. Touch a Wonder Flower, and something WEIRD will happen, taking the rulebook of the game and throwing it straight in the trash. Nintendo seemed to show off a great many bizarre, baffling and glorious Wonder Flower effects in the lead-up to this game’s release, so I was worried about them having done the same thing they did with Mario Odyssey back in 2017 – Spoiling the majority of the game’s great surprises way ahead of time. Thankfully, they seem to have been a good deal more disciplined when it came to their promotion of Mario Wonder, as I hadn’t even gotten past the 2nd level before I was hit with an incredibly cool Wonder Flower effect that I never saw coming. Despite how many Wonder Flower effects Nintendo showed off pre-release, we didn’t even see the half of it.
The levels in Mario Wonder already tend to be so good that they didn’t strictly speaking *need* the Wonder Flowers to complete them, but what they often do is taking already great levels and make them truly amazing. The actual Wonder Flower effects tend to range from “oh, that’s neat I guess” to “HOLY SHIT, THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!”, with only a couple of actual duds. Some effects do get re-used, but they’re usually recontextualized in such cool ways that these instances of flower recycling rarely feel disappointing.
In addition to these “traditional” levels, Mario Wonder also has plenty of shorter gimmick levels, which can involve everything from killing a bunch of enemies as quickly as possible to sniffing out hidden blocks, or Break levels that feature nothing that can kill you, but which can still involve neat ideas, like rhythmically timing your jumps to help play a classic Mario song. Most notably, there are Badge Challenge levels that require the use of specific badge abilities to complete them. These are really great, because they mean that even people like me, who generally shy away from using the badges to make the game more challenging, still get the chance to play around with all the cool new badge abilities within settings tailor-made for them.
And really, all the different types of levels really bring home just how inspired Wonder has been by Mario Maker – there is so much here, from speedrun levels to musically themed levels, that I really can’t imagine Nintendo leaning so heavily into unless they’d seen how well-received such levels were in Mario Maker. Same with the more puzzle-heavy levels, and levels focused more on spectacle than traditional 2D Mario platforming. As a huge Mario Maker fan, it’s great to see so much of not only the creativity, but the richness and versatility of the 2D Mario setting be so well reflected in an actual flagship 2D Mario game.
Another really pleasant surprise was this game’s world map, which is the best of both worlds – specifically, the best of Mario World and Mario 3D World. Like in the SNES Mario World, you can at various points unlock alternate paths that can prove very rewarding, and take you to some cool and unexpected locations. And like in 3D World, there are various parts of the map that you can freely walk around in and explore. But it all works better than it did in either of those games, because compared to SNES Mario World, there are just so many more meaningful alternate paths to take and unlock, and there are many levels (and even some worlds) that you can tackle in whatever order you choose. And unlike in Mario 3D World, exploring the map is actually *rewarding* in Mario Wonder, to the point of enabling you discover a significant number of secret levels. Additionally, there are sometimes NPCs to interact with on the world map, other, more minor secrets to find and other good stuff. For me, it was just really satisfying to finally see the underlying potential of 3D World’s explorable world map be fully realized in this way.
Like in Yoshi’s Island, practically every level in Mario Wonder is so unique, beautiful, clever and well-designed that it almost feels like a miniature work of art. The levels are meticulously, painstakingly crafted, as you keep seeing great new mechanics be introduced, utilized in various fun and interesting ways, expanded upon and reinvented within the span of a couple of minutes, time and time again. Each enemy, each platform is placed with a purpose, creating levels that just as fun to carefully explore as they are to speedrun. One obvious example of this design philosophy at work is any level that requires you ride a platform (which in Wonder can take a great many different forms) – normally in 2D platformers, these kinds of levels are pretty boring due to being slow-paced, but Wonder is excellent in terms of constantly coming up with interesting obstacles and challenges to keep the experience fun and engaging. But what if you *still* don’t feel like riding the platform? Every time I decided to test it out, it turned out that precise platforming and lengthy leaps achieved by bouncing off various enemies would enable you ignore your intended ride altogether! You DO miss out on a bunch of secrets by playing such levels in this way, but it’s really cool nonetheless that you turn out to have that option.
I haven’t even mentioned that Wonder Flower, the defining feature of Mario Wonder. Touch a Wonder Flower, and something WEIRD will happen, taking the rulebook of the game and throwing it straight in the trash. Nintendo seemed to show off a great many bizarre, baffling and glorious Wonder Flower effects in the lead-up to this game’s release, so I was worried about them having done the same thing they did with Mario Odyssey back in 2017 – Spoiling the majority of the game’s great surprises way ahead of time. Thankfully, they seem to have been a good deal more disciplined when it came to their promotion of Mario Wonder, as I hadn’t even gotten past the 2nd level before I was hit with an incredibly cool Wonder Flower effect that I never saw coming. Despite how many Wonder Flower effects Nintendo showed off pre-release, we didn’t even see the half of it.
The levels in Mario Wonder already tend to be so good that they didn’t strictly speaking *need* the Wonder Flowers to complete them, but what they often do is taking already great levels and make them truly amazing. The actual Wonder Flower effects tend to range from “oh, that’s neat I guess” to “HOLY SHIT, THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!”, with only a couple of actual duds. Some effects do get re-used, but they’re usually recontextualized in such cool ways that these instances of flower recycling rarely feel disappointing.
In addition to these “traditional” levels, Mario Wonder also has plenty of shorter gimmick levels, which can involve everything from killing a bunch of enemies as quickly as possible to sniffing out hidden blocks, or Break levels that feature nothing that can kill you, but which can still involve neat ideas, like rhythmically timing your jumps to help play a classic Mario song. Most notably, there are Badge Challenge levels that require the use of specific badge abilities to complete them. These are really great, because they mean that even people like me, who generally shy away from using the badges to make the game more challenging, still get the chance to play around with all the cool new badge abilities within settings tailor-made for them.
And really, all the different types of levels really bring home just how inspired Wonder has been by Mario Maker – there is so much here, from speedrun levels to musically themed levels, that I really can’t imagine Nintendo leaning so heavily into unless they’d seen how well-received such levels were in Mario Maker. Same with the more puzzle-heavy levels, and levels focused more on spectacle than traditional 2D Mario platforming. As a huge Mario Maker fan, it’s great to see so much of not only the creativity, but the richness and versatility of the 2D Mario setting be so well reflected in an actual flagship 2D Mario game.
Another really pleasant surprise was this game’s world map, which is the best of both worlds – specifically, the best of Mario World and Mario 3D World. Like in the SNES Mario World, you can at various points unlock alternate paths that can prove very rewarding, and take you to some cool and unexpected locations. And like in 3D World, there are various parts of the map that you can freely walk around in and explore. But it all works better than it did in either of those games, because compared to SNES Mario World, there are just so many more meaningful alternate paths to take and unlock, and there are many levels (and even some worlds) that you can tackle in whatever order you choose. And unlike in Mario 3D World, exploring the map is actually *rewarding* in Mario Wonder, to the point of enabling you discover a significant number of secret levels. Additionally, there are sometimes NPCs to interact with on the world map, other, more minor secrets to find and other good stuff. For me, it was just really satisfying to finally see the underlying potential of 3D World’s explorable world map be fully realized in this way.
That said, Mario Wonder is not without its faults – most notably, the bosses. Here, for some baffling reason, Wonder blows it on every level, with the boss battles not only completely failing to measure up to the rest of the game, but even feeling like a DOWNGRADE from what we got in the New Super Mario Bros. games. The Koopalings are gone again, so what you get is a surprisingly low number of fights (two of the main worlds literally have NO boss battle at the end!), against Bowser Jr. only, until the very final boss battle against Bowser himself (which is a decent enough battle I guess, but still disappointing). And while a few different Wonder Flower gimmicks are thrown in to spice up the Bowser Jr. fights, they’re all still extremely easy, short boss battles against the same character, who basically attacks the same way every time, and who you keep defeating in the very same manner.
Nani dafuq? What even happened here? How can a game be THIS good, boast SUCH ridiculous levels of variety and creativity, yet feature such lazy, repetitive and uninspired boss battles? Supposedly the developers had no hard deadline to worry about while developing Mario Wonder, so it shouldn’t be a case of the game being rushed – did they just not care about boss battles? Maybe this too was Mario Maker influencing the devs – it’s really hard to create truly good boss battles in the Mario Maker level editors, given the limited tools available (and Meowser in the 3D World mode is SUCH a fucking nigger, holy shit, that fucker has ruined so many levels on his own!). It’s a crying shame, because despite Mario 64’s bosses being kinda shit, the boss battles in the 3D Mario games have consistently improved over the years (3D Land and arguably 3D World excepted), with Mario Odyssey especially boasting a great selection of bosses. This is one area where even a radically improved 2D Mario still trails far behind the best 3D efforts.
There are other issues too – while pretty lengthy for a 2D platformer, this is still a game that merely takes like 15-20 hours to 100%, which might seem inadequate for a full price 2023 console release. Most of the levels are also quite easy, even if you don’t play as Easy-Mode characters like Yoshi and avoid the badges. The fact that the game's Purple Coin collectables stay collected even if you die right afterwards, without reaching a checkpoint, is really stupid too (I know the 3D World Switch port also implemented this kind of dumb change, but somehow it feels worse here) since, as that one famous Mario essay pointed out, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value - a tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. Perchance.
...or to put it more succinctly, such easily collected Purple Coins rob the levels of potential challenge and replay value for no good reason.
That said, in terms of the amount of fun packed into each hour, I struggle to come up with a single other game that beats Mario Wonder. And the game DOES boast some genuinely challenging (as well as really cool and well-designed) bonus levels, some of which can become available relatively early, quite unlike certain modern 3D Mario titles, which reserve all the actual challenge for the post-game. The final challenge level in Wonder legit came close to breaking me. Remember what I said about each level in Mario Wonder being like a Christmas present you unwrap? Well, the final gift box turned out to contain a spanking paddle – Ouchy ouch!
As for where Mario Wonder ends up on my Based Morality Scale, it’s an easy Neutral score – this is a thoroughly apolitical game, focused purely on being fun for everyone. There are multiple playable female characters this time around, and no Rescue The Princess plot, but there’s absolutely zero attempt to push a Girl Power narrative, with nothing even resembling the borderline case we saw during Mario Odyssey’s ending. I also only counted one case of singular they being used, and it was arguably justified (one of the chatterbox flowers that comment on what’s happening during gameplay mention some unidentifiable figure in the background of the level and refers to said character using the “they” pronoun). At worst, it’s somewhat bad writing, but it sure as hell doesn’t push the “non-binary” gender neutral nonsense, which games games like Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 4 now do. And compared to ACTUAL Cultural Marxist games, like that Soyny Spider-Man garbage which released the same week as Mario, the purity and innocence of Mario Wonder is all the more welcome.
….and no, I’m not gonna bash Mario Wonder for some of its voice actors apparently being total faggots. First of all, voice actors are tools, nothing more, they have no “ownership” of the characters they voice. Remember Pyra’s English-language VA trying to rewrite the ending of Xenoblade 2? Yeah, it doesn’t work like that, you have no power here bitch, you’re not Pyra, you’re just one of the femoids who over the years have voiced her. As fun as it is to imagine characters like Broly and Edward Elric WELL AKTHUALLY being anti-Yaoi Christians, voice actors aren’t that powerful. Secondly, pretty much all English-language VAs are evil nowadays, that should be your default assumption. Remember how Vic Mignogna, the guy I just referenced, got MeToo’d and Blacklisted specifically because he wasn’t an SJW freak? So yeah, odds are that any given English-language vidya VA is gonna be a piece of shit, but when I judge a particular game, I judge it on the basis on the content that’s actually there in the game, not by whatever stupid shit some stupid VA says on social media.
When all is said and done, Mario Bros. Wonder feels like a giant leap forward for the 2D Mario series. For a 2D Mario to be THIS gorgeous, and THIS varied, imaginative and unpredictable still feels kinda surreal – but of course, being surreal and surprising is a big part of this game’s identity. The end result has been an absolutely incredible experience, and my 2nd favorite 2D platformer of all time, only trailing Yoshi’s Island. And if we ever get a Mario Bros. Wonder 2, with even more levels, and boss battles that are actually good, even that timeless classic would probably end up dethroned.
Nani dafuq? What even happened here? How can a game be THIS good, boast SUCH ridiculous levels of variety and creativity, yet feature such lazy, repetitive and uninspired boss battles? Supposedly the developers had no hard deadline to worry about while developing Mario Wonder, so it shouldn’t be a case of the game being rushed – did they just not care about boss battles? Maybe this too was Mario Maker influencing the devs – it’s really hard to create truly good boss battles in the Mario Maker level editors, given the limited tools available (and Meowser in the 3D World mode is SUCH a fucking nigger, holy shit, that fucker has ruined so many levels on his own!). It’s a crying shame, because despite Mario 64’s bosses being kinda shit, the boss battles in the 3D Mario games have consistently improved over the years (3D Land and arguably 3D World excepted), with Mario Odyssey especially boasting a great selection of bosses. This is one area where even a radically improved 2D Mario still trails far behind the best 3D efforts.
There are other issues too – while pretty lengthy for a 2D platformer, this is still a game that merely takes like 15-20 hours to 100%, which might seem inadequate for a full price 2023 console release. Most of the levels are also quite easy, even if you don’t play as Easy-Mode characters like Yoshi and avoid the badges. The fact that the game's Purple Coin collectables stay collected even if you die right afterwards, without reaching a checkpoint, is really stupid too (I know the 3D World Switch port also implemented this kind of dumb change, but somehow it feels worse here) since, as that one famous Mario essay pointed out, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value - a tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. Perchance.
...or to put it more succinctly, such easily collected Purple Coins rob the levels of potential challenge and replay value for no good reason.
That said, in terms of the amount of fun packed into each hour, I struggle to come up with a single other game that beats Mario Wonder. And the game DOES boast some genuinely challenging (as well as really cool and well-designed) bonus levels, some of which can become available relatively early, quite unlike certain modern 3D Mario titles, which reserve all the actual challenge for the post-game. The final challenge level in Wonder legit came close to breaking me. Remember what I said about each level in Mario Wonder being like a Christmas present you unwrap? Well, the final gift box turned out to contain a spanking paddle – Ouchy ouch!
As for where Mario Wonder ends up on my Based Morality Scale, it’s an easy Neutral score – this is a thoroughly apolitical game, focused purely on being fun for everyone. There are multiple playable female characters this time around, and no Rescue The Princess plot, but there’s absolutely zero attempt to push a Girl Power narrative, with nothing even resembling the borderline case we saw during Mario Odyssey’s ending. I also only counted one case of singular they being used, and it was arguably justified (one of the chatterbox flowers that comment on what’s happening during gameplay mention some unidentifiable figure in the background of the level and refers to said character using the “they” pronoun). At worst, it’s somewhat bad writing, but it sure as hell doesn’t push the “non-binary” gender neutral nonsense, which games games like Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 4 now do. And compared to ACTUAL Cultural Marxist games, like that Soyny Spider-Man garbage which released the same week as Mario, the purity and innocence of Mario Wonder is all the more welcome.
….and no, I’m not gonna bash Mario Wonder for some of its voice actors apparently being total faggots. First of all, voice actors are tools, nothing more, they have no “ownership” of the characters they voice. Remember Pyra’s English-language VA trying to rewrite the ending of Xenoblade 2? Yeah, it doesn’t work like that, you have no power here bitch, you’re not Pyra, you’re just one of the femoids who over the years have voiced her. As fun as it is to imagine characters like Broly and Edward Elric WELL AKTHUALLY being anti-Yaoi Christians, voice actors aren’t that powerful. Secondly, pretty much all English-language VAs are evil nowadays, that should be your default assumption. Remember how Vic Mignogna, the guy I just referenced, got MeToo’d and Blacklisted specifically because he wasn’t an SJW freak? So yeah, odds are that any given English-language vidya VA is gonna be a piece of shit, but when I judge a particular game, I judge it on the basis on the content that’s actually there in the game, not by whatever stupid shit some stupid VA says on social media.
When all is said and done, Mario Bros. Wonder feels like a giant leap forward for the 2D Mario series. For a 2D Mario to be THIS gorgeous, and THIS varied, imaginative and unpredictable still feels kinda surreal – but of course, being surreal and surprising is a big part of this game’s identity. The end result has been an absolutely incredible experience, and my 2nd favorite 2D platformer of all time, only trailing Yoshi’s Island. And if we ever get a Mario Bros. Wonder 2, with even more levels, and boss battles that are actually good, even that timeless classic would probably end up dethroned.
@ChristiJunior
Even though I love that game, whatever happened to Charles Martinet, why did he stop voicing Mario?
@helldiverliberator I'm not sure an actual reason was ever provided. Martinet has continued to work for Nintendo as some sort of good-will ambassador, so there doesn't seem to be any bad blood, but I dunno whether Nintendo considered him too old (they do seem increasingly keen on Mario being no older than early 20s), or whether he himself felt that he was increasingly struggling to do the Mario character voices properly.
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@ChristiJunior
Well, I mean, he did the voice of Mario for nearly 30 years, so it is probably taking a toll on him. However, he did say that he did not want to retire as the voice of Mario, and yet Nintendo replaced him.
