"Back in my day"
That's what I said when my girlfriend put the game in the Wii (which we had just purchased) and I heard Mario say "New Super Mario Bros. WIIHII!"
*Note... I had just got done playing a whole bunch of Crysis and Doom 3*
Shortly after that strange moment of confusion and pretending to laugh to make her feel happy I was reminded of a time long ago of playing Mario games. It was a cool feeling and I felt as if I had already mastered this game! I felt awesome as the blue toad running around and getting tons of coins and stuff! It was great. I thought to myself "a little bit of this and I can go back to ultra-violent killing!"..... I was wrong. We got to the underwater level in the first world and I was completely outnumbered and overtaken by schools of fish! I kept shouting "shoot more ice balls! Dont let them closer!" While laughing at how incredibly fun the difficulty was. In the first castle we lost all our lives and it was clear that this was going to require trying to find all my old Mario skill that was buried under 15 years of FPS game play on my PC.
Everything in this game was familiar but new, it was strange to remember how to solve certain puzzles in the game even though I had never seen these before. I new what almost everything was and at the same time had no idea what to expect! The boss fights were crazy and the insane number of bad guys was challenging but never so hard that we gave up!
I thought the Wii was going to be a piece of crap because of how childish the games were, but Wii Sports and Wii Play proved me wrong and this new game continued to prove to me that the Wii is a solid system that makes me so happy I got it! The sounds, sites and controls of this game were all familiar with enough new stuff to make it groundbreaking from my perspective. I had thought this kind of gaming was limited to crappy flash games, but once again, Nintendo has proved me wrong and invited back into the world of innocent gaming! Thank you Nintendo for the great game and for the Wii! I once thought the Wii was a great paperweight but now that I actually have one and have experienced just how great and fun this thing is, I am excited to find out how the rest of the games go! Sorry Bioshock 2... but I need to go get Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Galaxy! Maybe even Wii Sports Resort!
Thank You Nintendo for the Wii and for keeping the spirit of classic gaming alive in the new world of gaming!