Third Review (2019)
When New Super Mario Bros. released on the Nintendo DS in 2006, the game resurrected the series’ 2D glory to commercial and critical success. Garnering positive reaction across the industry and eventually selling more than thirty-million copies worldwide, the first 2D Super Mario since 1992’s Six Golden Coins (I don’t count the brilliant Yoshi’s Island due to drastic mechanical differences in gameplay) had ushered in a comeback for Nintendo’s famed mascot on the two-dimensional plane.
Three additional entries later in the New series (not including a port of the series’ pinnacle on Nintendo Switch, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe), familiarity has bred contempt. Discussion surrounding New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe brought forth a negative, anachronistically-charged reassessment of the series. Apparently, the games never reached the Nintendo standard of platforming excellence, regardless of their almost unanimous accolades at their release dates. Bedazzled critics and tens of millions of gamers, blinded with nostalgia at the release of each New Mario game, failed to notice the games’ bland aesthetics, unimaginative level design, and the limpest theme songs ever featured in Super Mario titles...or so the conspiracies allege.
Oddly, the New Super Mario games suffer from a skewed negative remembrance, unlike their progenitors. I do not say that the series did not have its detractors at its genesis, though. When I first played the game at its launch, I thoroughly enjoyed the playthrough, but it underwhelmed me with its sample-sized stages and slim offerings of enrichment of the Super Mario formula. It felt almost as barren in presentation and power-ups as the original Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System, an undisputed masterpiece whose successors would build upon that formula to create several more undisputed masterpieces. It just seemed that Nintendo had reversed course with New Super Mario Bros., stripping the series down instead of continuing to build it up.
Revisiting this Nintendo DS classic nearly a decade and a half later, however, has helped me realize the beauty of a scaled-back 2D Super Mario platformer, created for simple spurts of fun or engrossing, sustained long play on Nintendo’s best handheld.
Relative to its time, the Nintendo DS probably still stands as Nintendo’s most innovative hardware, and a pure, old-school style Super Mario game only balanced and diversified a software library whose most notable games pushed the touchscreen/dual-screens gimmick (an excellent gimmick if ever one existed). In New Super Mario Bros., Mario still ran and jumped through two-dimensional stages and slid down a flagpole at the end of them. He still leapt through a grassland, a desert, a sea world, an inferno, and more, en route to conquering eight such worlds. The mustachioed hero still found himself chasing after the kidnap-prone Princess Peach, journeying to save her from Bowser, King of Koopas, who evidently has never served a single day behind bars for habitually snatching a ruling monarch from her homeland and endangering her life. That peppy plumber, who’s never actually shown off any of his plumbing skills or plumbing license to the gaming community, still collected coins, consumed mushrooms, discovered secrets, and played around with fun, shape-shifting power-ups. New Super Mario Bros. simply succeeded as a fun Super Mario game. Retrospectively, it raises the question: who could have needed or could have wanted more than that?
One particular power-up actually gave gamers less, which amounted to more. The mini mushroom made its Super Mario debut in this game, and it added a welcomed mechanical lightness to Mario’s control in contrast to his normal and necessary weighty feel. Obviously, the mini mushroom shrank Mario significantly, hence the item’s name. Gravity’s weaker pull on mini Mario gave him much higher air-time during jumps; his instantaneous dramatic weight loss enabled him to run across water; and his small size aided him in accessing secret areas hidden within the smallest spaces and the tiniest, thinnest pipes found in The Mushroom Kingdom.
The importance of this one power-up in this single game eclipsed the value of any other power-up found in its respective Super Mario. Nintendo cleverly and sinisterly made two of the eight worlds only accessible through accessing a secret passage as mini Mario in New Super Mario Bros. Even the Warp Whistle in Super Mario Bros. 3 was an optional way to unlock later worlds.
Requiring gamers to feed Mario the mini mushroom to unlock additional, optional worlds signaled Nintendo’s further toying with the idea of deviating from expected linearity in its 2D Super Mario games, and New Super Mario Bros. did it as interestingly as any other in the franchise, rivaling the SNES masterpiece Super Mario World with its keyhole exits. Further, the placement of three golden Star Coins in each stage implored the completionist to veer off the familiar path in hopes of finding all the treasures. These Star Coin hunts would sometimes lead to discovering hidden areas, which may have then lead to finding a secret passage, which might have ultimately resulted in locating a secret exit, in turn opening a new stage or set of stages.
Secret stages in New Super Mario Bros. did not offer visual novelties or adversarial oddities such as that of a Star Road in Super Mario World, but they often underscore—in a more challenging sense—the spatially brilliant stage design accentuated by Mario’s tight controlling mechanics. This Mario’s aerobic ability harkened back to that of the original Super Mario Bros. with his restricted aerodynamics. However, his jumping height and distance closely resembled the feathery weightlessness of the Mario from Super Mario World. Additionally, he could double-jump, triple-jump, and wall-jump like the Mario from Super Mario 64. Boasting a diverse move repertoire not previously seen in a 2D Super Mario, our plump hero felt better-than-ever to control and to navigate through the obstacle course levels in New Super Mario Bros.
These stages ran the gamut of traditional Super Mario level designs, while adding those that acclimated to Mario’s newest power-ups. The first stage in the game contained a giant mushroom that upsized Mario to towering status, which allowed the player to pummel through the course obstacles, sending enemies, pipes, and even the flag pole flying into oblivion. Aside from the stages built for the mini mushroom and the giant mushroom, the rest of the bunch focused on the pure, superb Mario mechanics. Jumping on top of a goomba to flatten him or kicking a koopa shell felt as satisfying as ever. Mario even adorned a koopa shell himself with a new power-up that allowed him to roll across the stage while inside of it, and it granted him smoothly superior swimming skills in the delicate, straightforward water stages.
New Super Mario Bros. only showed its rough edges in its completionist tasks. The game rarely fed the player the mini mushroom, a necessary item for the completionist. This uncommon dispensation required the player to pinball around the world maps, backtracking to find that needed power-up to access an area in a certain stage, which could be lost with one mistake, with one hit from an enemy, causing the player to begin backtracking yet again. Nevertheless, the paradox of this painstaking process is that it made success in this regard feel more rewarding. It just could have benefited from better execution.
Many argued that the music could have been better, more original, but the fun bops in this title did not disappoint in the head-bobbing department. Arrangements lacked the complexity such as the jazzy rock tunes of Super Mario 64 or the ragtime doozies of Super Mario Bros. 2, but their simplistic, toned-down chamber charm accompanied the scaled-back visuals nicely.
Apart from the completionist tedium, New Super Mario Bros. rounded out nicely as a package that packed in the touchstone gameplay for which the series had long been renowned. It incorporated the mechanical strengths of both its 2D and 3D predecessors, an amalgam of gameplay that suited the small but fluidly-designed levels. On the little two-headed Nintendo handheld that could, New Super Mario Bros. brought a whole lot of fun.
Second Review (2010): I initially reviewed and rated this game a 7.9 in 2006. I boosted the score up to an 8.0, but left the same review. Going back to the game, I have been able to enjoy it more, realizing that a handheld Mario game won't easily reach the level of a console Mario game, and that this Mario game was targeted for younger/casual gamers. That said, "New Super Mario Bros." is a great handheld plat-former that any Mario fan and casual gamer can appreciate. Original review below:
First review (2006): New Super Mario Bros. doesn't have the most original title but what it does have is classic 2D Mario gameplay that any fan of the series will enjoy. The game's story, like most Mario titles, is extremely simple. Princess Peach has once again been kidnapped by Bowser's evil little son, whose name is, you guessed it, Bowser Jr. Mario once again, must leave his plumbing duties for now and rescue the princess. The game has a map much like Super Mario World where you must complete one stage to move to another stage. The platforming itself is very pure.
It's a traditional 2D platformer but Mario brings some of his 3D moves to the table. Such as double jump, triple jump, wall kick, and back flip. Mario & Luigi both control very smoothly and makes for accurate jumps. The same enemies from the old 2D Mario platformers are back. Goombas and Koopas will be your main foes with a few new ones here and there. There doesn't seem to be enough enemies in the stages though. A lot of areas in some of the game's stages feel very empty. New Super Mario Bros. does a nice job of combining gameplay from multiple 2D Mario platformers. This is a good thing except it sort of causes New Super Mario Bros. to have an identity crisis and leaves it without a very unique feel. The game is also very short and very easy to beat.
The game has a few newly added powerups. Not all of them feel necessary though. The BIG mushroom makes Mario as tall as the DS screen where you can just run through most of the level and take the fun out of everything. Well, the BIG shroom is fun at first but later you'll find yourself trying to avoid it. The turtle shell is also a power up that doesn't feel very rewarding. It's basically an extra coat of armor that makes Mario spin uncontrollably when he runs. The small shroom may be the games coolest powerup. It turns Mario into an itty bitty Italian, and it allows you to jump extremely high and run across water. The game's boss battles are very very disapointing. There are some interesting boss battles that give that feeling of nostalgia, but most of them are too mindless and easy to enjoy. New Super Mario Bros. is as bright and beautiful as any other Mario game before it. The mushroom kingdom has never looked better on a handheld. Character models are very well done. The music is a bit disapointing. It just isn't up to par with Mario's previous music. The sound effects are crisp. New Mario Bros. has some hidden stages and it'll bring you back to play it some more, but after you've completed the game once it'll start to collect some dust before you decide to pick it up again. New Super Mario Bros. is a good playing, looking, and sounding game, but it suffers a bit of an identity crisis.