anyone who doesn't like this has no taste
The main game has Bowser Jr. distracting mario and stealing peach, sending you on one hell of an adventure. There are 8 worlds just like the original Mario Bros., and the Mushroom and Fire Flowers are finally back, which gives all die hard mario fans like myself a warm fuzzy feeling. It also takes after super mario bros three, following the same level set up (examples being level one is normal, 2 is desert, the final level is a hellish wasteland etc.) And its on a map like in mario 3 and world, and like Mario World, you can play each world as much as you want. You are 3-D which gives you the ability to do wall jumps and triple spin jumps like in Super Mario 64 and sunshine, and then a few new original features. There are three new abilities, Mega mushroom, which makes mario huge and allows him to destroy anything and everything in his path, mini mario, for those hard to reach places, and shell mario, which gives you a quick way to get around and take out enemies. Also every level has three hidden gigantic coins, when you get five, you can open a toad house. And the levels and maps are riddled with alternate routes and secret passages. Not to mention the variety of the levels. Each world has roughly ten levels, and each one has something unique to it.
Along with all the there is a minigame room where you can play 18 minigames, much like in the mario party series. There are a wide variety from having mario bounce on fly guys via the stylus, to playing a game of poker with luigi.
There are only three bad things. One, there is no racoon/cape abillity so mario will have to stay grounded. Two, The game can be annoyingly difficult every once in a while. And Three, In 20 years kids will be like, what the hell, why is an old school mario game called new super mario bros?\
anyways, when you add it all up with its great graphics and sounds you get nothing less than a great game thats just plain fun.