Wowie Zowie! Let's talk about Super Mario Bros Wonder!

[JBear]

Yeah, I was a lot more excited about discovering secret exits until I learned here that the UI conveys their presence (which I guess is on me for reading this thread). The first couple I found before learning this contributed a lot to that feeling of playing Super Mario World for the first time, when my only way to find out where secret exits were was by experimentation and playground rumour. (Yes, I know, they were red dots, but there was no forum thread to spoil that for me, and I didn't know about it until I was an adult.)

 

[Bongo]

There is no post-game as such, because it's accessible before defeating Bowser.

 

[Issun]

Just finished the first castle and, if we're not counting Yoshi's Island, this is easily the best 2D Mario since Super Mario world. What an imaginative romp.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

If the Switch2 is indeed coming out next year, it's weird that Ninty didn't pocket this game to launch on that. Not complaining, just odd

 

[Issun]

If the Switch2 is indeed coming out next year, it's weird that Ninty didn't pocket this game to launch on that. Not complaining, just odd

3D Mario is still the tentpole version of Mario, so that may be what they're going with. A new Animal Crossing may also be a possibiliyt, since New Horizons rocketed it up to near peer status with the Big 3 of Mario/Zelda/Pokemon.

 

[muteKi]

(Yes, I know, they were red dots, but there was no forum thread to spoil that for me, and I didn't know about it until I was an adult.)

But they, I, in the, with, mmmm, speakers, aaaaaaugh HOW THOUGH

 

[Issun]

Chalk me up as another one that loves the talking flowers. In fact, having them as an icon option for my Switch profile is the first time I've changed it since I chose Samus when I first got a Switch in 2019. I might replace it with the Skedaddler when it becomes available though, not sure.

 

[gogglebob]

I am a five year old, so I am always amused by a flower saying something like "boy, really love how everything here is boring and normal," while they are planted seven inches away from a Wonder Seed. Set up that punchline, and I will laugh every time.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

I am also pro-flower.

 

[Daikaiju]

I am also pro-flower.

Only fair, they're pro-us.

 

[Rascally Badger]

My enjoyment of this game increased a lot when I moved from playing it handheld to playing docked.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

My enjoyment of this game increased a lot when I moved from playing it handheld to playing docked.

How so?

 

[Rascally Badger]

How so?

It largely comes down to getting to use my pro controller. But is just feels more comfortable on a bigger screen.

 

[balder the brave]

Beat Bowser. Good game. Not quite as good as I was hyped up for.

Spoiler: opinions

Good
- Badges are fun
- Elephant power-up is great
- Wonder Seed moments are cool
- Rhythm game elements are a good addition
- Visually creative

Bad
- I feel like you're not supposed to say this anymore, but it's too easy. Easiest 2D Mario game by far. I know there's the Extra world and the 100% challenges, but it's a problem when the main game + story offers little feeling of reward.
- Story is a big meh. With emotional moments from Mario Odyssey and the two Zelda games this generation, I feel like something went wrong.
- Would like more to buy with the Flower Coins. Seems like a video game sin to include a currency and never give the player the sense of saving up to buy something cool.
- None of the enemies pose a threat, including the bosses
- Not enough open spaces to run and jump long distances. Feels kind of cramped. Missing a certain type of platforming challenge involving longer jumping.
- The bubble power-up seems cool at first but caused me some annoying deaths bounding off the bubbles by accident. I tried also to use the bubble for bounding high jumps, but this only seemed possible at a specific distance. It takes a while to run and catch up to them.

 

[Becksworth]

Going back replaying levels I skip past while playing through, and man was world 3 underwhelming.

 

[Becksworth]

Keep thinking to myself "Surely there is a secret path that unlocks several levels on those diamond moons on the map before the special world entrance...", but nope!

 

[madhair60]

honestly, I think this game peaks in World 2, and that bums me the fuck out. I'm on World 5 now and the game is very much in a groove, with Wonder effects becoming increasingly pedestrian, repetitive or - at worst - just annoying.

I'm liking the game, I'm gonna be finishing it, but it's remarkably easy in a way that I often find uninteresting, with levels that are just one and done with nothing memorable or interesting about them. The more I play the less I like.

But I'm still talking about like a 9 at worst. It is very very good. It's just becoming increasingly clear that it's not for me, really. It's not what I want from Mario, and it's a clear move by Nintendo into a less interesting space in the whole platforming thing.

it's petulant. I know.

 

[Lokii]

It's helpful to remember that Nintendo is trying to make a game with broad appeal. The intended audience is everyone from tykes to olds, and that's a hard spread to cater to. The last thing they want to do is alienate a general audience with a game that's too difficult or demanding, so we have a main campaign that can be seen through by someone who doesn't instinctively clamp on the b-button from start to finish--if they put in a little elbow grease--and special world stages for true doomheads who cut their teeth on 8-3 and Tubular.

As I chomped through endgame stages like potato chips I wondered if one day Nintendo might make a new Mario game exclusively for super players, sort of in the way Mario 2 Lost Levels was positioned, but I don't know if we'll ever see it. Mario, as the company mascot and with Mickey Mouse levels of recognizability, is saddled with that broad-appeal baggage. The days of Mario games as precision platformers are long behind us. But that's fine. Wonder plays like silk and there's tons of room for player expression and boundary pushing. I'm sure speedruns and other player-defined challenges will turn out to have plenty of meat to sustain high level play for a long while. I've already seen some crazy exploits that players have gotten up to with the bubble flower.

tdlr: its impossible to make a perfect game that satisfies everyone but Nintendo has done a pretty good job here crafting a game for babies and grandmas while also giving space and tools for players who want a more extreme experience. IE: I'm looking forward to that invisible badge run at AGDQ 2025.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I know what you mean, Madhair. It is a an odd situation, though. Wonder is consistently doing things I’ve never seen before, all the while I keep sitting there theorizing how many worlds I have left. I think playing a bunch of Kirby games in the past year and a half has changed my perspective on what a platformer could and should be.

I think the difficulty is finely tuned for casual players and group family sessions. I like how most of the tougher stages are interspersed in the worlds themselves, and not all locked behind the end of the main game this time.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

As I chomped through endgame stages like potato chips I wondered if one day Nintendo might make a new Mario game exclusively for super players, sort of in the way Mario 2 Lost Levels was positioned, but I don't know if we'll ever see it.

Wasn't New Super Luigi U positioned this way?

 

[madhair60]

Wasn't New Super Luigi U positioned this way?

ditto the New Super Mario Bros. 2 DLC stages.

---

I should make it clear and transparent that when I say "it's not what I want from Mario", that's not the same as me saying "this game shouldn't be like this".

I've had four - five, counting Super Luigi U - New Super Mario Bros. games that have been exactly what I want from Mario. I have been feasting for a long time. I'm not opposed to Mario evolving.

 

[Lokii]

I forgot Luigi U was supposed to be like the hard one. It wasn't tho, not really I didn't think. I guess it's harder because the stages have a short timer, but I didn't feel like they pushed the difficulty meaningfully via stage design... at least from what I can recall. It's been years so mea culpa if it's a right bastard.

 

[balder the brave]

I wonder if the game was pushed out before it was really done. Some of the worlds

Spoiler: 1

have no boss and just give you a Royal Seed after a level

. Others

Spoiler: 2

have that conveyer belt with a chomping robotic Bowser mouth

that are trivial to beat. Just wonder if there was a bigger plan for

Spoiler: 5

bosses

that was cut from the game.

And the story

Spoiler: 3

might have supposed to be bigger too. There's so little done with Prince Florian and the flower people other than "we need to save the world" and "thank you for saving our world." Come on, the isn't a single plot twist or bit of characterization.

 

[Daikaiju]

Deep lore is reserved for the RPGs and 3D games.

 

[Violentvixen]

A new Animal Crossing may also be a possibiliyt, since New Horizons rocketed it up to near peer status with the Big 3 of Mario/Zelda/Pokemon.

After just visiting the Kyoto Nintendo store, I can say the current big ones for Nintendo are Animal Crossing/Zelda/Mario/Splatoon/Pikmin. Pokemon isn't there but likely because it's just everywhere else. Here are two pictures of the fun little window art of all the characters walking that you see when you come up the escalator.

I have not played this yet because we've been so busy but damn there are ads for it everywhere in Japan!

 

[Bongo]

I decided to finally break out Nabbit in order to get the sixth and final badge, but it is done.

 

[Issun]

Finished it. What a joyous game!

 

[balder the brave]

Beat the special world stages - except the last one that requires a 100%. Fun, but

Spoiler: special world

wish they were harder and used the badge abilities more.

Started a go at a 100%, but burned out after an hour or two. I've never really enjoyed a 100%. I liked how Mario Odyssey did it...you don't have to get every single moon, just enough to make you go through all the levels again once or twice.

 

[estragon]

I'm pretty sure I'm just one or two steps away from 100%ing this, by which I mean I've currently working on learning how to consistently invisibly jump across the fish balloons in the last hidden level. I've mastered the rest of it and put it to sleep with 60 lives to come back after a break another day.

I don't have a problem with this game being mostly on the easier side, but I do think the sections where they ramp up the difficulty are really uneven and not as successful as the NSMB games. The NSMB games were incredibly divisive because of their aesthetics, but I hope one result of the difficulty discourse around Wonder is more people revisiting and reevaluating the NSMB series, which frequently had really strong optional endgame levels. I imagine they're easy if you play fanmade Kaizo Mario games, but I don't. And as far as official Nintendo Mario games go, I think the NSMB games were much more successful than Wonder at creating difficult levels that felt like tests of core Mario platforming, instead of doing something else.

I'll probably eventually learn the section of Wonder I'm working on, but I don't think it will give me nearly as much satisfaction as I got out of finishing the toughest challenges on NSMB Wii and NSMBU. For me the issue isn't that Wonder is too easy. I enjoy the easy levels as easy levels. My issue is that the hard levels aren't hard in an interesting way for me. I totally get why there needed to be extra hard levels that function as a showcase of Seeds and Badges. But I was also hoping for the kind of extra platforming challenges I loved from the NSMB endgames, and there's very little of that.

Again, repeating the caveat mentioned by others that this doesn't mean I think Wonder is a terrible game. I think it's excellent! It's just that it's also solidified for me just how special the NSMB games were, and that they really do have a meaningful niche that's separate from what came before or after.

 

[estragon]

I'm pretty sure I'm just one or two steps away from 100%ing this, by which I mean I've currently working on learning how to consistently invisibly jump across the fish balloons in the last hidden level. I've mastered the rest of it and put it to sleep with 60 lives to come back after a break another day.

That did end up being the very final section to learn. But, I ended up also doing the same level three more times because I kept missing the flagpole. Oops! But it's done now, and weirdly I'm kind of glad I missed it the first time because I do really feel like I learned the entire level instead of just getting lucky once.

I still do prefer the end- and postgames in the best NSMB games after thoroughly learning the final hidden level, but the easy levels in Wonder are definitely great stuff. I'll be very excited if they release a Luigi U style challenge levels expansion, and for the first entry in a new Mario series Wonder is off to a very strong start. I hope there's a much growth between Wonder and what comes next as there was been the original NSMB and NSMBU.