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New Super Mario Bros. Game Review

New Super Mario Bros. is a 2006 platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It was the first official 2D Mario game in this decade and it is overall quite good.

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“Here I go!“

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This was the first 2D Mario game since ‘Yoshi’s Island’ and it was praised for its old-fashioned gameplay mechanics and the overall feel emulating those early nineties entries in the franchise. It is also widely considered to be one of the best games on the NDS. While I find it to be pretty strong, I also think it is somewhat overrated as it is not particularly authentic at anything that it does.

The plot is nothing to write home about. Mario must rescue Princess Peach from Bowser and that’s pretty much it. But it was meant to emulate the simplicity of the earliest games in the series, so the plot should not be considered a flaw here. My main issue, however, is the lack of innovation in the overall gameplay. While I loved seeing its retro designs and mechanics being brought back, I wanted at least a bit more originality to this product. There are some memorable, fresh additions here, but for the most part the game is too straightforward and way too easy.

You can play as either Mario or Luigi. You can jump, crouch, stomp on enemies and break walls. But the moves from ‘Super Mario 64’ and ‘Super Mario Sunshine’ are also added into the mixture. Those include the ground pound, wall jump and triple jump. Mario’s jumping does feel a bit floaty given that his sprite is too large in comparison to the blocks in the world, but the overall jumping mechanic worked as did all the other moves as the controls are great and the game runs smoothly throughout.

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There are eight worlds, each containing ten levels. The world map is shown on the second screen of the DS, which was a great choice for the console, but playing the game on an emulator is a tougher task as the screens fit the laptop screen awkwardly. The flag is brought back at the end of each level and those were pleasantly nostalgic for me as a big fan of the original game.

Each world ends with a boss and I honestly found these boss fights hugely uninspired. Most of them are not only ridiculously easy, but also very repetitive as the same mechanic is repeated constantly. Bowser Jr. appears and he either rushes toward you or jumps toward your direction. Then, he throws a Koopa shell that you have to stop and throw at him, then stomp him and you do that three times and the boss is defeated. Needless to say, this got tiresome pretty quickly and it’s the weakest element of otherwise strong gameplay.

As for the power-ups, there are six of them. The Super Mushroom and Fire Flower are back as is the classic Starman, but you also have three new power-ups introduced here for the first time. The Blue Koopa Shell lets you withdraw into a shell and perform a dash attack while the Mini and Mega-Mushroom cause you to shrink or grow large. All three were interesting and pretty fun to use, but the problem here is that they were mostly present in the first couple of worlds. They should have been included much more frequently.

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The first world is your standard first Mario world full of lush greenery and pleasant backgrounds. It is overly easy, but sweet. The second world is pleasantly reminiscent to ‘Super Mario Bros. 2’ in its beautiful Ancient Egyptian setting and great underground passages. The third world is solid, but containing too many water levels and those are always overly frustrating in platformers. The forest exteriors of the fourth world were cute and fun.

The ice levels of the fifth world were a whole lot of fun to play through and visually quite arresting. The desert sixth world was very well constructed, but those annoying enemies that throw stuff at you from the sky made these levels quite difficult. The seventh world is all in the sky and requiring a lot of precise platforming. The eighth world is very memorable in its purple color palette and the castle levels are great. All of these worlds are pretty strong. I just wish that they were a bit more defined in setting as the world building was only okay here.

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The multiplayer and single player mini-games are quite solid and enjoyable, though fleeting experiences. The best parts of this entire game are actually not the main gameplay, but the map and the big coins. The game uses this big map full of additional paths containing extra lives, power-ups etc. The map is easy to navigate and quite colorful, being pleasant reminiscent to ‘Super Mario Bros. 3’.

As for the aforementioned big coins, there are three of them in each level. They are so perfectly hidden in each level (some of them are actually hidden in highly mysterious, incredibly well concealed locations), requiring you to make a significant struggle to get to each and every one of them while also evading potential enemy danger. This collection part of the game was by far its most entertaining and most pleasingly time-inducing aspect. I just wish that some levels did not require you to be in Mini form as it was a nuisance to find those mushrooms. They are too sparse within the game’s world.

Graphically speaking, New Super Mario Bros. is a delight. It is a 2D game, but the characters and objects are rendered in 3D, resulting in a 2.5D effect that was both very pleasing to the eye and unique. The characters are very well designed, the backgrounds are beautiful and the world building is terrific. Thus, the game looks both traditional and modern, which was a perfect mixture that really worked.

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But the biggest highlight has to be the score. It is fantastic! The game features that very classical soundtrack that is inspired, but not copying the first game. There are a ton of great tunes here and the overall sound is impeccable. The level design is quite inspired at times with both the enemy placement and the use of different mechanics being very smartly incorporated. Mario also controls well, though his jumps can be floaty at times. The game’s length is too short when playing only the main campaign, but doing the extra stuff will prolong it significantly.