After having played New Super Mario Bros. Wii for a combined total of what had probably been an hour or more over the course of a few days at E3, and having gone through all ten stages they had prepared and included in the demo version (some, a few times), I was told about a couple features in particular stages that I had been missing. In one stage featuring a wooden-log raft à la Super Mario World, the first of the people playing to step on the raft gets control of the mounted floodlight, which is spun by tilting the Wii Remote left or right. (In another few levels, metal bridges work the same way, with the tilt moving the entire bridge).
Though it controls in essentially the same way, it's things like these that are going to come to typify New Super Mario Bros. Wii—feelings that you remember from playing the original Super Mario Bros. and this game's predecessor on the DS. This game's "propeller suit," a feather- and leaf-replacing power-up, puts Mario (or Luigi, or one of two Toads, depending on the number of players) into tiny flight garb with a spinning helmet that lets him shoot up into the air and either float harmlessly or quickly whack into the ground. The "penguin suit" turns you into (what else?) a penguin, as which you can zip along the icey slopes in those levels or toss balls of ice at foes, freezing them into friction-free rideable blocks.
These two power-ups alone provide enough entertaining new diversions, but add in a handful of your friends (all trying to grab the goodies before you) and you introduce a whole new dynamic—there are few things as satisfying as popping a greedy player off a Yoshi, doing a spin jump next to them to grab them (just shake the remote while holding run), then hucking them off a platform into the great blue abyss.
Speaking of which, the Yoshis are back, and they gobble up enemies, berries, and even player-thrown fireballs from those who have recently acquired a Fire Flower (the Yoshis can even shoot them back through the air). Madly scrambling to get to these little dino-friends is an element of the game all its own.
Competition, in multiplayer anyway, typifies the game for most players, but truce up to work cooperatively, and things get even more interesting. It looks like there's something up there, but you can't reach it alone. Maybe if you hop off there, and I—well not just the two of us, but what if you stand below us and we all jump...
As a co-op experience Mario's almost surreal, in that you're still competing for coins and lives and score (and one of three "big coins" peppered throughout the level), but at the end of the stage all it determines is your place: is this ranking more important than your fun? Not necessarily, you'll occasionally come to discover, to the lament or delight of your buddies, who can either join in the cause (for science!) or determinedly dash along to the finish line, clipping the rest of you off the left side of the screen to your mysterious demises.
Certain activities are more ambiguous: there is always a reason to collect coins, which count towards your personal score but which are tallied in a shared pool: grab a hundred between the four of you and you get an extra life for everyone, handy if you've run out of lives and are just spectating, less so if you want to get the most points for having the most remaining extra lives once you touch the flagpole. Exploit virtually the only genuinely frustrating element of the game and grab power-ups as other players prepare to make precarious jumps (the game "pauses" momentarily while any character enters a power-up animation, throwing off the timing of last-second launchers and usually sending them to their doom). Discover secret pipes, but not just for personal gain: everyone's pushed into the room in the order they entered the pipe, with anyone not getting to it in time being drug along anyway for a shot at the goodies (albeit a couple seconds leaving the pipe after the first one out).
The demo featured green, Yoshi's Island-looking stages, dark, purpley underground caves, a sky level with rotating platforms reminiscent of Sunshine, two castles atop which live the Koopa Kids (back after a long hiatus), a lava world, the aforementioned rafting level and ice stages, and these are only ten of them! (The full game is said to feature more than eighty).
It's hard to say much about how the single-player experience will coalesce, but with a multiplayer experience so enjoyable, you could forgive Mr. Miyamoto if one-player weren't as fresh and exciting as what we got to take for a spin. Releasing "this holiday," you'll have as great a chance to get some friends or family around it as anything else. Sometimes the adage seems true: it's good to play together.
Though it controls in essentially the same way, it's things like these that are going to come to typify New Super Mario Bros. Wii—feelings that you remember from playing the original Super Mario Bros. and this game's predecessor on the DS. This game's "propeller suit," a feather- and leaf-replacing power-up, puts Mario (or Luigi, or one of two Toads, depending on the number of players) into tiny flight garb with a spinning helmet that lets him shoot up into the air and either float harmlessly or quickly whack into the ground. The "penguin suit" turns you into (what else?) a penguin, as which you can zip along the icey slopes in those levels or toss balls of ice at foes, freezing them into friction-free rideable blocks.
These two power-ups alone provide enough entertaining new diversions, but add in a handful of your friends (all trying to grab the goodies before you) and you introduce a whole new dynamic—there are few things as satisfying as popping a greedy player off a Yoshi, doing a spin jump next to them to grab them (just shake the remote while holding run), then hucking them off a platform into the great blue abyss.
Speaking of which, the Yoshis are back, and they gobble up enemies, berries, and even player-thrown fireballs from those who have recently acquired a Fire Flower (the Yoshis can even shoot them back through the air). Madly scrambling to get to these little dino-friends is an element of the game all its own.
Competition, in multiplayer anyway, typifies the game for most players, but truce up to work cooperatively, and things get even more interesting. It looks like there's something up there, but you can't reach it alone. Maybe if you hop off there, and I—well not just the two of us, but what if you stand below us and we all jump...
As a co-op experience Mario's almost surreal, in that you're still competing for coins and lives and score (and one of three "big coins" peppered throughout the level), but at the end of the stage all it determines is your place: is this ranking more important than your fun? Not necessarily, you'll occasionally come to discover, to the lament or delight of your buddies, who can either join in the cause (for science!) or determinedly dash along to the finish line, clipping the rest of you off the left side of the screen to your mysterious demises.
Certain activities are more ambiguous: there is always a reason to collect coins, which count towards your personal score but which are tallied in a shared pool: grab a hundred between the four of you and you get an extra life for everyone, handy if you've run out of lives and are just spectating, less so if you want to get the most points for having the most remaining extra lives once you touch the flagpole. Exploit virtually the only genuinely frustrating element of the game and grab power-ups as other players prepare to make precarious jumps (the game "pauses" momentarily while any character enters a power-up animation, throwing off the timing of last-second launchers and usually sending them to their doom). Discover secret pipes, but not just for personal gain: everyone's pushed into the room in the order they entered the pipe, with anyone not getting to it in time being drug along anyway for a shot at the goodies (albeit a couple seconds leaving the pipe after the first one out).
The demo featured green, Yoshi's Island-looking stages, dark, purpley underground caves, a sky level with rotating platforms reminiscent of Sunshine, two castles atop which live the Koopa Kids (back after a long hiatus), a lava world, the aforementioned rafting level and ice stages, and these are only ten of them! (The full game is said to feature more than eighty).
It's hard to say much about how the single-player experience will coalesce, but with a multiplayer experience so enjoyable, you could forgive Mr. Miyamoto if one-player weren't as fresh and exciting as what we got to take for a spin. Releasing "this holiday," you'll have as great a chance to get some friends or family around it as anything else. Sometimes the adage seems true: it's good to play together.