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New Super Mario Bros.: I Like It, and Here’s Why!

~ Titus Richards ~ 2 Comments

New Super Mario Bros. is a series often maligned by the “purists” and “classic” fans of 2D Mario for being a same-y, nothing-new, over saturated series of games. This is a particularly amusing and ironic case of nostalgic bias and a clear misunderstanding of what exactly it means for a series to be unoriginal and over saturated. Let us take a trip down memory lane, and see just how silly the hatred for a return to form those said-same “fans” wanted since 1993 is.

First, it’d be smart to identify and describe the landscape of 2D Mario in the 90s and how Nintendo went about innovating the series… There was no attempt to innovate. After 1993 and the release of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins, Nintendo didn’t make any more 2D Mario games. They instead opted to go on to rerelease fever. They made the Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World compilation titles. These compilations gave graphical updates to the original trio of Super Mario titles on NES (and Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan a.k.a. The Lost Levels/Super Mario for Super Players), as well as a save system for said NES titles.

I am not trying to insinuate that All-Stars wasn’t a worthwhile release or substantial enough update to the Classics. On the contrary, a save system is a much appreciated addition to all of these titles, especially given the length of Super Mario Bros. 3 and the difficulty of The Lost Levels. The quality of life features and musical updates are also, for the most part, a step up. This is a solid collection and a bang for your buck, so much so that All-Stars got a rerelease on Wii, which was where I was introduced to the classic titles.

Good to be sure and worth SNES owner’s time, All-Stars was the definitive Mario package, and thankfully so, because Mario fans wouldn’t get a taste of another 2D Mario title until 1999 with the release of Super Mario Bros. Deluxe on Game Boy Color, which is funny because New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe came out quite recently.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe featured the original Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels as an unlockable extra. It had a calendar and card game, and extra goodies hidden around levels for players willing to search out for their secrets. It was actually a pretty cool package, despite being the third rerelease of a game from 14 years ago. The problem was its screen-crunch. To retain the original sprite quality of the NES game, Nintendo zoomed in the camera and made your line of sight very limited. Interestingly enough, when Nintendo was developing the original Super Mario Bros., it’s believed that the original camera was going to be zoomed in a similar fashion to the Game Boy Color port, but I can’t necessarily consider Nintendo’s decision an inexcusable offense. This was late-90s portable technology, and, let’s be real, I don’t know how they could have really done better.

After Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Nintendo began a new rerelease frenzy with the portable versions of famous Super Mario classics on the Game Boy Advance, selling them under the “Advance” series moniker. Super Mario Bros. 2 (Super Mario Advance), Super Mario World (Super Mario Advance 2), and Super Mario Bros. 3 (Super Mario Advance 4) were all the main-series Mario games rereleased. Yoshi’s Island was also rereleased as Super Mario Advance 3, but Yoshi’s Island had yet to be rereleased, so a port wasn’t necessarily a bad look, especially considering how different Yoshi’s Island is, even taking into account its original title being “Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island”.

The only issue fans truly had with the rereleases of these games is that nothing new was coming. Nintendo had yet to provide another 2D series Mario title. The only new levels to come from the Advance series were the e-Reader levels found in Super Mario Advance 4. There are a lot of levels in that package, but I can’t think of one person besides myself who owned an e-Reader or any e-Reader cards. Granted, the Wii U eShop rerelease of Super Mario Advance 4 comes with all the e-Reader levels, and I have played them. They’re good stuff, for the most part, mixing elements of Super Mario Bros. 2, 3, and Super Mario World to make an almost surreal package! Why they didn’t just use the concepts of e-Reader’s ideas for a new installment featuring a mesh of concepts throughout Mario’s history in 2D is beyond me. Maybe it’s because nobody cared about e-Reader? Poor e-Reader…

(Side note: The arcade classic Mario Bros. was rereleased in conjunction with all the Advance games and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, likely making it one of the most consistently rereleased video games of the 90s, if not in gaming history.)

You put all these things into perspective, realizing that 2D Mario has been dormant for 13 years with the exception of rereleases of older titles, and the announcement of New Super Mario Bros. seems less of a nostalgic cash-grab, and is more so Nintendo finally doing something new with a beloved series. New Super Mario Bros. gets released on the DS in 2006 and is loved by many. It had new power-ups, new stage gimmicks, new bosses, and great multiplayer fun through minigames and a versus mode where Mario and Luigi duke it out in death matches and Star-grabbing shenanigans.

Of course, what’s a Mario game without multiplayer co-op? Well, actually it’s every main-series Mario game that’s released up to 2009! I mean, the classic titles did have multiplayer in the sense that you take turns to do levels, but real-time, interactive co-op didn’t exist for Mario’s 2D or 3D titles. The developers needed something brick-breaking for this “New” Super Mario Bros. game coming out for the Nintendo Wii. What better way to spice up the ever-growing party machine that was the Wii than with an all-new, four player co-op game starring Mario?

New Super Mario Bros. Wii was the next step in interactive, couch co-op, family gaming for Nintendo’s main man. Finally, there would be no more getting mad at your brother for stealing your Star in Mario Party. Now you’d get mad at your brother stealing that Propeller Mushroom even though he already had the Propeller Suit on him! New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released to warm reception. It had been 3 years since the DS title, so it felt great seeing this title released. With all the new features, such as the various versus modes for multiplayer fun, New Super Mario Bros. was shaping up to be a popular Nintendo mainstay.

Fast-forward another 3 years, after the release of the 3DS and Wii U, and Nintendo decides to release New Super Mario Bros… 2? Yeah, for some strange reason, Wii didn’t count and the 3DS game was given the number treatment, making it the oddball in terms of naming convention. Disregarding that little quirk, it was actually a lot more fun than people make it out to be. Heavily inspired by Super Mario Bros. 3 in many ways, New Super Mario Bros. 2 featured a slightly restructured campaign, the long-awaited return of the  Raccoon Tail ability, and an entirely new goal. Collect 1,000,000 shiny, golden Coins across the game to become the richest player among your friends!

You can’t be expected to collect a million Coins in the short but sweet campaign provided in the main mode, but Nintendo has you covered with Coin Rush, a side mode and selling point of the game. In this mode, you chose a specific difficulty that would select three levels in the pool, and you have 100 seconds each level to make it to the end and maximize your coinage in one life. You essentially set up a speedrunning mini-gauntlet where your priority was money and not your own safety. Coin Rush is, above all else, a cautionary tale of late-stage Capitalism.

Coin Rush had Streetpass functionality, where you traded scores with people on Streetpass and challenged their high scores in the level set they faced. This along with the mini-DLC and co-op mode made New Super Mario Bros. 2 an ideal entry for 3DS players. If you wanted good pick-up-and-play 2D Mario action on the 3DS, you had this game. It’s solid and fun, and I can’t go wrong recommending it to newer and older fans.

The newest of the New Super Mario Bros. series, that I mentioned having gotten a port to Switch, was New Super Mario Bros. U, a game that came out, of course, on the Wii U. This game is the culmination of all the lessons learned from previous entries in the New series. You had improved level design, better co-op functionality, a Challenge Mode, a Coin Battle Mode with Coins and Star Coins you could manually set down in arenas (a possible hint as to what was to come a couple of years later), and a super solid DLC package released for the Year of Luigi, called New Super Luigi U, which was basically a more fair and fun version of The Lost Levels that featured all-new levels built around Luigi’s more vertical and slippery movement. It was such a big package, it got a separate physical release!

I would not hesitate to call New Super Mario Bros. U the most solid and optimized 2D Mario package there is. I’d also recommend those wanting to get into 2D Mario and have a Switch to get New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, a great way to experience both New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U wherever you are! There are even a few extra features for those who get the Deluxe version, but the base is still good and worth your while in my book.

New Super Mario Bros. U may feel like more of the same, but if “more of the same” means getting the best 2D Mario game out there, then I can’t really complain. I genuinely enjoy what these games have to offer, even more than what the classic games provide despite how fun they are. Is everyone that dislikes New Super Mario Bros. as a whole nostalgia blind? No. That’d be a stupid assumption. I do think that the series does get more flak than it deserves, and that it should be considered a fundamental part of Mario history. It shouldn’t be overlooked, and it shouldn’t be hated nearly as much as it is.

Each entry in the series does provide something new and different. Nintendo providing extra modes based on the context of the console sets each entry apart in a good way. It doesn’t stray to far from its core like Sonic does and I’d argue its quality across the board is to be commended and not taken for granted. To take quality for granted is a dangerous thing, and it’s what lead to the complacent AAA game industry we see today.

Overall, I find the New series to be a fun return and continued legacy for 2D Mario, but I can understand if people miss the older style of play, or maybe they want a new 2D experience that isn’t “New”. Maybe you don’t like the way Nintendo designed the levels of the New series and you want to show them up with your level design! It seems Nintendo has just the game for you, as Super Mario Maker 2 is releasing in June of 2019, and appears to have a lot of features and tools that fans will love.

Think you can make a better game than Nintendo did with the New Super Mario Bros. series? Prove it!

Undertale: Gem of an Indie

~ Titus Richards ~ Leave a comment

Undertale, the acclaimed indie masterpiece known for its subversion of tropes and excellent story-telling, has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch. I suppose now would be the perfect time for me to give my thoughts on the game. This review may feature minor spoilers involving gameplay and story details, so be warned that your enjoyment may be slightly barred by reading if you plan on going in blind. Let’s begin.

Undertale presents itself as a simple, NES-era RPG upon opening the game, with a simple narrative at the beginning explaining an ancient war between the human race and monster kind. The monsters lost the war and were sealed inside a mountain with the power of a mystic barrier. Fast forward to the year 201X, and it seems a child has fallen down a cavern on the mountain in which the monsters were sealed. The child is now trapped in the Underground, where all the monsters live. Now you, as the child, must brave the unknown and leave the mountain.

I’d rather not go into very specific story details, but subversion is heavily emphasized throughout all of Undertale’s story. No matter what decisions you make in how you influence the story of the Underground there will always be something interesting, funny, or sinister to find. How exactly do you influence the Underground and its fate? Well, it’s all a matter of mercy or murder. Indeed, Undertale is designed in a way that the decisions you make in battle directly affect the outcome of the events that unfold, whether it be to show kindness to those you encounter or killing the monsters where they stand.

The marketing doesn’t lie. You can go through all of Undertale without harming a single monster. No one has to die at all throughout the journey. However, being pacifistic can sometimes be a true test of patience, as you can’t gain any LV and increase your HP and DEF without killing monsters. Battles will be inherently more difficult the less you kill, like in any RPG, but it’s still more than doable if you gain a handle on the game’s base mechanics.

Of course, you could always go the easy route and simply kill with the FIGHT command, but doing that creates a bit of a distance between you and other NPCs, at least when killing at an excessive rate. Not only does it negatively impact those around you when you kill, but it’s also very boring, especially on a first playthrough, if all you do is kill. I honestly only recommend killing monsters if you are either really having trouble with the game’s battle system and need some stat boosts or just want to see the consequences of such behavior. The choice is yours and yours alone.

Then there’s the more difficult but more rewarding alternative. You can show monsters you don’t want to fight through the ACT command. ACTing a certain way can convince monsters to stop fighting, then through MERCY you can SPARE them. This suddenly transforms the turn-based RPG system into a sort of puzzle game. Every monster has commands and actions you can perform that are completely unique to them. There are 30+ monster types as well, so the variety is staggering, especially since every monster type has unique and interesting dialogue based on how the player interacts with them. I guarantee you will get a good chuckle out of at least half of the monsters you encounter if you seek out a peaceful solution.

Just know that the choices you will make matter more than you may expect, and certain tools and progression may be locked by killing monsters. Don’t let that stop you though, as the game is relatively short and you can always just RESET. No harm, no foul.

However, you aren’t the only one taking turns in these battles. Enemies you encounter, as you may expect, will attempt to attack and kill you. However, the design of enemy attacks is unique, interesting, and completely turns the Bullet-Hell genre on its head. You are taught in the beginning of the game that you move around in a box with your SOUL for the express purpose of dodging attacks that appear on enemy turns. Enemy attacks range from your standard bullet attacks that you expect from a “Bullet”-Hell, to crazy microgame-like challenges you may find in a WarioWare title. It’ll turn itself on its head and become a platformer, shooter, game of blocking bullets with a shield, and what have you. It’s just as cool and engaging as it sounds, and it keeps things fresh and exciting at all times, especially in Boss fights.

Every enemy has a unique attack, and you need to learn and master the techniques and technicalities of dodging said attacks. Enemies that are grouped together may also have unique team attacks exclusive to a group of two or three monsters. Getting a handle on dodging attacks can be a bit daunting at first, but all it takes is a little Determination to push forward and do what you need to do.

Overall, Undertale is a charming, unique, one-of-a-kind experience only captured by a few games that have the passion, love, and willingness to go the extra mile to succeed. It takes inspiration heavily from several places, but to call it a rip-off of any of those in which inspired it is an illogical, blind assertion and a disservice to Toby Fox and Tuyo Chang’s hard work to create something truly special. While I glossed over story in this review, let me assure you that it is a wild emotional rollercoaster that I have had the wonderful pleasure of experiencing. Undertale truly is a wonderful indie masterpiece that, after three years, is still adored by fans today, including myself. I whole-heartedly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of unique gameplay, quirky dialogue, fantastic music, and touching and deep story-telling.

If you haven’t already, pick it up today. You won’t be disappointed.