With every major release on the home consoles seemingly striving to push the boundaries of 3D visuals and gameplay it’s a breath of fresh air to play a game like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Following on from its predecessor on the DS, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is an unashamedly nostalgic celebration of the old school 2D Mario games that put Nintendo on the map during the 80’s and early 90’s. Where the DS game took its influences from the very first super Mario bros. game on the NES the Wii edition feels more like a successor to Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World.  Instead of attempting the impossible of bettering these cornerstones of 2D platforming, Nintendo has wisely chosen to build upon the fundamentals of these games. There’s plenty of nods to the previous games, returning characters (like series favourite Yoshi) and a familiar feel to veterans of the 8 and 16-bit era.

Despite these similarities to the older games it never becomes complacent. Each world follows tried and tested platforming themes, each level is expertly designed. The designers have made sure each provides its own unique twist to the familiar Mario gameplay with many of these design elements  unique to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and gives the game its own identity compared to its predecessors. The new power ups that are introduced are great fun to experiment with; my personal favourite would be the penguin suit that allows you to throw snowballs to freeze your enemies and also to glide along on your belly at speed allowing for some very impressive feats of platforming skill. Motion controls are used to control the tilt of certain platforms and activate the propeller Mario power up. Shaking the controller to pick up objects and enemies is not so intuitive but this is the only niggle with an otherwise excellent control scheme.

The influence of the older Mario games extends to aesthetics. The game has some gorgeous high resolution 2D backdrop art with 3D models for the characters and the odd environmental element. Everything is presented in bright vibrant colours with a sprinkling of visual touches like the clouds that part when you use the propeller power up. Even the music composed of remixes of classic Mario tracks that sound like the chiptunes of old and wouldn’t feel out of place in a Super NES game. While the mix of 2D and 3D never looks out of place, I would have preferred the game to be fully 2D. We have seen with recent games like A Boy and his Blob and Muramasa: the Demon Blade just how good fully animated 2D can look on the Wii.

The games biggest selling point is the simultaneous multiplayer aspect, a first for a Mario Bros. game. Anyone worried about the focus on the multiplayer aspect to the detriment of the single player experience will be happy to hear that NSMB Wii still provides a fantastic single player experience as no task in the game requires co-op play .