"Don't confuse nostalgia with quality"

Before you call me a "hater," know this: I love Mario. I love old school 2D platformers. I love my NES and my SNES. These are the games I cut my gaming teeth on as a child, so I was fully ready to fall in love with New Super Mario Bros. I had seen the cool-looking gameplay footage, and I had read the raving reviews. "It's a tribute to Mario's 2D roots," they said. I slapped down my pre-order, and I picked it up the very day it came out. I had long become bored of 3D platformers that all repeat the same boring formula. I was ready for a game like this to come along and serve as an antidote for those new school games, as a savior for platform gaming as we know it.

Imagine my shock, then, to find myself becoming increasingly frustrated and bored as I plodded along through this game. I was not enjoying myself to such a degree, that I often times put the game down, only to lack any motivation to pick it back up. I kept going, only because I had already spent money on the game, and because I wanted to desperately feel the same joy everyone else felt from playing this game. After picking up the game several times over the months since it came out, I can only come to one conclusion: This really is just an average platformer disguised with a coat of nostalgic paint.

Perhaps I had better start from the beginning. Just to let the fans know this is going to be like a "classic" Mario game, they rehash the "classic" plot. Bowser has kidnapped the princess, and it's Mario's job to go through many worlds and levels until you rescue her. This is very important, because the thing that always made the original Mario games great was the plot. Right. Not that this is a big deal though, because the selling point here wasn't the story, nor should it be. The original Mario games are, after all, about platforming goodness.

There is platforming, sure, and it's not terrible. You have to bop baddies, jump over holes and onto small platforms. That's common not just to most Mario games, but most platformers in general. The levels do give you a variety of enemies, both old and new. Familiar faces like Goombas, Koopa Troopas, and Dry Bones will no doubt make fanboys gush with excitement. I can't lie and say it's all bad. The original Mario game was a blast, and they do a decent copy-paste job here. There are SOME new ideas in the levels, like a castle level that takes place entirely in an elevator. In it, you just have to survive being in the elevator while spiked iron balls bounce around the screen. Most levels, however, feel uninspired. We've seen it before, and it was more fun the first time around. One advantage NSMB does have is its scale. The game is fairly big. There are eight big world, with many levels in each. There are multiple paths on each map, and many boss battles. The boss battles may be not much more than stomping on their heads, but that might not be a bad thing to all players. I would have preferred something more substantial.

Classic items like the size-increasing mushroom and the fire flower return. One nice element is the "reserve" item that makes a return from Super Mario World. If you lose your power, you can use your backup. There are new items to be found, like the Koopa suit, which lets you roll around as a deadly shell, and the giant mushroom, which is without a doubt one of the marquee features from the NSMB advertising campaign. The shell is kinda fun, but you need a running start or a hill to get it going. The giant mushroom, to my great disappointment, is just a gimmick, and a weak one at that. Giant Mario only works on a few stages, where there aren't any giant holes or unbreakable walls in his way. He can destroy blocks and small pipes, but if you try to use the giant mushroom on most stages, he won't have any room to operate. There's also a miniature Mario, who is used almost exclusively to squeeze through designed small places. It has no real advantage in most situations.

One of the things that bothered me most about NSMB is the "star coin" system. In every stage, including castle levels, there are three star coins to collect. Collecting these coins is not only a must for every completionist freak who must attain 100% of everything in the game, but the coins will let you unlock things on each of the world maps, whether they're Toad houses where you can pick up a bonus item, or an alternate path through the area that let's you take on a different level.

I know this game is supposed to harken to the 8-bit Mario games, but I don't remember having to replay the same levels over and over to find stupid collectibles in the original Mario. Being gagged to death by collectibles is part of the reason why modern platformers have become cliche and repetitive, and if they're going to treat this game as a classic-style Mario game, I would rather avoid collectibles. That's not to say I hate all 2D games with collectibles. Super Metroid, Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country, Super Princess Peach, it works very fine for these games, because it's the style of the game. I don't think collecting items enhances a game of this classic Mario style in the slightest bit. Even more annoying, is that if you die, you lose any star coins you've collected since the midway point of a level, or since the beginning if you don't make the midway point.

There are a few things that do return from previous Mario games that didn't need to. Just like in Super Mario World, you can't save the game after just any level. You have to beat a castle or some other special area. This is a bit frustrating. Games have come to the point where saving is a little more convenient now, and inconvenience is especially unforgivable in a handheld game. If I'm on the go, I want to be able to turn the game off when I want, without losing the last three levels that I beat.

The controls of the game also prove that not all that was old is good. One of the few things the game managed to recreate faithfully, is the "slow to get going, slow to stop" movement of the original Super Mario Bros. That is one of the things about the old games I would rather have NOT brought back. There's a reason why the controls on Mario games became more responsive as they continued to be made, because walking everywhere like you're on ice is dreadfully frustrating and unnecessary. Walking on ice was fine in the original Mario, because you never had to move backwards. If you had good timing with your jumps, you seldom had to start or stop on a dime. It was simple and uncomplicated level design, but as Mario games continued to be made, Mario's ability to start and stop became crisp and fitting, even in games like Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World. The level design in NSMB is too complex for the old, original, sluggish movement of 1985. These sluggish controls are another reason why collecting stars feels more like a hassle than a feature. I also guarantee that 90% of your deaths in this game will be from not being able to stop fast enough, or not being able to move out of the way quick enough from a stand-still.

Graphically, the game is actually pretty great. I like how the mixture of 3D characters and enemies blends seamlessly with the flat levels. Things like monsters from the background falling into the foreground to hit Mario, for example, look even better than they did in Yoshi's Island. I think the graphics could have been even better, in that many of the stages keep a consistent and almost vanilla theme. In the desert, all you see is desert. In the snow, all you see is snow. They could have made things a little more colorful, but it's still very pleasing to the eye. The music, on the other hand, I would call below average for a Mario game, as there isn't really anything memorable.

The game as a whole just feels like a combination of recycled material with some new-yet-uninspired additions. There's absolutely nothing about the game that strikes me as revolutionary or that makes it a must-have game. If I want a feeling of nostalgia, I would rather play the old games that New Super Mario Bros. tries to emulate, than New Super Mario Bros. If I want a new Mario platformer for the DS, I'll play Super Princess Peach. There is a big game here with some decent action, but it's more of an attempt to cash-in on the loyalty of easy-to-please nostalgia fans than it is a real tribute to classic Mario games.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/19/06