Running out the last of my free funds, I ordered New Super Mario Bros. Wii online because I could not find it anywhere in local stores. The game is superb, to say the least. Myself and three of my good friends started playing it Thursday night then came back Friday night to finish it. The game took about 13 hours to beat and we were done by 6 A.M. this morning.

Let me start off by being honest. I have an inherent pro-Nintendo bias. I was raised on the Gameboy and the Nintendo 64, not the Playstation. I have always supported Nintendo through thick and thin, and honestly I believe they are in one of the “thin” spots. However, Super Mario Bros. really starts to show why the Wii is a fun and effective console. The game has your typical side-scrolling Mario layout with a few expanded and revised concepts. Now available to you are items found in the Nintendo DS counterpart of this game, as well as several new items such as the Ice Flower, which gives you the ability to fire ice to freeze your enemies, an obvious mirror of the ever-recognized fire flower.

The game is eight main worlds set up in the game fashion as the old school Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES, you venture around these worlds going through the mostly linear worlds and fighting badies along the way. What really makes this game is the multiplayer. Other players, as Luigi, and various toads can join the game and play with you if you are having trouble or are attempting to reach secret areas. However, as we learned quickly, 4 player does make things much harder than single player does! Bouncing off of each others heads and the ability to throw each other into enemies and off ledges makes for some crazy competition to stay alive. The worlds are pretty and elaborately designed for a side scrolling game. The wii remote is held sideways like the original NES controller but can be moved, tilted and shook to preform various actions in the game. Also to my relief was the controls not being overly obnoxious for playing. You didn’t have to do too much out of simple hand motions to get through most of the game which is nice for the four of us sitting on a couch trying not to knock each other out. There are also a few multiplayer modes included where you can have coin battles and score races to see who can complete a level without dying and maintaining a high score, which is hard when there are three other players who are seeking your demise.

Without giving too many details, the finale was harder than expected but had a nice throwback to the classic Bowser battles of the day. Lots of allusions to past games were visible. There was the quintessential underground level at World 1-2 with a nice spin on it, some of the traits of the original castles were retained and the airship levels were also retained making for a very new yet very nostalgic experience. I highly recommend this game to pass the time, I think I am going to play it again on single player and compare the experiences but I recommend getting together a couple of friends and going at it. You will have a load of fun and probably not get a lot of sleep!