Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Lonely As A Cloud)

Quote :

Step into a world of wonder in Super Mario Bros. Wonder for Nintendo Switch!

Classic Mario side-scrolling gameplay is turned on its head with the addition of Wonder Flowers! These game-changing items trigger spectacular moments you have to see to believe. Witness pipes coming alive, wreak havoc as a giant spiky ball, and see even more unexpected events called Wonder Effects.

Pick from heroic Super Mario characters and Power-Ups

Choose from familiar characters including Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi and Toad. Transform into Elephant Mario to use your trunk to trounce enemies with a surprising new Power-Up!

Share the wonder with friends and Mario fans

Team up with up to three friends locally and gather around one Nintendo Switch console to experience the game-bending Wonder Effects together as you tackle courses as a team, and help each other on your way to the goal.

Looks lovely. Looks, crucially, nothing like an NSMB title. The trippy elements remind me of Dream Team Bros. but hopefully not too much because that was bobbins. I think I'll try and play this in co-op with The Lady. Good long-awaited stuff.

Does only Mario turns into Elephant with that power, or can I have an Elephant Yoshi? Anyway, keen for this.

I don't think you'll have elephant yoshi, but you've just made me realise we'll have elephant Peach and that'll mean a LOT of fanart for VERY specific fetishes.

Glad they finally moved away from the NSMB style. Would have been a bit much even for Nintendo I guess, with a NSMB title already on the Switch. Good to see Peach and Daisy, and that they've moved away from the Peach getting kidnapped plot.

I'm going with the talking flower being the bad guy!

I absolutely adore this, everything about it looks spot on, (Daisy aside) the style, the speed of it, the focus on subverting expectations, it's all incredible. They could have easily shat out another NSMB and it would have sold bucketloads but they look like they've genuinely gone back to the drawing board here and worked that special Nintendo charm.

I was initially a bit disappointed when 2D Mario turned up considering the NSMB formula has definitely run its course, but that disappointment faded fast when I saw the game itself. This is oozing with charm and feels like it's going to be something well worth playing.

Even when the formula was at its most tiresome, the NSMB games were always fun to play. A fresher game with that same competence could be something truly special.

I really hope it's as balls-crazy and unformulaic as it looks. Now that Mario Maker is in everyone's hands to make "normal Mario stuff". I can't wait to see if this breaks as many rules as it looks like it does - I hope we're essentially looking at a 2D Mario game with the scope of Galaxy / Odyssey.

Plus I'm playing as Daisy you motherfuckers

You absolute stinker Jim. Daisy is the Diddy Kong of the Mario universe (except for when actual Diddy Kong shows up).

Buskalilly wrote:

Even when the formula was at its most tiresome, the NSMB games were always fun to play. A fresher game with that same competence could be something truly special.

Each to their own: I thought that NSMBWii in single-player and NSMB2 overall were probably worse than average. (In fact NSMBWii is the only Mario platformer released since I started playing videogames that I haven't finished the campaign of.)

This ain't that though, this looks brill. I have seen people saying it looks a lot like NSMB. I don't know how you look at the trailer and think that. This feels like the Odyssey of 2D Mario given the sheer invention the core premise will let them get away with.

This is like how farmers can tell their sheep apart from their faces. You and I are immersed in Nintendo games and intimately familiar with the differences between Mario games. I’m sure for someone else, it does look pretty similar – a lot of classic Mario iconography appears in both.

These aren't randomers off the street/Twitter I'm talking about, these are big gaming fans who have in theory followed Mario for a while! It's weird.

Now that I've had some time to come down from the trailer, I'm hoping strongly that Nintendo can follow up the great ideas with making Mario feel good to control, and with some impressive level design. I'd say they haven't knocked those things out of the park in 2D since Yoshi's Island, or at least Mario Land 2. At least it's not designed by Arzest I guess.

24:46 for the good stuff apparently. What did people think of it then? I hated it, but that's because of the narrator, not because of anything the game showed. It was never quite going to show what I was after, that being complexity on a similar level to Mario World for example, but it was decent.

I ain't gonna watch that - I know I'm gonna play this, and I'd rather not know any more than "it is new Mario."

I wasn't going to watch it either for the same reasons but I did on the day & it only made me more excited to play it.

Yeah, I caught a bit of online buzz and it all tickled my pickle.

Was it just me who watched it and thought ‘what was the point in that’? I’ve got every confidence that the final game will be excellent, but to me that Direct didn’t really say much other than “it is new Mario”.

I kind of felt the same way. I watched the direct because my friend was streaming it to react to it and I thought why not. There was some cool stuff in it but it didn't really change my perception of the game.

My younger self would have been all over it though, wanting any glimpse of the gameplay I could get.

Basically though as a big game that they'll expect/want sales of 30m+ from that's coming out at fairly short notice, they want as much awareness of the title out there as possible.

If NGamer had a double page spread of juicy nuggets about this game I'd be poring over them and salivating, but sitting and watching a fifteen minute corporate presentation feels pointless.

In other news, apparently this game was made without a deadline. Along with TotK taking a whole year just for polish, and AC:NH being pushed back to avoid crunch, Nintendo are industry leaders for this stuff worldwide, never mind in infamously toxic Japan. Apparently they have a 98% new employee retention rate (against a national average of just 70%). As Iwata always said, it shines through in the games. Happy staff make fun art.

Yeah, I guess I didn't really learn a lot from watching that, but proper excited.

Should we/they have given Blue/Yellow Toads their own names though? It automatically feels a bit arbitrary choosing those two.
Current suggestions: Bort and Derwood

Buskalilly wrote:

If NGamer had a double page spread of juicy nuggets about this game I'd be poring over them and salivating, but sitting and watching a fifteen minute corporate presentation feels pointless.

It really is the worst way to be informed about a game isn't it. I guess the modern-day equivalent would be a YouTube analysis? But good luck finding one of those with a British sense of humour and without a charmless git going in the thumbnail.

Buskalilly wrote:

In other news, apparently this game was made without a deadline. Along with TotK taking a whole year just for polish, and AC:NH being pushed back to avoid crunch, Nintendo are industry leaders for this stuff worldwide, never mind in infamously toxic Japan. Apparently they have a 98% new employee retention rate (against a national average of just 70%). As Iwata always said, it shines through in the games. Happy staff make fun art.

While that's presumably the permanent staff and the contractor situation is where things got grim (in NoA at least), this is great news.

Oh yeah, I don't really think about NoA or NoE these days . . . The decadent West is a lost cause to me. Crumbling Empire in the death spasms of late-stage capitalism.

So this is here! First thoughts?

I'm stuck with a dilemma. Do I restrain myself, and wait until something like four p.m. tomorrow earliest to play it with The Lady as I said I would; or do I plough straight into it this evening? Decisions decisions...

I had a quick session last night - it's delightful, and it feels very new in a was NSMB never did, maybe even when the first DS one launched.

I'll have another save file for playing with Mercy.

However, since this released I've played more of The Lost Levels than I have this, because I'm an idiot.