The Good
- It’s Mario, it’s pretty good in all the ways Mario is good.
- The return of the Raccoon Leaf, generally reminiscent of SMB 3 all around
- Build in mechanisms for if things get too tough
The Bad
- It’s Mario… It’s not a particularly original Mario either
- There are a few tricky points but not much is super difficult, which makes the game go by pretty quick
- The Coin Collecting aspect is interesting but serves little purpose
In Depth
If there’s one consistency in Nintendo’s world, it’s Mario. I’m not even going to attempt to figure out just how many Super Mario Brothers titles there have been, let’s keep it at “a lot”. A few years back for the original Nintendo DS, we got the first New Super Mario Brothers, a sort of, return to roots restart of the Super Mario Brothers franchise. There have also been a few New SMB titles on the Wii and WiiU as well. New Super Mario Brothers 2 comes to the Nintendo 3DS.
It’s not a remake of any previous title, despite the name, which can be a bit confusing, given how much Nintendo rereleases it’s old SMB titles. I didn’t expect it to be a remake but they seem to have taken the same idea with the Yoshi’s Story series, there is a New Yoshi’s Story, that apparently isn’t a remake of the original as I had thought it might be. Though not a remake, there isn’t a whole ton here that’s super original. While the more old school Super Mario Brothers titles would get newer graphics and power ups and music, this game looks and feels very much like it’s predecessors, especially New Super Mario Brothers for the DS. There aren’t even really any super original power ups in this title, the primary two being the Fire Flower and the Raccoon Leaf.
I really like the return of the Leaf, SMB 3 is one of my favorite titles in the series. Of all of the ways Mario has been able to fly over the years I always felt like Raccoon Mario was a good balance between functionality and being too over powered like say, the Cape. If you fail a level too many times you will be rewarded with the chance to use a White Raccoon Leaf, which gives you unlimited invincibility as well as (normal) flight power. This isn’t always the best choice though hen trying to collect the Star Coins necessarily though, as some coins require you to perform tricky bounce maneuvers across enemies, with the White Raccoon power, you’ll simply push right through the enemies. Also, while completing the stage with the White Raccoon lets you proceed, the stage will remain red and incomplete for actual completion percentage.
The real addition to the gameplay here is the coin accumulation. In addition to score, you have a counter for how many total coins you have collected throughout the game. The only real change that occurs as you collect coins however is that the pile of coins on the title screen will gradually grow larger. This feature is similar to how Wario Land worked. It might have been a nice twist to the classic formula for Wario or maybe the genie from Wario Land to show up, giving this coin total purpose, but sadly, it’s just the slightly tired 8-9 worlds with Koopa bosses.
Which is another nice nod to Super Mario Brothers 3, and Super Mario World, the return of Reznor and the Koopa Kids. Bowser Junior was the villain of the first New SMB, instead Bowser’s other kids get to take control here, one in each world, just as you’d expect.
If you really like the coin mode there’s also the Coin Rush Mode, where you play 3 randomly selected courses with a very limited time set to see how many coins you can gather. These coin records can be saved and shared via the Street Pass system, to let you try to beat other’s records. It’s an alright additional mode, though nothing special. You can also purchase additional course sets, which I believe is the first time a Mario game has had paid DLC. Honestly, I don’t find the mode fun enough to justify buying more stages for it. I’d rather just buy another title.
The Verdict
What’s the final call here? Well, it’s a decidedly adequate Mario Game. It’s fun, it’s got some good references to older titles here and there, it’s everything you’d expect. It’s also… everything you’d expect, with nothing overly new.
