A funny thing happened at (well, near) PAX West 2023. Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the latest two-dimensional Mario game — and the first original one in over 10 years — was surprisingly made fully playable for Nintendo Live attendees and media alike ahead of its October 20th release on Nintendo Switch.
Anyone who’s watched preview footage of Wonder can attest to the game’s more whimsical nature, even for Mario’s standards; you’ve got the nighttime, moody-blue palette, a flower power-up that when touched sees Mario descend into Lewis Carrol-like dreamscapes, and, of course, the elephant in the room … Mario can turn into a freaking elephant.
Not unlike some of Mario’s most memorable adventures, this game looks weird — really weird. But does all this nonsense come together to create something as fun as Mario’s lofty standards often promise?
Wonder-ing how it works?
Skip the following sentence if you wish to avoid spoilers for Super Mario Wonder: Bowser is back, and he’s causing problems in the Mushroom Kingdom. Okay, are we all back? We good?
Great, because we're excited to tell you where Nintendo has subverted expectations in this iteration of Mario: it’s in all the little, important details. And those little details will likely make a pretty big difference for both shiny newcomers and decorated veterans alike.
Nintendo Life was given the opportunity to play a 15-minute multiplayer demo that starts exactly where you’d expect: level 1-1. (We also played the solo game for longer at a later demo.)
To start playing, you must first pick your character, naturally. Wonder has plenty of options: Mario, Luigi, two Toads, Peach, Toadette, Daisy, four different colored Yoshis, and Nabbit. However, picking the Yoshis or Nabbit relegates the player into 'Easy Mode,' which in this context means your character will take hits, but not damage — as a trade-off, these characters cannot gain power-ups. Yoshi features his additional moveset fans have come to expect, complete with a flutter kick to inch up into the air just a little bit higher, and a convenient (um?) saddle that lets other players ride on Yoshi’s back.
The playables — Image: Nintendo
Badges add tons of variety
As detailed in the recent SMB Wonder Direct presentation, new to the series are 'badges,' which when equipped give the player some kind of unique gameplay feature, such as the abilities to jump super high, scale walls completely vertically, and much, much more. At least for the demo, equipping a badge meant it was unilaterally equipped for everyone playing.