Yea, the invisibility part seemed tough at first, but it only took me three tries, maybe?
Overall, I would put Wonder as an easier 2D Mario, but not a "baby's first platformer" like some of you guys are saying lol It was a nice romp, and some of the Special World levels made me lose a few lives, and the last two levels definitely gave me an hour-ish of tries.
I think there were more challenging levels in some of the NSMB games for sure, and I still say most people today would have a heck of a time beating the original Mario Brothers on NES without using save states or using the internet to get every hidden 1-up block along the way.
I also think some of us have been honing our skills in Mario Maker 2 for the last 5 years or whatever, so there was little chance Wonder was going to throw something at us that would feel "super expert"-level platforming tough.
@rallydefault It's honestly kind of hard to compare modern games to smb1 because the difficulty in smb1 is mainly the awkward physics which haven't aged well. The actual level design is not hard levels and the main non-physics difficulty is occasional hammer spam. Playing the exact same levels in e.g. Mario Maker physics is a 20 minute walk in the park even without extra lives.
That said, back when Mario 35 was a thing, I played Mario 35 for like 30 hours and then out of curiosity went back to the original game and it felt sooooo easy without spam constantly falling from the sky. 😝 I think it took me 2 lives because final Bowser killed me once.
As for Wonder, it took me maybe 50-70 tries actually at the invisible part. I feel like it is meant to be near-auto but if you don't happen to play exactly like Nintendo wants you to, it is essentially RNG. Not good level design in my opinion. So on the one hand for me it was the hardest official Nintendo 2D Mario level I've ever played, but on the other hand it was hard for kind of nonsense troll reasons. I'm sticking with almost all the 2D mario games have had similar difficulty even though the exact way that difficulty comes across has varied. But they're never particularly hard regardless.
You compared to mario maker — I feel like Nintendo tries for most levels in mario games to be 'Normal' with the occasional easier expert level thrown in and the even more occasional hard expert in special worlds.
@FishyS Didn’t get a notification, my bad. I did enjoy the actual invisibility badge test since I had a good idea about how to visualise where Mario was, funnily enough. But this one really grinds my gears and yeah, I spent 15 minutes on it! One solution is to spam X so the emoticon icon comes up above your character’s head, but the level’s still hot garbage and surprisingly unfair for it.
That said at first I thought the courses were too easy as well but I realised that I only meant that because I had managed to beat Celeste, one of the hardest platformer games on the market. The special world levels are a great challenge, and most of them were very fun to beat even though I lost a ton of lives. The Piranha Plant one was the one I liked the least though.
@FishyS
I agree and disagree. I have zero issues with the original Mario Bros. physics - even picking it up from time to time today, it feels pretty logical and smooth to me. I think every 2D Mario game is a tad different with the physics, honestly, and takes a couple minutes of adjustment.
The games that I think "challenge" me due to physics alone are actually the 3D Mario games. I was sour on Odyssey for my entire first playthrough because I just couldn't jive with the physics in that game. But I gave it many, many hours of playtime, and eventually I came to understand it and feel my hit detections with the cap and all that, and now I adore it.
I stick by my point that Mario Bros. 1 is a solidly challenging game. Physics may play a part of that, but the enemies and level design do, as well.
@NeonPizza
I do wish there was an unlockable harder difficulty once you 100% the game. The 100% badge is kinda funny for a few minutes and nowhere near the worst completion reward I've seen, but I was kinda surprised at how little content there was in the "end game." Odyssey and 3D World spoiled me when it comes to that, though.
@rallydefault smb-1 physics was fine for its time but hasn't aged nearly as well as the physics in 3 and beyond... one of the reasons 3 is still loved so much to this day. You personally may not find the game hard for physics reasons, but the reason people who have never played the game find it difficult is because they fall in a pit on what would be easy jumps in any other Mario game. That happened even in Mario-35. People would be dodging 98 enemies and then suddenly they would just fall in a pit because they forgot the physics don't allow modern-style Mario jumping. 😝 Or all the newer players who just constantly jumped into pits. I agree the 3D games have their own physics, but the 2D games have all felt pretty similar at least in the basic fundamentals since 3.
@FishyS I spent 15 minutes on it! One solution is to spam X so the emoticon icon comes up above your character’s head
15 minutes is many times faster than me so good job. I thought about the emoticon tactic but the fact that in-game you can change some of the buttons but they specifically don't let you change the x button to a trigger button annoyed me.
@rallydefault
I wish they would of had a harder difficulty setting, that forced the player to go back to lets say World 3-1 after losing all of their lives at World 3-5. This would obviously allow the player to get better at past stages, while offering an actual level of intensity and suspense because there's actually something at stake and penalty or consequence for losing just like there was with 1, 2, 3 & World
World was such an easy game, it was actively difficult to game over. 😝 Plus Wonder just lets you buy 99 lives with a few coins...not to mention that you can easily farm 99 lives by jumping on a Koopa shell. Regardless, bringing back the type of mechanics which were originally created to consume quarters or to make very short games feel longer doesn't seem like a great modern approach to difficulty. But I agree a harder difficulty would be fun. I'm hoping for nsmbu deluxe-like DLC with new more difficult modes.
@FishyS
You're pretty much just telling me my opinion about physics is wrong lol so I don't really know how to constructively advance this discussion
I mean, it's the generally accepted opinion that smb3 improved jumping mechanics over smb1. That doesn't mean your opinion is wrong for yourself, it's just not what most people feel. There is a reason Nintendo kept the 'more control in air' physics mechanic in all the smb3 onward games. Because people like it.
I enjoy smb1 too, but it still feels very stiff to me after playing modern Mario games. But my main point was that if you hand most people e.g. an smb1-cloned level in Mario Maker (with Mario Maker physics) they will find it MUCH easier. Mainly because they won't randomly jump in a pit for no reason. 😝
You were claiming smb-1 is a harder game and I mostly agreed, I was just giving one reason why. Obviously the limited lives is another reason although that is a different type of 'hard' because it has nothing to do with an individual level.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of things in smb-1 physics are more consistent with real life physics. 😆 The one-way-platforms and 'massive control in air to change your velocity' of later Mario games are both weird mechanics if you think about it.
@FishyS
I'm sorry, I just don't see things the way you do, even aside from the physics. I think you're forgetting a lot of SMB 1 levels outside of worlds 1-4. There are tons of single-block jumps, tough hammer bros placement, and powerups are stingy if you're not looking at a guide for secret blocks.
SMB 1 is one of the tougher 2D Mario games even regardless of the physics.
@rallydefault Not sure we are fully disagreeing. I guess my point is things like single block jumps are much easier if you have more air control — later games give you tons of time and power to adjust where you land after-the-fact. That was my only real point regarding physics and difficulty. And to be fair, you can't fully seperate that aspect from level design.
I did play Mario-35 which included every level for dozens of hours so I am familiar with them all. 😝 I have also 100%-ed the normal game on NSO. I miss Mario-35 so much.
Honestly after playing so much Mario 35 and Mario Maker all the games smb-1 through nsmbu seem super easy. 😆 Some Wonder levels seemed harder to me simply because they are fundamentally different but I'm sure after smm3 or a couple more playthroughs of the game they will all feel easy also. Except the evil invisible part -.- But I feel like my difficulty with that is a me thing.
@FishyS
I don't know what we're debating anymore to be honest lol
For posterity's sake: I think SMB 1 is one of the toughest 2D Mario games. The physics may certainly contribute to that, especially for younger/newer players who didn't grow up with the game, but regardless, I find the enemy movements, sparse powerups, and tight platforming of the second half of the game to be quite challenging.
I would encourage anyone who hasn't played SMB 1 or hasn't played it a long time to go back and give it a shot without save states and without a guide for the hidden blocks.
As a fun side note, the Lost Levels is THE hardest 2D Mario game, period.
@rallydefault I definitely agree regarding lost levels. I feel like it's the only 2D Mario game Nintendo ever truly tried to make actively hard. Nowadays they just slap a small percentage of harder levels in rather than trying to make the game itself hard.
As for going back and playing smb1 'blind', that is pretty hard. Everyone knows where the warp pipes and some of the hidden blocks are. And because Nintendo has remained remarkably consistent in some ways, some of the other secrets are just where you would expect them to be from playing other Mario games; I assume people in the 80s who had never seen Mario had more of a challenge finding everything.
And sorry for sounding argumentative by the way. back-and-forths in forums are not always super clear. 😝
To get back on Wonder topic, I think the vast majority of levels were definitely intended to be pretty easy. And almost all the harder levels are optional — either special world or just random levels in e.g. the lava world that you don't actually have to play to win.
New super Mario bros two is the hardest 2d mario that came to the western market
I wish they would bring that game to Switch. Now that Nintendo finally gave us a new 2D game, I want the full collection of mainline Mario all on Switch to go back and play to compare!
Most Mario's that you mentioned I found to be harder. Back then I wasn't that experienced though. As for Kirby, it always has some hard stuff. Yoshi's crafted world was very easy (and boring) but also had hard stuff. Personally, instead of ending every Mario with one insanely hard level (that badge level is to annoying for me without checkpoints), I rather had all the levels to be a bit harder. But that's just me! And I love searching for collectables, they can hide them better for me.
I just wish it played by the same 'difficulty' rules of something like SMB3 to create that much needed level of challenge, suspense, sense of reward, just that intensity, of feeling like you're constantly on your toes instead of sometimes carelessly blazing through a stage with 50 1-Ups at your disposal and no real game overs. That just degrades the fun imo.
It's a matter of personal taste, but to be fair, smb3 has unlimited continues and even if you die, fortresses remain cleared, shortcuts remain open, and your items remain so at worst you just have to redo a couple levels you already successfully cleared anyways. It may feel somewhat different, but practically it isn't so different than having to redo a Mario Wonder level occasionally to get missing collectables. Personally I never felt any suspense in smb3 except for the rng part near the end where you don't know which hand levels will grab you. 😝 Granted, Wonder has no real suspense. However, I personally found the sense of reward very satisfying in Wonder when you 100% a world or sometimes even a level-- they do that part well. As for difficulty, I would go with 1-life challenge (or some other small number). That is hard (and definitely suspenseful) in both games. Although Wonder not having multiple save states per account makes it slightly annoying.
@NeonPizza
I never owned a Wii, so I haven't had the chance to play Galaxy 2 (I've played Galaxy through the Mario Anniversary on Switch, though).
Wonder is fantastic. It's waaaaaaaaay better than NSMBU, and I 100% completed U back at launch on my Wii U. I think overall I would give the difficulty edge to NSMBU especially when it comes to the Special levels, but Wonder is just so refreshing overall as a platformer.
What makes Wonder so great in my opinion is that the usual gimmicks that 2D Mario games use to keep levels fresh are still there in the form of new enemies introduced, new powerups (you don't get the drill until a bit later), new platforming elements: But add into that the badges (which I think most of us will criminally underexplore) and the wonder effects, and it's such a fun romp where every level is truly, truly different.
@FishyS
It's all good, no worries. Wonder is an incredible game. Probably top 10 for me on the Switch, which is saying something. I was just a bit surprised at how easy it turned out to be. I was expecting a lot more from the Special levels and the very last two levels.
@Croctopus I'm very curious how much that is temporary Mario hype and how much it will translate into total lifetime sales. It needs to pass 17 million to get into the top 10 Switch games and Odyssey has sold around 27 million. I assume games like this get a big Christmas surge and a decent ongoing surge the whole first year as parents buy it for birthday presents.
In the World: Shining Falls, I've completed all individual levels with and have a green stamp (100% completed). However, the total World doesn't have the stamp yet. I've seen this video and directly at the beginning you see a level (it's similar as an Secret World exit with the flower in the middle. Any idea how to get this?
By the way, I already have found the exit to the Secret World and Captain Toad.
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