When Super Mario World first released back in 1990 (or '91 or '92 depending on your region), it felt like a huge moment for Nintendo's iconic platforming franchise. Here was Mario as we already knew him, bounding energetically through 2D environments on the way to his usual goal but, at the same time, everything felt as though it had changed.

Super Mario World was a thorough modernisation of all of the important pieces that made the series tick. The world and its characters were brought to life like never before with a broader range of animations and abilities, and mechanically things had taken a huge step up in terms of responsiveness and polish. This was the best a Mario game had ever looked or felt, it was full of fun and magic, it brought the somewhat ageing formula up to speed and remains one of the very best adventures the Italian plumber has ever taken.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review - Screenshot 1 of 6
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

All of the above applies to Super Mario Bros. Wonder. At the tail end of 2023, one of the strongest years for video games we've seen in a long time, Nintendo has just gone and served us up its best 2D Super Mario adventure in 33 years. This feels like Nintendo returning to the very same font from which World sprung, with Nintendo EPD firing on all creative cylinders to give us a game that barrels along on a seemingly endless stream of great platforming ideas.

Where the style of New Super Mario Bros. U may have left some feeling a little cold overall, Wonder brings with it the warmth and familiar glow of a lovingly crafted Mario adventure that's set on doing its own thing rather than reheating old ideas. Right from the get-go this feels like a return to the creative glory days of 2D Mario, with a quick cutscene to get us underway — Bowser has attacked Flower Kingdom, help us Mario! — before you're delivered to a gorgeous in-game map and pummeled through several worlds full of Nintendo-grade ingenuity.

Yes, things kick off strongly here with the headline new power-up, Elephant Mario, making its appearance almost straight away. Much like how Yoshi's early arrival in Super Mario World felt like that game announcing its intentions to be a whole new thing, this moment feels like Wonder letting us know that it's got plenty of tricks up its sleeves. And what tricks they are. This is easily the best-looking and most creative 2D Mario to date, an adventure that's bursting with colour and detail and levels full of one-time mechanics and silliness to discover.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

This feels like 2D Mario refreshed and revamped, then. Not only has the wee man got a brand new voice in the form of Kevin Afghani, but his moveset has also been pimped out via lots of lovely little touches and tons of new animations. Watch as he clambers in and out of pipes rather than simply teleporting through them, gasp at how he wobbles at the edge of a platform, teeters on the brink of a chasm, or how his facial expressions change to suit whatever tight spot he's got himself in next. Even the traditional 2D world map has had a nice revamp, no longer confining you to a set track through stages, you can wander, discover little secret areas, and choose which levels to take on next with a certain degree of freedom.

Mechanically, this is still 100% the Mario you know and love, it's just never looked or felt quite this slick before. The way characters transition between moves, transform into various guises, bound across enemy heads, and swing over gaps — it's deliciously slick stuff. There's a level of polish here that ensures you never need to second guess the controls or level design (they're flawless); where every failure belongs to you; and where repeating and re-running areas never feels like a chore.

The biggest new gameplay additions in Super Mario Wonder are its Wonder Flowers and its Badges. As you run through the various levels on offer you'll need to gather up Wonder Seeds in order to keep unlocking new areas of the Flower Kingdom and pushing forward. In each and every main stage in the game you'll find a Wonder Flower. The Wonder Flower is often hidden a little out of the way and interacting with it warps the world into its Wonder form, meaning an area that was quite straightforward has now transformed into something else entirely.

Maybe all of the platforms have switched places or disappeared, the ceiling has become an enormous enemy that you need to avoid, the inhabitants begin reacting in surprising ways, the camera angle and controls have shifted, you're flying or falling...

Each new Wonder Flower brings with it an alternate route through a stage and it's where the game derives so much of its creativity and playfulness. No matter how vanilla a level starts out here, you never know where it's gonna end up, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder makes sure to keep a wealth of strong gameplay ideas flowing across the entirety of its running time. Between normal stages you've got trials, and challenges to undertake, too, and it's here that you'll get your hands on most of the game's badges.

Badges give you various boons, boosts, and aids to help you discover every secret and hidden area scattered throughout the Flower Kingdom. You'll get lots of new moves, such as a powered-up crouching jump, a wall jump, a cap glide, and more, as well as plenty of neat accessibility options to help players who need a little more help. Maybe you want to add extra platforms to a stage, make it so falling in lava or down a pit doesn't result in death, or give yourself a Super Mushroom to kick-start every stage. With badges, you can do that.

As the game progresses you'll need to switch between all of your collected boost badges if you want to 100% every course, maybe give yourself more hang time or activate wall jumping so that you can find all the Flower coins and Wonder Seeds spread throughout a level. With nonstop new ideas, the smoothest controls we've felt in a 2D Mario game, gorgeous visuals, Wonder flowers, and badges all in the mix, we're already having a great time. But then Wonder just keeps on adding wins to the formula.

You've got a whole bunch of characters to choose from as you run through the campaign (Yoshis and Nabbit act as easy modes), it's simple and quick to jump into four-player local co-op (get a couple of Elephant Marios on the screen and you're guaranteed a very silly time), and, more excitingly, clever new online aspects have been very carefully massaged into the experience.

Taking cues from, of all places, the Dark Souls series, Super Mario Wonder gives us an online aspect that sees other players appear as shadowy ghosts on your screen. You can use Standees, little collectible character boards that can be bought in Poplin shops, to interact with and help each other — die and you've got a few seconds to interact with another player or their Standee to be respawned, for example — and the whole thing has been introduced in such a way that it never feels intrusive.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

If you prefer your Mario as a solo experience, you've got that, but if you like engaging with pals, helping other players through areas, or racking up fast scores on time trials, that's here too and it works really well without ever feeling like it gets in the way or muddies the water. In fact, the online shenanigans work so well here that they almost feel like they've always been part of the series.

Does Super Mario Wonder stumble at all? Well, if we're being super picky, we would have loved to see a more challenging mix of platforming elements. Things never get really difficult at any point outside of a few specific challenges, and there's nothing here that's gonna blow the doors off the platforming genre as a whole — nothing truly earth-shattering or defining beyond being one of the most refined 2D platformers ever crafted.

Instead, you're just gonna have to make do with a very, very good 2D Mario. This adventure serves up as much inventiveness as its 3D brethren, is the best-looking two-dimensional Mario to date, and another very fine addition to 2023's ever-growing pile of Incredibly Good Games That You Absolutely Need To Play™.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

The best 2D Mario game release since the Super Nintendo? We'll have that.

Conclusion

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is, quite simply, the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World. This is the slickest, sharpest, and smartest that two-dimensional Mario has felt since 1991 and in its Wonder Flowers, badges, and online aspects, it serves up an endlessly inventive and impressive platforming adventure that we've been utterly hooked on. With local co-op and online fun adding to the replayability factor and nigh-on perfect performance in both docked and handheld modes, this feels like 2D Mario with its mojo back, and one of the very best platformers we've played in quite some time.

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