Thoughts on Super Mario Bros. Wonder

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and does not reflect the viewpoints of Nintendo.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Super Mario Bros. Wonder. We don’t recommend reading this until you’ve completed it, and please proceed at your own risk.

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It’s been over a week since Super Mario Bros. Wonder released, and I’ve been training up. I’ve played a ton of Super Mario Maker, so I’m used to some of the Kaizo-style elements that Nintendo threw in this game. I’m guessing it’s true that what fans have made with Super Mario Maker may have influenced Super Mario Bros. Wonder. I finished the game in its opening weekend.

It’s been over a decade since a new 2D Mario game had even released, and is also the first not to bear the “New” moniker. I’m sure we were getting all tired of seeing Mario games like that. The game reminds me a lot of Super Mario Bros. 2, with Peach being in the playable cast as well as departing from the traditional mainline plots.

From what others have said, this is truly a fantastic game. I think this is the best mainline Mario game ever made and would be fit for the Game Award for Game of the Year, even if The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom may beat it for said award. However, there was one part of the game I didn’t like, and that was the KO Arena stages. You had to defeat an onslaught of enemies within a given time limit. I got every Wonder Seed plus Flower Coins in every stage.

In terms of its soundtrack, I did not expect this game to have a musical feel in some stages. We might have seen it in the movie, where Bowser performs a piano ballad for Peach. Speaking of the movie, I didn’t even know how more energetic the character animations were, and it was the movie that influenced it. Nintendo couldn’t do it in their earlier games because of hardware limitations.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder marks the debut of the new voices for the Mario Bros. Charles Martinet retired a few months before the game released, and this game marks the beginning of the “Kevin Afghani” era of Mario. Why not Chris Pratt? I also did not expect a single character to have full voice acting across every supported language in the game, that being the Talking Flowers you encounter.

After all, this would be a “wonderful” musical adventure that you’ll enjoy for yourself.