8. Super Mario Bros. Wonder, dev. Nintendo EPD
Mario in three-dimensions never disappoints in creativity: Sunshine, Odyssey, Galaxy, these are wild experiments. Mario in two-dimensions has not been interesting since Clinton was president. That is not to say they have been "bad". I really love most of the New Super Mario Bros. games. The first New game on the DS has a very special place in my heart. However, they have been stylistically stagnant. Even for a company like Nintendo, often unfairly accused of making the same games over and over, 2D Mario this century has been totally flat. I could not name one significant difference between the 2D Mario game on the WiiU and the one on the Wii.
I cannot say that Mario Wonder is a major revolution in the series formula. You're still a little chubby Italian man or one of his friends, you're still mostly running ring, you're still jumping, and you're still fighting a tyrannical turtle. The reforms are mild, at best. The change is best reflecting in the art style - Wonder makes Mr. S. Mario look better than he ever has in 2D. Most of that comes from very detailed skyboxes, which are these amazingly lush landscapes that you'd never even notice since you're so focused on the action in the foreground. Another change is that you can play as one of the like 50 Mario characters: from old mainstays like Peach to new stars like Toadette to deeper cuts that nobody will ever pick like Blue Toad. The change is that all of these characters play exactly the same. If you're really addicted to the Princess' short glide, you might as well switch back to Mario, because it will just be confusing. Nintendo replaced the character-based movement mechanics with a new system involving equitable kinds of jumps. So anybody from Toadette to Nabbit can do the floaty Luigi jump.
Oh, also you can become Elephant Mario. That's a thing. Elephant Mario is just a reality we have to accept in the Covid era.
No, just looking great and making some minor changes to gameplay are not really the thing. The thing is that Mario Wonder feels boundless in its possibility space. It is the video game equivalent to Frank from Always Sunny at full dirtbag mode, barging into a funeral to gloat, announcing to all who might be disgusted, "Well, I don't know how many years I got left on this Earth. I'm gonna get real weird with it. Now block the wind while I roast this bone." Nintendo are 2D Mario institutionalists. Mario Wonder is not some new template that will define the series for twenty years. But for now, we can enjoy the game getting nice and freaky.
Mario games have had optional collectable items since Mario World. Traditionally, they have just been like Strawberries in Celeste, little extra challenges that test either your platforming skills or your ability to suss out Nintendo's Easter Egg hiding style. In Mario Wonder, you find Wonder Seeds, which completely fork the rest of the level. You could just keep going right and get to the flag *or* you can grab the Seed, and let something unpredictable happen to you. In the first world, we have an musical sequence involving Singing Piranha Plants, all of them babbling a baby talk tune straight out of Loco Roco. (Oh if you kill one of the chorus of plants, their part of the song ends early. Sad.)
Every level in a Mario game already is a surprise. Nintendo's great strength with these games is imagining a new method of platforming twist, milking it just long enough, and then moving on. With Wonder's new exploration into the land of freaky, we can have anything happen. Mario could get super tall. Mario could be a helpless Goomba that cannot jump. We could have a brutally hard Celeste B-side timed beat challenge. (I died nearly 100 times to this shit, hardest single gaming challenge of 2023.) It really makes you want to 100% the Wonder Seed hunts, since if you're missing one, you've missed one of the core elements of this game's joys.
Mario is family-friendly comfort food. I've been running right and going down pipes for like thirty years now. The formula is timeless, like a cheeseburger. You never fall out of love with cheeseburgers. But maybe sometimes you add some horseradish sauce or a lightly-roasted pineapple or candied apple slices or peanut butter. Not all the flavors work (I regret that peanut butter burger), still you can get excited again about a meal you've had a million times.
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