We've now posted our review of the Nintendo DS game, New Super Mario Bros. Does the game bring anything new to the long-running series, or is it pretty much same-old, same-old? It's certainly worth a play-through, but read on for more about what we thought of the game.
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A news bit from the ever-questionable VGChartz was revealed this weekend, stating that the longstanding Super Mario Bros has been surpassed in sales by Wii Sports, making the Wii's pack-in game the best-selling video game of all time.
Let's be realistic for a moment and assume that VGChartz is right about this. Even if Wii Sports hasn't yet overtaken the NES classic, at this point there are no doubts that it will.
You might say this momentous occasion doesn't matter, because Wii Sports is a pack-in and everyone who buys a Wii must own one. Let's not forget that Super Mario was a pack-in under certain conditions as well, but the up-and-coming Wii title and the evergreen Super Mario Bros have something even more important in common: they both gave consumers a reason to buy a console.
Yes, just as people bought the Nintendo Entertainment System for Mario's jumping, mushroom-fueled hijinks, they're buying the Wii in order to smack a virtual tennis ball around an onscreen court. What does this mean for the relevance of VGChartz's sales data? It means the Wii has revolutionized video gaming in the same way that the NES did in the early 1980s, back when Atari was the king who never saw the disruptive wave as it crashed onto the shore.
Congratulations, Wii Sports. Your victory is well-deserved.
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Something I haven't mentioned about myself before is that I'm one of Nintendo's lapsed gamers. I played video games fanatically from the NES days up through the Nintendo 64, but left console gaming behind for about 6 years. During that lapse, I played a fair number of PC-based games, but for the most part I just got into other hobbies.
In mid-2006, I finally jumped back into Nintendo consoles with the $99 GameCube and caught up with a few of my missed opportunities such as Wind Waker, Eternal Darkness, Mario Sunshine, and the like. Now, I play the Wii and the DS.
With a substantial gaming backlog to work through, I've been playing New Super Mario Bros. on and off. When I first started playing it, I was disappointed at the lack of cool and nifty stuff in the game. It doesn't have an equivalent to leaf or feather powerups, there isn't a frog suit or a ghost mushroom, etc. And the giant mushroom is annoying because it makes levels too easy.
But as I've gotten a little more into it, I've come to appreciate the game for what it is - a reinvention of the original Super Mario Bros. that takes the series back to its roots. It's simpler than Mario 3 or Mario World, and that's OK, because Nintendo wasn't trying to outdo those games. No, this game meant to introduce a new generation of gamers to Mario platforming, and it does a great job of it.
Once I finish the game, I'll be writing up a full review. But for now, I'm just enjoying the ride, so I thought I'd offer up my current impressions.
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A dedicated Boom Blox level designer has taken the time to recreate some of classic gaming's most memorable times in the physics-driven Wii title. Although you can't quite play them the way you remember, with the slight exception of the Duck Hunt clone.
See the montage in the video below:
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If ever you doubted the lasting remembrance of Super Mario Bros. 3, just take a look at this mural, created by a handful of students at University of the Fraser Valley:
Apparently the final piece of artwork took 2 months to complete, but only after many previous revisions spanning multiple semesters (not to mention apt comparisons to Da Vinci's timeless works). I wish I'd thought of such a thing during my college years, but alas, I whiled them away with working around IT security to put my own special messages on the computer labs' screen savers.
Flickr Via The Tanooki (More pictures there)
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