New Super Mario Bros Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 7th January 2008

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Retro platform action comes to the DS.

New Super Mario Bros Details:

	Adventure
	Nintendo DS
	Nintendo
	Nintendo

Out Now

N/A

For those of you that are lucky enough not to be able to remember Mario’s side scrolling adventures the first time around, Nintendo have brought the game to the DS that defined platform based action, and even though its 20 years since the games first appeared they’ve not lost any of there magic.

The story of New Super Mario Bros will be familiar to anyone that’s ever played a Mario game! Yes Princess Peach has been kidnapped again! Yes, you guessed it Bowser is up to his old tricks again!

The game follows the classic Mario games structure, with the game split into several worlds, each with its own theme. Worlds are then made up of a number of levels which you will have to make your way through until you reach that world fortress and do battle with one of Bowser’s cronies before eventually meeting King Koopa himself.

In the games you will have to perform the action we have all come to know, jump across platforms, run under falling blocks and swim through caverns. Mario has some new moves available to him as well as the classics! He can now perform triple jumps and jumps off walls in order to reach high platforms.

The usual power-ups are available to collect, mushrooms to make Mario grow, flowers for flower fire power and stars to make Mario invincible. A number of new power-ups are available, big mushrooms that turn Mario into a giant so he can simply stomp his way through a level. There’s also a blue mushroom that shrinks Mario down to a tiny size, but strangely allows him to jump much higher. Finally you can collect a blue Koopa shell that offers protection when you press down on the D-pad, and also serves to speed Mario up.

You can also store one power-up in your inventory. This can be accessed anytime by tapping on the touch screen, which is useful for when you lose your current power-up after a run in with a Koopa. The touch screen is also used when Mario goes down some pipes as the action switches to this screen, unfortunately these are the only two ways the touch screen is used in the single player mode and you can’t help feeling it has being a little neglected.

During the games levels you collect the same gold coins that were featured in the original Mario adventure 20 years ago. There are also switches that will reveal red coins that reward you with a power-up once you collect eight. Scattered throughout the levels are giant gold coins which allow you to unlock extra levels not on the normal game path.

To complement the games excellent single player mode, is a two player versus mode and a selection of mini games for up to four players via Wi-Fi play.

The versus mode sees Luigi and Mario battling to collect stars, the number of which is set before the game starts. Obviously the first to collect all the required stars wins. Players can also win if their opponent loses all their life during the course of the match. The usual power-ups are available throughout the level, while collecting eight gold coins earn you a power-up also.

The mini-games make the most of the touch screen and makes use of the microphone for the now common blowing puzzles. Mini games are placed in one of four categories action, puzzle, table and variety. Action games include one where you try to fire Koopa shells into air ships and another that you have to roll a snow mans head down a path avoiding various obstacles. Puzzle features a game in which you have to find a specific character hidden among others on the touch screen. Table games are all card based and include a poker style game with Luigi as the dealer. Variety is a mix of action and puzzle elements thrown into each game. All the mini-games have multiple levels of increasing difficulty and are usually timed. All of them are pretty good but some will grab your attention more then others and these are extremely addictive.

For a side scrolling platform title New Super Mario Bros looks stunning, all the games characters are rendered in 3D on colourful 2D backgrounds. It’s also nice to see the developers have stayed faithful to the original games, as many who have played the NES and SNES versions of Mario will recognise lots of the graphical elements.

Sound is also very good! Mario does his usual variety of screams and shouts while the sound effects are classic Mario and help give the game a real retro feel, music will also be familiar to Mario veterans.

New Super Mario Bros features an excellent single player mode that provides a brilliant retro experience that is complemented with excellent graphics and sound. The multiplayer options also add extra value and the overall package is a must for any Mario or retro platform fan.