The Nintendo Switch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3yhU6hLVOY

Good deep dive technical review comparing the various elements of the game design to previous iterations. The attention to detail in Wonder is just immaculate.

What it reminds me of is being a kid and playing Super Mario World or Mario 64 for the first time l, where it doesn’t feel like a sequel or a facelift but rather as though everything is built from scratch. There are a lot of fun moments in how it lets you do things you couldn’t do in other Mario games. Plus nearly all the enemies are new. The Wonder Flower thing is incredible, just not knowing what’s going to happen because everything’s on the table. And yes it looks amazing, extremely colorful without looking like rainbow vomit. Reminds me of Yoshis Island actually

Hard to get used to the flowers talking though, feel like no real speech is kind of a rule in these games. Outside of “so long gay Bowser” of course

https://kotaku.com/super-mario-bros-wonder-talking-flowers-setting-turn-of-1850946435

Can’t get over how much I like Wonder. Haven’t liked a new Mario game this much in forever?

I love the Wonder mechanic. If only I could pry this away from Liz for more than a minute!

New Super Mario Bros was a great game, a 2006 remake of a classic. The problem was that new super mario bros u deluxe, released in 2019 was still a 2006 remake of a classic game (yes yes the original NSMBU was 2012 but point still stands). Here you have the same thing, but now with 2023 high development shine which did not exist to the same extent 17 years ago (good lord). Nice to see 2D mario enter the 2020’s with all the bells and whistles. Let’s see what the 2040’s bring

Let’s see what the 2040’s bring

lol probably a port of Super Mario Wonder.

"every level has a big wacky set piece" is basically the exact thing a 2d Mario needs to sell me these days. most of the ones in the first world were shown in trailers but im hoping to be properly surprised down the line

i liked dkc tropical freeze a lot for strongly answering the question of 'why a AAA nintendo sidescroller now that there's tons of good indie ones?' and this seems like it could too

whereas the previous nsmb games didn't properly answer that imo

New super Luigi (included with the deluxe re-release) tickled that indie itch of “geez this is hard, ain’t it?”

I mean that in the best way possible. That one made me feel like I’d never played a videogame before in my life and I loved every minute of it. Eventually had to give up on the idea of getting the star coins the first time through the levels as it was just driving me too crazy

lol probably a port of Super Mario Wonder.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 23 October 2023 12:58 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sadly otm.

Got this yesterday. Just beat a level called “Jump! Jump! Jump!” in world 2 after like 20 tries. Celeste vibes. The difficulty ratings aren’t fucking around, wonder how high they go.

Oof, I think I suffered through that last night. Never going to go back and go for the purple coin.

Wall Climb Jump II in the ice world killed me with the revolving red platforms towards the end

those were fun and I’ve played another 15ish levels without finding one like that again! It seems like there’s a sky zone with hard levels like that, unlocked when you beat the world dungeon I think?

Literal nightmare aesthetic here lads
https://i.postimg.cc/cHF3BWB6/IMG-1115.jpg

Super excited to play this after reading this thread. I have some academic work due soon, so I'll buy it as a reward in a few weeks' time.

I had low expectations for the Switch Mario U port that came out a couple of years ago, but they had a copy at the place I was housesitting earlier this summer, and I thought it was pretty terrific - after Odyssey, I was glad to play a more bare bones Mario, and the level design was really good. Ultimately, I think good Mario games are like books, you can't have too many.

Got this yesterday. Just beat a level called “Jump! Jump! Jump!” in world 2 after like 20 tries. Celeste vibes. The difficulty ratings aren’t fucking around, wonder how high they go.

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Sunday, October 22, 2023 1:01 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

uhh yeah the bullrush level is pretty insane, reminds me of those Super Mario World bonus levels where you basically have to memorize the timing of everything.

btw one fun thing about the piranha plant serenade is if you use a fire flower to kill some of them they stop singing. can't think of many game devs who would actually go through with that level of detail

The Digital Foundry video shows that a lot of the enemies on screen react to what Mario does to their friends!

seems like the switch 2 is really "on the way" (next year) now https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-demoed-switch-2-to-developers-at-gamescom

7 years same as all the other consoles, not surprising

yea standard stuff

Just beat wonder, wish it was longer!

is it anything like Super Mario 3D world where there is like an absurd number of bonus levels after you think it's over?

putting the hard stuff after "the game is over" is an elegant solution to not making it too hard for some people

yeah it's what I loved about 3D World, it was sometimes challenging but mostly kinda light, even the final boss battle was kinda easy. but then there's like 3 extra worlds worth of the stuff you've really been waiting for

odyssey is like that too, tho theres some optional hard stuff just mixed in with the normal levels too

I got confused after beating odyssey and found it was too much hassle running around trying to look for extra content

I like my Mario linear or linearish, like odyssey

The last battle vs the bowser castle isn’t fucking around…fun though but a slog towards the end

I've think I've failed the Jump Jump Jump level maybe 50 times now

oh man the five star jump level in the special world took me prob 150 tries

it took me like 20-30 tries to do it, something about how that last bit switches up the rhythm kind of messes with your brain I think. but now that I've beaten it I can probably pass it like...30% of the time. unless you're talking about the level that it unlocks (the 5 star difficulty one with wall jumps), I tried it 3 times and went nope impossible

I did the 5 star one eventually, but I had to switch from playing handheld to using the pro controller and TV first. Which is something I never had to resort to when playing Celeste, including most of its extra challenges.

Urgh I really hope this isn’t as difficult as you’re making it sound, our 7 year old wants this (and nothing else, apparently!) for xmas, he’s going to be so disappointed if he opens it up and then it turns out he can’t make any progress with it. Can you at least get through the core game to an initial ending before you get to the really tricky stuff? Or is the main path difficult too?

All the difficult ones we're talking about are optional. The main path isn't any more difficult than previous 2D Marios. If you have someone else that can play, the co-op is really well done too (my 5-year-old has been happily playing it as Yoshi which is the easy mode)

Ah phew, thanks. :)

Co-op can be a mixed blessing in mario games though, definitely remember some bits (especially in the Wii U NSMB game but also in mario 3d world) where it was so hard to avoid getting in each others' way that having a second player actually just made things more difficult.

they've really improved the 2p mode this time - we were much more successful with it

the big difference in multiplayer between this and the other new 2-D Marios is that the characters are basically transparent. so you jump through each other instead of getting in each other's way. though you can jump on top of the Yoshis which sometimes gets irritating on the tougher levels. but yea multiplayer is a lot 'easier' so to speak. I always wondered if the other ones made it obnoxious on purpose to cover for the fact that multiplayer is kind of cheating, since you can endlessly respawn

we're only halfway through yet but yeah I don't think the main game is too hard. all the really difficult stuff is optional. also I think this game put a lot of care into making sections that look crazy and difficult but actually aren't too bad. I think a 7 year old could do it.

There's two playable characters who don't take any damage (will die if they get crushed or fall offscreen though), my 8 year old daughter plays with them and loves the game.

its cool how theyve found clever ways to have easy modes more incorporated into games, special characters, stuff that comes "after" winning

its funny there was so much complaining when it was revealed that one of the semi-recent Mario games would have a feature where Luigi would 'help' you if you died enough times, basically making it so anyone could finish the game. I think a lot of people felt that you only deserved to beat a game if you had enough skill. I guess I get that but man, just thinking back to all the NES/SNES games I rented where we were basically stuck at Level 2 or 3 because the difficultly ramped up so much, and how much stuff was probably in those games that their most dedicated players probably never even got to see because they were just kids.

lol so many nes games were impossible just cause they were bad

^me and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

that's definitely true but I always suspected a big part of the reason was you only had so much space and developers didn't want their games to be beaten in an hour so they compensated by making them super hard

yeah just a mindset descended from arcade games where the design goal was to eat quarters

in retrospect pretty funny how the goal of the gamer back in those days was to outsmart the developer and figure out which moves you could spam or what corner you could hide in to trick the CPU

xp this design for insane arcade difficulty was always stupid for home consoles. every Mario game had cheat codes/warps built in so you could beat the game in 5 minutes if you wanted!