New Super Mario Bros. 2 is off to a strong start, but does it have the same evergreen sales power of its DS predecessor?

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is all about the fat cash money. Mario Mario and Luigi Mario are sick of the steady pay of plumbing and they’ve taken G. Gordon Liddy’s advice to heart, pouring all their time and energy into acquiring monstrous piles of gold. These mustachioed, raccoon-tail wearing freaks are so obsessed with coins in their latest adventure that they literally spout coins out of their heads.

The money obsession isn’t just woven into the game’s platforming fabric. Cash fueled its creation. New Super Mario Bros. for DS and New Super Mario Bros. Wii have been two of Nintendo’s strongest sellers in the past 6 years. NSMB alone has sold nearly 30 million copies. That’s why Nintendo started pulling developers from non-Mario studios to make the new game while the core Mario team EAD worked on New Super Mario Bros. U: To make new Mario games faster.

Has it worked? Is New Super Mario Bros. 2 raking in the dough in Scrooge McDuck quantities? It’s only been available in the US for 24 hours, so we’ll look to the rest of the world. Survey says: Yes.

MCV reported on Monday that the 3DS sequel did brisk business in its first week on sale in the UK. Though it didn’t share precise sales data, UKIE GfK Chart-Track said that New Super Mario Bros. 2 sold more than 29 percent better in its first week than New Super Mario Bros. did. Bully for Nintendo.

Strong UK sales doesn’t guarantee the game will go on to be one of Nintendo’s biggest earners though. The original New Super Mario Bros. sold just 450,000 copies in its first year, but ballooned to 30 million over half a decade because of the Nintendo DS hardware’s popularity. Nintendo kept selling DSs, so people kept buying NSMB. The Nintendo 3DS hardware meanwhile, while healthy, isn’t guaranteed to be as popular as the DS was. In fact, it’s almost impossible seeing as the DS is the second best-selling gaming machine ever made.

Retail performance is only half the story though. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is also the first big Nintendo game to be released as a digital download at launch, and the Big N isn’t spilling its guts on digital sales just yet. President Satoru Iwata did reveal to The Wall Street Journal that 5 percent of NSMB 2’s initial sales in Japan were digital, but again, initial sales aren’t indicative of ultimate success. There’s no golden fire flower for Nintendo to just turn things into money. It has to rely on fickle, everyday people just like every other business to make money.

First released on the Nintendo DS in 2006, New Super Mario Bros. has gone on to sell over 29 million copies worldwide. If it was a music single that’d make it the fourth biggest seller of all-time (ahead of anything by Elvis or The Beatles). It’s also sold (slightly) more than either Call Of Duty: Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3 – despite them both being on multiple formats. And yet the odd thing is it’s a game that not even diehard Nintendo fans are all that keen on.

Together with the completely different, yet almost identically named, entry on the Wii the New Super Mario Bros. titles sound like a game made in fan heaven. A return to Mario’s two-dimensional roots the games promised a true sequel to Super Mario World, taking advantage of both modern technology and Nintendo’s unparalleled history with the 2D platformer.

But where the previous games remain amongst the most lauded in video game history New Super Mario Bros. ended up just a competent retread. A curiously bland addendum to the classic series, the two New games lacked any of the imagination or invention of the earlier titles. And given their sales success it’s unsurprising to find that the same is true of this new sequel.

Under no circumstances could New Super Mario Bros. 2 be considered a bad game – in fact if it were by anyone other than Nintendo there’d be no quibbling at all. The controls are perfectly judged and the level design is still as excellent as ever, even if it often fails the unspoken Nintendo promise of a new idea every level.

What you get instead is a peculiarly pointless gimmick about trying to collect over 1 million coins over the course of all your play. The game is absolutely obsessed with coins, which rather than appearing rarely now regularly explode on screen in a fountain of dozens at a time. Exactly why though is a secret known only to Nintendo, as they add almost nothing to the gameplay beyond granting more extra lives and making the game even easier than it already is.

The power-ups are disappointing too, with the only genuinely new one letting you fire golden fireballs that turn enemies into coins. There’s an amusing-looking block-headed power-up but its primary use is to, you guessed it, generate more coins.

The Racoon Suit (and P-charge bar) from Super Mario Bros. 3 return and grant you the ability to fly, but there’s rarely the chance to get much of a run-up for them. Most of the other pre-existing power-ups seem even more superfluous, with the mega and mini mushrooms (which make Mario bigger or smaller) appearing so rarely it’s a wonder anyone bothered to include them at all.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 suffers from a number of such peculiar design decisions, perhaps the most bizarre being the way the background is blurred out when viewing the game in 3D. Exactly what this is meant to convey, other than that Mario is getting short-sighted in his old age, we’ve no idea but it’s distractingly ugly. Especially as if you switch it to 2D the background suddenly moves into sharp focus and you can see all the detail.

Alas the art design is never interesting enough that you feel you’re missing out on anything. The music is even worse, and so irredeemably boring and unimaginative it shames the Super Mario name more than anything else in the game. Everything from the gameplay to the presentation seems so far removed from the experimental beauty of Super Mario Galaxy, or even Super Mario 3D Land, that it seems impossible to reconcile it with the ‘real’ Super Mario games.

Even the co-op options, which could’ve justified the whole game if properly supported with an online mode, seem half-baked. You can play through the whole of the main campaign with a friend, but only wirelessly and both people have to own a copy of the game. But in another utterly incomprehensible decision the camera is always focused on player one – despite the fact that both players obviously have their own screens.

The other main multiplayer mode is called Coin Rush, which takes three random levels from the main story and challenges to you to complete them within a strict time limit and while collecting as many coins as possible. The idea is you’re mean to then swap your high scores via StreetPass, except of course because the levels are random the chances of you meeting anyone else that has done the same three is remote.

As negative as all this sounds we have to again reiterate that this is a very good 2D platformer. In mechanical terms it’s far better designed than almost any other rival. But in terms of imagination and attention to detail it’s one of the most disappointing games Nintendo has ever released.

Not because it isn’t as good as its predecessors, but because it doesn’t even try to be. This feels more like a yearly update than a proper sequel that the developers were genuinely interested in making. In short the Nintendo magic just isn’t there.

In Short: Arguably the most disappointing Super Mario game ever made, and one that certainly doesn’t deserve the world ‘New’ at the beginning of its name.

Pros: In terms of controls and level design the Super Mario games still can’t be beaten, even on their worst days. Coin Rush is an interesting, if flawed idea.

Cons: Far too reliant on past glories, with very little attempt to innovate or move away from the themes and settings of the past. Bungled co-op and weird 3D mode.

Score: 7/10

Formats: 3DS

Price: £34.99

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No. 4

Release Date: 17th August 2012

Age Rating: 3

Video: Check out the
New Super Mario Bros. 2 trailer

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I don’t think I expected much from New Super Mario Bros. 2, the series’ 3DS debut, aside from the traditional platforming perfection that has become synonymous with this new generation of Mario side-scrollers. I’ve experienced NSMB on the original DS, the Wii and most recently on the Wii U, and the games have been, without fail, pitch-perfect analogues to their old school counterparts – the true bearers of the legacy that made Mario and Luigi household names.

In the prescribed fashion, New Super Mario Bros. 2 injects some noticeable tweaks. There’s a 3D element inherent in the very hardware, of course, and it does not disappoint. The title seems tailor-made for play on the recent 3DS XL system redesign alongside which it launched, with the skillfully animated sprites and dynamic environments truly benefitting from this larger digital canvas. Though I’m reluctant to say the game requires this new system for full enjoyment – it looks just as beautiful and elements like its cloudscape backdrops appear even sharper on the original 3DS screen – Nintendo obviously intended NSMB2 to showcase the best the XL has to offer.

It’s important to note that this game was also the first available through Nintendo’s new direct-download system, affording gamers the opportunity to at long last purchase and download full retail releases directly from the eShop. Though not exactly groundbreaking on its own merits, this development does at least mark another milestone in Nintendo’s slow crawl toward proper online services. The game downloaded in an acceptable (but not exactly stellar) hour-and-a-half through my perpetually-throttled DSL, and I’ve been quite pleased with both its miniscule load times and the added convenience of one less cartridge to carry.

In addition to these outside elements there are likewise the regularly scheduled gameplay enhancements for which the New Super Mario series is known. The charm of Nintendo’s iconic level design is at an all-time high, with the maze-like Ghost Houses proving particular inspired. There’s also a solid blend of power-ups, adding to the traditional Invincibility Stars and Fire Flowers the Mini and Mega Mushrooms from previous NSMB titles as well the oh-so helpful Invincibility Leaf from Super Mario 3D Land, a sort of level-mandated god mode that only appears when the player dies multiple times in a given stage.

The haymaker of NSMB2, however, is none other than the Gold Flower; its super-charged fireballs obliterate enemies as well as brick obstacles, turning practically everything in their path into cold, hard cash. And it stands as merely one of the ways in which the quest to be a gold coin millionaire subtly, skillfully shifts the classic Super Mario Bros. experience. Golden Rings – similar to their Exclamation Switch counterparts that reveal bonus coin challenges – can be activated for a timed coin grab that both turns enemies gold and ups their loot drop value. Similarly, special baddies like Lakitu and Cheep-Cheep leave valuable coin trails in their wake while in gold form. The classic throwback multi-coin bricks can now be worn as masks that launch additional coins as you run and fall, and even the ubiquitous pipes can produce a veritable deluge of gold.

Though I initially laughed off this gimmickry, it’s exactly the thing that managed to truly change the way I play a Super Mario title. For decades I have been a “straight through” player. I pick a path and I go, with my sole motivation being to save the trapped Princess and wrap up the story. Generally I follow the most direct course, while occasionally I put in the work to uncover the more exotic routes. But always, always my gameplay is purely goal-oriented.

Yet in NSMB2 I found myself falling in love with this shifting paradigm, this new gold-oriented play style. After all these years of seeing coins as mere set-dressing, baubles to be collected whenever they were convenient, this game bestowed upon them a new importance. As I charged forward in my mission, I would detour to snag more coins. I’d explore areas I would’ve otherwise ignored for the promise that additional money would pop into existence if I just stepped in the right place. I would lose lives to gain cash. Moreover, as a gamer who seldom replays, I found myself going back even after Bowser and his brood had been defeated and Princess Peach safely returned simply to slake my growing avarice.

Still, this enjoyable cash grab isn’t prefect. With ample branching paths and unlockable levels available, New Super Mario Bros. 2 puts an emphasis on both standard coins and the harder to find Star Coins which are used to bypass barriers. However, wasting countless lives trying to make the perfect jump to that almost-too-far ledge loses its urgency when your life count climbs into the hundreds, an unfortunate side effect of Mario’s new-found hoarding. Also, while the Quick Save option is always available on the map menu, a proper file save only becomes available after mini- and level-boss battles. The one exception? If you unlock a power-up Mushroom House or secondary route by spending your significantly more scarce Star Coins you are prompted with a save option. This means that on your initial playthrough you essentially have to pay to get a genuine game save.

Despite the tons of content to explore after Peach has been rescued, the core game experience can be powered through in a single day. This short principle experience is due in part to the fact that the Koopa Kids’ boss battles are far too similar and the pattern recognition element therein is super-simple. Further, in what is likely the Mario franchise’s biggest WTF moment since Birdo’s shifting gender, the Triceratops-on-a-Ferris-Wheel mini-boss fights that occur mid-world are painfully uncomplicated and border on insults to you gamer intelligence.

Yes, New Super Mario Bros. 2 phones in a number of elements, but don’t let that dissuade you from experiencing a title that is, on the whole, deliciously addictive. Its extensive (post-Princess) single-player experience is further bolstered by a two-player mode and Coin Rush challenges, not to mention StreetPass and SpotPass support. NSMB2 isn’t perfect, but it walks a fine line between damsel-saving altruism and coin-copping greed that would make Wario’s head spin. The quest to rescue Peach is an enjoyable diversion, but the challenge of accumulating a million coins is the driving force that keeps you coming back for more.

Review materials provided by: Nintendo of America

To be fair, no one buys a new Mario game looking for a completely new experience. Lovers of “Super Mario Bros. 3” will smile when they stumble upon a very familiar raccoon tail, for example, and use it to take flight into the blue sky of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s grin-inducing gameplay and familiarity. But nearly every Mario game offers at least one new attribute that distinguishes it from its predecessors—that is, except for this one.

Unlike last year’s “Super Mario 3D Land,” this latest Mario is a 2D side-scroller with gameplay almost identical to the “New Super Mario Bros.” released on Nintendo DS in 2006. The game’s main course is ridiculously easy even by Mario standards, although there’s some challenge presented by the final level and a few of the extra unlockable courses.

While I enjoyed the game (which I’ll now start referring to as “NSMB2”), I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had played it before. Entire courses seemed identical to ones from the “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” game released in 2009, particularly in the lava-filled final world and a middle world filled with purple water, spiderwebs, and giant caterpillars.

Most Mario games have a few levels that are positively exhilarating. “Super Mario Galaxy” was filled with them, including an epic final battle vs. Bowser spanning three planets. “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” has what might be my all-time favorite Mario level, a secret course involving a gigantic skeletal roller-coaster that you ride and cling to until the bitter end—all while hopping and avoiding a treacherous lava pit and the enemies emerging from it. By contrast, there really wasn’t a single level in “NSMB2” that felt exciting; again, the game stands out not for what it offers but for what it doesn’t.

Like previous games in the New Super Mario Bros. series, each course has three star coins tucked away in hidden, hard-to-access areas. It’s the primary trick Nintendo uses to make these games replayable—if you don’t find all the star coins, keep going back and exploring until you do. The star coins can be used to unlock special levels and mushroom houses containing items to help Mario on his way.

Separately from the hidden star coins, there are plain-old-regular Super Mario coins everywhere throughout each level. As you clear levels and build up coins, you unlock a bonus game, “Coin Rush,” in which you replay courses in order to collect more coins. Collect a million coins and the title screen will feature a gold Mario statue. I’m up to 17,000 coins, but I’ve already accomplished my goal of unlocking and completing each level, so I won’t be going much further.

It becomes clear while playing “NSMB2” that Nintendo needs to stop making new Mario games every year. Last year there was “Super Mario 3D Land,” today there’s “New Super Mario Bros. 2,” and coming soon is “New Super Mario Bros. U.” I love Mario, but there are only so many times you can trot out the same game and call it a sequel before the well of innovative gameplay is sucked dry.

After playing through the Italian plumber’s latest, I argue that the only way to save Super Mario Bros. is to give the series a time-out. If Nintendo needs cash in 2012 and 2013, issue a remake of every 8- and 16-bit Mario game for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. Or (since Nintendo hates releasing software for hardware it didn’t build) just release them again with better graphics for the 3DS and upcoming Wii U. No one will hold it against the company.

After doing that, Nintendo should wait. While Mario development will never completely cease, it should be put on the back burner in favor of developing new intellectual property. Keep the Mario wheels moving slowly behind the scenes until you hit upon the right idea, the one that takes the series to the next level like “Super Mario World” and “Super Mario 64” did in the 1990s, or “Super Mario Galaxy” in 2007.

Nintendo can take a page from its own Legend of Zelda series, which maintains its excellence with clever dungeon and over-world design, strong storytelling, and gameplay tweaked to fit the unique strengths of both handheld and traditional consoles. Crucially, years go by between major Zelda releases—that’s how long it takes to get everything right.

I will gladly wait until 2015 for the next Mario game if it’s anywhere near as satisfying as Zelda’s “Twilight Princess” or “Skyward Sword.” Fans waited five years between Zelda releases for the Wii and were rewarded. The same could be true of Mario.

The State of Mario Today: Haven’t I Already Played This Game?

Most gamers assume that each new Mario game will just offer more of the same. But that’s not entirely true. I’ve been playing Mario my whole life, and to my mind nearly every one stands out from the rest for one reason or another.

“Super Mario Bros. 3” and “Super Mario World” built upon the classic original with more intricate level designs, power-up items, and the ride-able dinosaur, Yoshi. “Super Mario 64” brought Nintendo into the 3D age and influenced an entire generation of games. “Super Mario Galaxy” introduced gravity as both villain and friend. And last year’s “Super Mario 3D Land” condensed the best bits of side-scrolling and 3D Mario action into one rollicking, lengthy video game.

With this latest Mario, only one thing distinguishes it from previous editions: coins. Lots and lots of coins. Yes, every Mario game has coins, but this one has lots of them, and you get the aforementioned special rewards for collecting them. If you played “New Super Mario Bros.” for the Nintendo DS, just about everything in this sequel will be familiar: it’s all nearly identical, just not quite as memorable.

Nintendo has fallen behind Sony and Microsoft in courting serious gamers. The fact that its biggest hits are new versions of classic games wouldn’t be concerning if Nintendo could also produce some great new series and attract third-party developers before the latter’s newest games hit the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC (or iOS and Android).

And while Nintendo still leads the handheld gaming market, it had to drastically cut the price of the 3DS. This holiday season, Nintendo will release a home console that finally puts it on graphical parity with the half-decade-old PS3 and Xbox 360. The list of launch games for the Wii U is notable for including third-party titles that hit rival consoles a year ago, such as “Batman: Arkham City.”

The thing Nintendo is really trying to build excitement around is “Nintendo Land,” a game that will supposedly explain the appeal of the Wii U in the same way Wii Sports sold players on the motion control capabilities of the original Wii. It’s hard to see how this strategy will succeed on a massive scale. “Nintendo Land” is basically just a series of mini-games based on Nintendo’s most successful franchises, as the company desperately clings to its past to remain relevant. It’s like saying, “hey, remember when these games really mattered?”

The Future of Mario

Ultimately, “NSMB2” is an enjoyable experience that leaves me discouraged about the future of the Mario series. While the Legend of Zelda has remained fresh, Nintendo is relying on gimmicks to make each new Mario game seem slightly different than the last. But with level design virtually identical from one game to the next, releasing three Mario games in just over a year will only make matters worse.

I don’t think Mario has run its course for all time. As I mentioned before, I just think the course has been run for 2012 and probably 2013. (Instead of playing the essentially same game with a “2” or a “U” appended to the title, I may as well replay the games that made me love Mario in the first place.) That’s why, instead of releasing one new Mario game every year (or worse, several), Nintendo should dramatically slow down and focus on one or two new Marios for each console generation.

To be fair, no one buys a new Mario game looking for a completely new experience. Lovers of “Super Mario Bros. 3” will smile when they stumble upon a very familiar raccoon tail, for example, and use it to take flight into the blue sky of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s grin-inducing gameplay and familiarity. But nearly every Mario game offers at least one new attribute that distinguishes it from its predecessors—that is, except for this one.

Unlike last year’s “Super Mario 3D Land,” this latest Mario is a 2D side-scroller with gameplay almost identical to the “New Super Mario Bros.” released on Nintendo DS in 2006. The game’s main course is ridiculously easy even by Mario standards, although there’s some challenge presented by the final level and a few of the extra unlockable courses.

While I enjoyed the game (which I’ll now start referring to as “NSMB2”), I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had played it before. Entire courses seemed identical to ones from the “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” game released in 2009, particularly in the lava-filled final world and a middle world filled with purple water, spiderwebs, and giant caterpillars.

Most Mario games have a few levels that are positively exhilarating. “Super Mario Galaxy” was filled with them, including an epic final battle vs. Bowser spanning three planets. “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” has what might be my all-time favorite Mario level, a secret course involving a gigantic skeletal roller-coaster that you ride and cling to until the bitter end—all while hopping and avoiding a treacherous lava pit and the enemies emerging from it. By contrast, there really wasn’t a single level in “NSMB2” that felt exciting; again, the game stands out not for what it offers but for what it doesn’t.

Like previous games in the New Super Mario Bros. series, each course has three star coins tucked away in hidden, hard-to-access areas. It’s the primary trick Nintendo uses to make these games replayable—if you don’t find all the star coins, keep going back and exploring until you do. The star coins can be used to unlock special levels and mushroom houses containing items to help Mario on his way.

Separately from the hidden star coins, there are plain-old-regular Super Mario coins everywhere throughout each level. As you clear levels and build up coins, you unlock a bonus game, “Coin Rush,” in which you replay courses in order to collect more coins. Collect a million coins and the title screen will feature a gold Mario statue. I’m up to 17,000 coins, but I’ve already accomplished my goal of unlocking and completing each level, so I won’t be going much further.

It becomes clear while playing “NSMB2” that Nintendo needs to stop making new Mario games every year. Last year there was “Super Mario 3D Land,” today there’s “New Super Mario Bros. 2,” and coming soon is “New Super Mario Bros. U.” I love Mario, but there are only so many times you can trot out the same game and call it a sequel before the well of innovative gameplay is sucked dry.

After playing through the Italian plumber’s latest, I argue that the only way to save Super Mario Bros. is to give the series a time-out. If Nintendo needs cash in 2012 and 2013, issue a remake of every 8- and 16-bit Mario game for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. Or (since Nintendo hates releasing software for hardware it didn’t build) just release them again with better graphics for the 3DS and upcoming Wii U. No one will hold it against the company.

After doing that, Nintendo should wait. While Mario development will never completely cease, it should be put on the back burner in favor of developing new intellectual property. Keep the Mario wheels moving slowly behind the scenes until you hit upon the right idea, the one that takes the series to the next level like “Super Mario World” and “Super Mario 64” did in the 1990s, or “Super Mario Galaxy” in 2007.

Nintendo can take a page from its own Legend of Zelda series, which maintains its excellence with clever dungeon and over-world design, strong storytelling, and gameplay tweaked to fit the unique strengths of both handheld and traditional consoles. Crucially, years go by between major Zelda releases—that’s how long it takes to get everything right.

I will gladly wait until 2015 for the next Mario game if it’s anywhere near as satisfying as Zelda’s “Twilight Princess” or “Skyward Sword.” Fans waited five years between Zelda releases for the Wii and were rewarded. The same could be true of Mario.

The State of Mario Today: Haven’t I Already Played This Game?

Most gamers assume that each new Mario game will just offer more of the same. But that’s not entirely true. I’ve been playing Mario my whole life, and to my mind nearly every one stands out from the rest for one reason or another.

“Super Mario Bros. 3” and “Super Mario World” built upon the classic original with more intricate level designs, power-up items, and the ride-able dinosaur, Yoshi. “Super Mario 64” brought Nintendo into the 3D age and influenced an entire generation of games. “Super Mario Galaxy” introduced gravity as both villain and friend. And last year’s “Super Mario 3D Land” condensed the best bits of side-scrolling and 3D Mario action into one rollicking, lengthy video game.

With this latest Mario, only one thing distinguishes it from previous editions: coins. Lots and lots of coins. Yes, every Mario game has coins, but this one has lots of them, and you get the aforementioned special rewards for collecting them. If you played “New Super Mario Bros.” for the Nintendo DS, just about everything in this sequel will be familiar: it’s all nearly identical, just not quite as memorable.

Nintendo has fallen behind Sony and Microsoft in courting serious gamers. The fact that its biggest hits are new versions of classic games wouldn’t be concerning if Nintendo could also produce some great new series and attract third-party developers before the latter’s newest games hit the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC (or iOS and Android).

And while Nintendo still leads the handheld gaming market, it had to drastically cut the price of the 3DS. This holiday season, Nintendo will release a home console that finally puts it on graphical parity with the half-decade-old PS3 and Xbox 360. The list of launch games for the Wii U is notable for including third-party titles that hit rival consoles a year ago, such as “Batman: Arkham City.”

The thing Nintendo is really trying to build excitement around is “Nintendo Land,” a game that will supposedly explain the appeal of the Wii U in the same way Wii Sports sold players on the motion control capabilities of the original Wii. It’s hard to see how this strategy will succeed on a massive scale. “Nintendo Land” is basically just a series of mini-games based on Nintendo’s most successful franchises, as the company desperately clings to its past to remain relevant. It’s like saying, “hey, remember when these games really mattered?”

The Future of Mario

Ultimately, “NSMB2” is an enjoyable experience that leaves me discouraged about the future of the Mario series. While the Legend of Zelda has remained fresh, Nintendo is relying on gimmicks to make each new Mario game seem slightly different than the last. But with level design virtually identical from one game to the next, releasing three Mario games in just over a year will only make matters worse.

I don’t think Mario has run its course for all time. As I mentioned before, I just think the course has been run for 2012 and probably 2013. (Instead of playing the essentially same game with a “2” or a “U” appended to the title, I may as well replay the games that made me love Mario in the first place.) That’s why, instead of releasing one new Mario game every year (or worse, several), Nintendo should dramatically slow down and focus on one or two new Marios for each console generation.

(Credit:
Nintendo)

(CBS News) For those who are excited about the release of the New Super Mario Bros. 2 on Nintendo 3DS, there is both good and bad news. Now before you jump to any conclusions, know that the good seriously outweighs any bad. Starting with the good news, anyone who grew up on a classic NES system and played the original Super Mario Bros. games will immediately recognize and wax nostalgic at this new handheld entry to the classic gaming series.

Combining elements you will recognize from Super Mario Bros. and, to a much greater extent, Super Mario Bros. 3, the side-scrolling game includes most of the upgrades and functionalities you know and love. In fact, while playing, many who grew up playing the classic NES system won’t help but think of this latest entry to the Super Mario Bros. series as an update to the much-loved and praised Super Mario Bros. 3 from 1988. Jumping on enemies is the standard attack, mushrooms will have Mario grow larger, flowers will give him the ability to shoot fireballs, leaves give the ability to fly, levels are traveled on a map that gives a multitude of options and ways to move ahead (including bypassing whole areas) and gold coins are the currency sought out in order to really up your ante on points and a variety of added options.

In fact, gold coins have never been more vital to the game series as they are now in the New Super Mario Bros. 2, with the ability to unlock key areas by obtaining the somewhat rare Star Coins found within most of levels. While traveling on the map and choosing your next location challenge, you will end up coming across a multitude of areas that are blocked until you have the minimum number of Star Coins needed to unlock the path. This will obviously up the replay value on many levels as you take on the challenges again and again to try and find any Star Coins you may have missed the first, or even second time, around.

Now for the bad news, though don’t jump to any conclusions in terms of what that might mean. The New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a classic side-scroller that harkens back to one of the ground-breaking games from the Mario series, Super Mario Bros. 3. For any of who played and loved that game, this will be a chance to play it all over again in a whole new way with updated graphics and some new functionalities included. It’s also a chance to introduce this particular style of classic side-scrolling gaming to a new generation, who will hopefully embrace the fun and challenge that comes with this style of play. There will be some who simply may not enjoy classic side-scrolling after such innovations to the Mario series such as the much-lauded Super Mario Galaxy (and almost every game in the Mario series created in the 21st century). If you know side-scrolling gaming isn’t something you enjoy, then the New Super Mario Bros. 2 will simply not be the game for you.

To everyone else, however, the New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the Nintendo 3DS is a nostalgic tribute to the classic series and masterpiece in its own right that will have you scrambling to save the princess, collect the coins and find all of the hidden areas and secret drain pipes that you know and love all too well.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB. It is available now for Nintendo 3DS.

Remember back when you didn’t know where the 1up mushrooms were hidden in the original Super Mario Bros.?

A time long ago, when there was no Internet to turn to? When the only way to find secrets was asking your friends during recess and then filtering out all of the lies and I-swear-my-cousin-totally-did-this-one-time tall tales?

That’s how I felt playing New Super Mario Bros. 2, a new Nintendo 3DS game to be released on Sunday. Playing through the game and saving the constantly imperiled (get a can of pepper spray already) Princess Peach isn’t especially difficult, but the game’s secret levels and hidden items are tucked away so thoroughly that it’s as if the designers don’t want you to find them. Nintendo seems to want even veterans to have to tear their hair out looking everywhere for hidden pathways.

Especially because it shows you the secret destinations on the map screen, tantalizingly out of reach, and provides not a single clue as to how to get there.

Finding the well-hidden surprises is rewarding, but on the big ones, I gave up: I simply could not find the entrances to the game’s secret worlds, and went straight to the internet. Come to think of it, this was largely my strategy during the NES days, too; just replace “the Internet” with “dog-eared Jeff Rovin paperbacks.”

I think Nintendo realized that New Mario 2 had to provide an extra level of challenge for veteran players, because it doesn’t change much else. Besides some minor tweaks, it looks, sounds and plays just like New Super Mario Bros. on the legacy DS console, and for that matter New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

All images courtesy Nintendo

This is what Nintendo is banking on, of course. The strategically regressive 2-D side-scrolling New Super Mario games have outsold the boundary-pushing, experimental Galaxy titles — not by a little but by huge heaping piles. I loved Super Mario 3D Land, released nine scant months ago; I loved how it did so many clever things with the system’s 3-D display. New Super Mario Bros. 2 does absolutely nothing with 3-D, and in spite of (because of?) that, it’ll probably outsell 3D Land by a factor of two or three.

Mario 2 is an excellent game, but also a deliberately cautious one, the development and release of which seems more driven by Nintendo’s need to sell systems than its designers’ passion for creating something new.

Be that as it may, within that rigid framework Nintendo’s designers still occasion to produce moments of surprise and brilliance: Levels that take place on mushroom platforms that cause enemies to spring dangerously about the playfield, shifting blocks that always seem to move out of the way at the exact second so that you can feel you made a deft escape. At this point, Mario design is level design, and few if any feel rote or samey.

The addition of simultaneous cooperative play (local only, requiring two copies of the game) also helps to differentiate this game. It seems a bit more difficult than the four-player New Mario Wii. The player in “control” can advance the playfield by running forward, rather than the game keeping everyone on the same screen. So it puts the burden on the players of staying in sync as they play.

Gold coins have always played a subtle, but important role in the Mario series. Collecting 100 of them gives the player an extra life, so one quickly learns to scour the levels for hidden stashes of coins tucked away in blocks, etc. Coins also serve as path markers; a row of them might show a player where to begin a jump or clue him in to a secret waiting just off the screen.

In New Mario 2 subtle goes out the window. Each level is filled with at least a thousand and maybe more coins: They’re scattered everywhere in plain sight, hidden switches might cause the screen to fill with them, a new power-up item causes Mario himself to generate more coins the faster he runs. Coins burst forth in golden showers from pipes and volcanoes. The Golden Fire Flower ability lets Mario fire projectiles that turn bricks into coins.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 thus quickly becomes an interactive version of the fable of Midas, the king who wished everything he touched would turn to gold and quickly grew to regret it. After a few minutes gleefully scooping up coins like Goonies at the bottom of a wishing well, it all becomes hollow. Once you have, oh, 400 extra lives in reserve, why do you need any more coins?

The game gives you a reason, ostensibly: The new “Coin Rush” mode allows you to play three random levels, collecting as many coins as possible under a more stringent time limit. Once you’re done, you can post your scores and trade them with friends via the local StreetPass mode (although not online).

The idea of giving players who’ve mastered the game a new goal to achieve is smart. But Coin Rush seems to have impacted the game’s level design at the expense of the single-player experience. A common example: You get to the end of a level — one in which you’re pretty sure a secret exit or elusive Star Coin bonus might be hidden — and you see bricks that have to be destroyed with the Golden Fire Flower. Alright. You go find the Flower, you meticulously move slowly through the whole level again so as not to lose it, and you finally break through the bricks and find…

…a whole room full of goddamned gold coins. Those gold coins you already have more of than you’d ever know what to do with. Maybe in Coin Rush this would feel great, but in the regular old game it’s just frustrating. I can’t think of another Mario game that has deliberately hidden secrets that turn out to be a booby prize. Except maybe the backwards warp zones in the original Super Mario Bros. 2, which on second thought has a good deal in common with its current namesake: Identical graphics, extra difficulty and a feeling that the whole thing was cranked out in record time.

And it’s still tons of fun. The controls are so tight that even when you die, you know it was your fault and you pledge yourself to do better. And then there’s that feeling you get when you’re about to die but you save yourself with some miraculous wall-jump that bounces you back to safety. The enemies, which would be adorable if they weren’t so deadly, dancing along to the game’s theme song, which has come to be as much of an earworm as the original Mario tune. It’s all baked in to the design; these are not happy accidents. This is a game by people who understand how to make phenomenal 2-D platform games.

It’s better than almost anything else on the platform. But it’s also a game produced by a Nintendo with its back against the wall, which seemed to want to get a side-scrolling Mario on shelves to sell 3DS hardware before the time was quite right.

WIRED Best-in-class gameplay, extra gameplay modes add value, secrets are well-hidden.

TIRED Doesn’t innovate like a Mario game should, “Coin Rush” distracts from single-player experience, no 3-D besides a simple depth effect.

Rating:

$40, Nintendo

Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.

Photo: Nintendo’s “New Super Mario Bros. 2″ /  Image Credit: Nintendo

The New Super Mario Bros. series is getting old. When the first game in the collection made its debut on the Nintendo DS six years ago, gamers had been waiting more than a decade for a new 2D Mario platforming experience.

After the release was a smashing success, Nintendo appeased those fans again in 2009, offering a console version for the Wii that felt like a perfect amalgamation of every side-scrolling Mario game that had come before it.  Over the last three years, “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” has sold more than 26 million copies, outselling Wii’s “Super Mario Galaxy” and “Super Mario Galaxy 2″ combined.

With such massive popularity, it was inevitable that the series would continue, but in what form? Would we be exploring new worlds or revisiting long lost ones?

Unfortunately, neither, “New Super Mario Bros. 2″ seems content to explore the same scenery, battle the same baddies and retain the same mechanics as its predecessors.

While Mario’s classic game play is always welcome, fresh advances in story and theme are sorely missing, leaving the game with very few surprises and making the New Super Mario Bros. games even more indistinguishable from each other.

Sure, in every Mario game Princess Peach is kidnapped by Bowser, but there used to be a twist — new characters, dinosaur islands, castles filled with paintings, galaxies of planets. You get the idea. But  New Super Mario Bros games are quickly becoming indistinguishable from each other.

The big new thing in this game? The coins. This incarnation of the game challenges you to collect a million (I topped out at 25,000) and that bodes well for parents looking for a kid’s game with replay value, but it won’t help you differentiate this game from the others several years from now. I thought I would get tired of hearing the “da-ling!” sound effect with each coin collected, but it surprisingly didn’t faze me. Technically, I have to hear the effect 975,000 more times, so I may be speaking a little too soon.

Of course, the level design is top notch, the game is addicting and there are some nice touches revolving around depth perception in both backgrounds and boss battles. But when it comes down to it, “New Super Mario Bros. 2″ isn’t weird enough.  There’s no mystery, no sense of wonder, just a new power-up now and then.

The really annoying thing is that the solution to this problem is staring Nintendo in the face. The New Super Mario Brothers series could blast off to space and see what the “Super Mario Galaxy” world looks like in 2D. Or it could bring back Wario. It doesn’t take a genius to see some interesting directions for Nintendo to go in.

Thus far, New Super Mario Brother Wii has been the crowning achievement of this series. Four player co-op plus highly detailed world maps brought plenty of new Mario magic to the table along with the old. This game feels like Wii-light, less multiplayer options, the same bosses, mix-and-match power ups from previous entries in the series and maps that take a step backwards.

Come on, Nintendo, get weird!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is available on Nintendo 3DS via game cartridge or digital download (a first for a new Mario title) starting Sunday, Aug. 19.

Mario and friends return to the 3DS in New Super Mario Bros. 2, robot war rages in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and updated rosters in Madden NFL 13 as teams once more compete for glory.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS)
North America: August 19, E
European regions: August 17, 3+
Japan: July 28, A (all ages)

Coin-collecting frenzy New Super Mario Bros. 2 has been boasting of its long-term replay value. Mario’s latest outing could prove a decent little money-spinner for Nintendo too.
Price: $39 / €39 / £29 / R499 / ¥4,800
newsupermariobros2.nintendo.com

Darksiders II (360 PC PS3)
North America: August 14, M17+
European regions: August 21, 18+

Plunge yourself into the chaos of the earth’s final apocalypse as Death, one of the Four Horsemen, as voiced by the gravelly Michael Wincott (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Crow), and vindicate fellow horseman War, star of the first game.
Price: $59 / €69 / £39 / R599
On PC: $49 / €49 / £35 / R399
www.darksiders.com

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (360 Mac PC PS3)
Worldwide: from August 21 via download

One of the most enduring online action games is updated, and brought to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for the first time. Teams of terrorists and counter-terrorist each have their own objectives to work towards, in a streamlined experience requiring tactical teamwork and quick reactions.
Price: $15 / €14 / £12
counter-strike.net

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (360 Mac PC PS3)
North America: August 21, Teen
European regions: August 24, 12+

Settle the score between Autobots and Decepticons during the final moments of home planet Cybertron in a conflict that sucks in transforming robots miniscule and megalithic.
Price: $59 / €59 / £39 / R599, less on PC
transformersgame.com

Madden NFL 13 (360 PS3 Vita Wii)
North America: August 28, E
European regions: August 31, 3+

Updated for a new season, Madden NFL 13‘s improvements include new passing and defensive AI systems, with 4 players on the same machine, up to 6 online, and an Xbox 360 version that can respond to player audibles via the Kinect Sensor.
Price: $59 / €69 / £39
easports.com/madden-nfl

Rock Band Blitz (360 PS3 via download)
PlayStation 3, North America: August 28
Xbox 360: August 29
PlayStation 3, European regions: expected August 29

This is Rock Band reinvented. No plastic instrument accessories required, just a standard controller and the option of importing old Rock Band songs or sticking to Blitz‘s 25 song soundtrack as you surf the note highway à la Frequency, Amplitude, and Frets on Fire.
Price: 1200 MS Points / $15 / €14 / £10
rockband.com/games/rockbandblitz

Mario’s adventures continue to look like kids’ stuff: all bright colors, peppy music and dumpy hero rescuing the girl. They are, however, among the most mature creations in video games. That they eschew a narrative for grown-ups is just another sign that Nintendo designers reject plot as something that matters much in this realm.

The Mario adventures also do nothing to further a medium’s supposed advance toward the emotionally compelling, the realistic or the cinematic. They instead re-emerge every few years as exemplars of the philosophy that the best games — be they Mario’s travels, professional sports or Texas Hold ’Em — are both a concoction of well-balanced rules and an invitation for players to obey, bend or break those rules. The gamer’s enjoyment is a byproduct of that process.

The latest installment, New Super Mario Bros. 2 (to be released on Sunday for the Nintendo 3DS and rated E for Everyone), follows the familiar path established with Super Mario Bros. in 1985, and tended with a string of hit sequels. All of these games are classified as side-scrolling platformers, so designated because of the movement on the screen.

The player controls Mario, a small man in a brightly surreal, flat and mostly horizontal world called the Mushroom Kingdom. That landscape is displayed like a portion of tapestry that scrolls through the frame of a television, or in the case of New Super Mario Bros. 2, the upper screen of a portable Nintendo 3DS.

Mario runs through this world from the left. The bad guys are creatures who march or fly in from the right. There is another hazard, the bottomless pit. Many of these interrupt Mario’s smooth running path. A good player makes sure that Mario jumps over all these obstacles. The platforms hover just above the height of Mario’s head. Our hero can jump onto those platforms too. The princess is at the right of the final main level, awaiting rescue.

Many of society’s most successful games are competitions among players under guidance from rules made by someone else. Mario games, however, like other great single-player video games, are based on the relationship between the gamer and the distant creators, in this case, the designers who devise a new batch of obstacle courses to navigate in each sequel.

The designers tend to include delightful and mischievous surprises. For example, the designer may introduce a large expanse that the player can span only by directing Mario to run toward it at full speed and leap. If, at the end of the leap, an enemy is running toward Mario, ready to hit (and kill) him, that’s the developer winking at the player.

If the player makes the jump and quickly does a second hop to pounce on the enemy’s head, then sprints onward, that’s the player wagging an index finger back at Nintendo, as if to say, “Unh, unh, you didn’t fool me.”

The rules of a Mario game have subrules. Some blocks, when bumped from below, will sprout one coin; others will sprout more, but only if they are hit a second and third time quickly.

Some enemies won’t flatten when jumped upon. Instead, if they’re turtles, they will become projectile weapons that can be kicked into a row of enemies — though these careening shells will dangerously ricochet back if they hit a stone or metal obstacle. To play a Mario game is to discover these things and to chuckle while knowing that somewhere in Japan, the people who made the game are probably chuckling too.

Every few years Nintendo releases a new side-scrolling Super Mario game, and each time the company adds a minimum of changes to the formula. In one sequel Mario can briefly fly or sometimes run behind the scenery like a stagehand scampering amid the props.

In another, he can ride a small dinosaur that can shake its feet in midair and flutter a little bit. Naturally, to complicate this, the designers make some of that game’s bottomless pits wider.

Each change is more profound than the addition of a more complex story line or an enhancement to the graphics might be. The maturation with every game involves the basic rules and the continuing playful conversation between creators and gamers.

The most interesting advance in New Super Mario Bros. 2 is therefore not Nintendo’s acquiescence to make its single-player games more social by allowing players to swap scores or run through its levels together. The exciting changes are the small, clever additions: the new gold flowers that let Mario toss Midas-touch fireballs that can turn brick blocks into coins, a move that will backfire if Mario needs to leap onto those blocks to reach some important place.

Another tweak: jumping through gold hoops makes enemies toss coins at Mario. Another: sometimes Mario can grab a winged gold box, put it on his head and collect the coins that sprout from it. But coins sprout only while Mario moves, and he will lose the box if he recklessly moves into the path of an enemy.

Each twist is a pleasant surprise. Each twist has a catch.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 tallies all the coins that players collect. Players are encouraged to fetch a million of them. If Nintendo were the kind of company that made its games say something important, the theme of New Super Mario Bros. 2 might be the pitfalls of greed. That is not how Nintendo plays.

Like all the best Mario games, New Super Mario Bros. 2 toys with our capacity to discover, to understand and to adapt to a set of elegant rules that has been evolving for 27 years and counting.

Stephen Totilo is the editor in chief of the gaming Web site Kotaku.com.