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GDC: New Super Mario Bros. Hands-On

New Super Mario Bros. is so hot its difficult to describe the game without resorting to superlatives...

How good is New Super Mario Bros.? So good that Nintendo had a booth girl doing nothing but getting people off the demo DS's, so others could take their turn. I've been skeptical since the game was first revealed- the polygonal art style had me worried about the direction the gameplay might be headed in. Spending some time with the game has erased all my fears, however. The game is an absolutely perfect mixture of old and new, and literally every level I played was packed with innovation, as well as classic homages.

The overworld looks a lot like a Mario Party board at first glance. There's eight worlds, but it isn't a linear progression. Each world is filled with branching paths and secret levels/powerups. Within each individual level there are three special coins hidden. On the overworld some paths will be blocked, requiring a certain number of coins be paid to open the path. I had to pay five that gave me access to a brief game of chance that ended up awarding me four free lives.

I only played the game's first five levels, but I was extremely impressed with the amount of imagination they showed. Here's a list of things I encountered, in just those first five levels:

  • A ring that made eight red coins appear in a level when you jumped through it. Collect them fast enough for a 1-up, or another powerup.
  • Giant mushrooms that act like big trampolines.
  • A new blue shell powerup that allows Mario to spin along the ground and dispatch enemies Koopa-style.
  • A platform that sends Mario into the air in a liesurely spin, like when you jumped on the skyguys in Super Mario 64.
  • A super mushroom that grew Mario to screen-filling size. The surprise was that the mre destruction you caused, the more 1ups you earned when shrunk back down to normal size.

    All of this was just within the first half-world. New Super Mario Bros. is out in mid-May, and is most likely going to be a DS Game of the Year contender once Nintendo adds the final layer of polish. Modojo will have more on the game's multiplayer and a more in-depth report later this week.


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