New Super Mario Brothers Wii is just like classic Super Mario Brothers. At E3 I joined a game with three other people, playing as one of the two Toads. The first level had what you would expect in a Mario game, super mushrooms and pits to jump over. One quirk about New Super Mario Brothers Wii is if one person shrinks the game briefly pauses. At first I thought it was slowdown, but it’s not. The game pauses to show the shrinking animation for a second. The same thing happens when someone dies, which might take some time to get used to.
When you get the propeller suit you can shake the remote to make Mario, or in my case, Blue Toad, slowly drift to the ground. You can’t fly like if you had a racoon tail so if you want to collect out of reach star coins players have to work together or bounce off another person’s head.
Since New Super Mario Brothers Wii supports four players the screen can’t scroll backwards and if one person jumps in a pipe everyone automatically goes in. This can actually save your life. If you’re about to get hit by a koopa jumping in a pipe cancels that. When you haphazardly fall into a pit and die you respawn in a bubble. You need another player to pop a bubble to get back in the game. Shaking the remote makes the bubble float towards other players.
The other stage I played had Yoshi. When you hit a mushroom block usually four mushrooms appear, but you only get one Yoshi. Luckily, I grabbed Mario’s dinosaur friend and started spitting goombas at the hammer brothers. By mistake, I also ate another player. If you eat someone they’re stuck in your Yoshi until you spit them out. I imagine this can be pretty amusing in a group of friends. Not wanting to spoil someone else demo I spit them out right away. On second thought I should have tried spitting a player at a goomba to see if the game had tandem spitting attacks.
New Super Mario Brothers Wii is scheduled to come out this holiday.
