Super Mario Bros. Wonder is Nintendo’s newest platforming game for the Nintendo Switch. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth your time.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review Overview
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Fun Levels and Interactive Power-Ups Superb Sound Design and Great Soundtrack Badges and Minigames Keep Things Fresh Game Progression is Newbie-Friendly |
Uninspired Storyline Limited Voice Acting |
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Overall - 88/100
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a solid addition to Nintendo’s ever-expanding catalog of Mario games. A commendable effort has been made to maintain the game’s quality in terms of gameplay, aesthetics, and replayability. It’s not a complete standout in the lineup, at least visually, but it’s not a bad game by any means.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Story - 7/10
Platformer games are not always known to have the most compelling stories. There are very few exemptions, and this game's story is not one of those. Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s story is nothing special - it’s a standard "hero saves the kingdom" setup that many platformers have adopted before. The game tries its best to connect the story to the gameplay but the story was never that deep to begin with. The story is one of the game’s weaker points.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Gameplay - 9/10
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an effective and fun platformer that manages to mix up the formula with new power-ups and minigames to keep things from going stale. New gameplay mechanics like the item balloon and badges add a new layer of strategy that can make even platforming veterans sweat. Multiplayer is also available, improving its playability and fun value fourfold by allowing up to four other players to play at the same time.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Visuals - 9/10
The game has good visuals, as is expected from a mainstay Nintendo franchise like Mario. While the game retains the tried and tested 3D Mario look, it manages to stand above its peers with its amazing world designs and fluid animations.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Audio - 10/10
The game has a superb soundtrack spread across varying worlds and minigames with most of them being absolute bangers. The musical scores accompanying every major area on the map enhance their atmosphere, and the minigame soundtracks also feel much more energetic because of their tunes.
While the Mario franchise isn’t exactly known for its voice acting, it would have been great if we had more instances of Mario and his friends talking. The lack of full voice acting doesn’t take from the experience though, and the score by itself is worthy of a perfect score.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Value for Money - 9/10
The game has enough content to justify its $60 pricetag, with six expansive worlds to discover, high replayability, and a developed multiplayer experience. Apart from the main story, there’s minigames, map puzzles, and badge courses, all of which provide additional hours of arcade platforming enjoyment for the whole family.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review | What a Wonderful Journey Indeed
Get your hat on and keep that Super Mushroom handy, we’ve got a kingdom to save!
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a 3D platforming game by Nintendo and is the newest addition to the Mario franchise’s long list of games. The game offers a grand adventure through the Flower Kingdom and its many territories in hot pursuit of King Koopa himself, Bowser. You’ll be jumping, smashing, and dashing your way through six beautiful worlds, full of well-designed levels, enticing power-ups, and fun minigames, all while decorating your arsenal with unique badges that change the way you play.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s platforming is crisp, precise, and very high quality. Each level’s layout strikes a good balance between its theme, difficulty, and secrets, making sure that none of them ever feel like an afterthought. Like an artisanal creation, everything in a level is meticulously arranged to provide a specific experience for the player, from enemy placement to pixel-perfect spacing between platforms.
Moreover, each level has a Wonder Flower that can be found somewhere in its passage. When found, it warps the level and its elements to greater heights. This is called the Wonder Effect and, in addition to granting you an extra World Seed, it introduces a unique game mechanic to the rest of the level.
Speaking of World Seeds, let’s discuss the game’s progression system. It is a very forgiving system that lets even new players progress with relative ease. New levels and worlds are unlocked by gathering a certain number of World Seeds, which can be found in each level. There are usually two World Seeds in a level, one given at the end, and one hidden away somewhere that you must find. There are also gold coins and flower coins, which can be used to gain additional lives should you need them.
This shows Nintendo’s design philosophy of making games playable for everyone. Newbies have more options to progress while veterans still get a hefty challenge.
Overall, this is a solid game with good mechanics, superb sound, plentiful content, and a staunch adherence to accessibility.
Pros of Super Mario Bros. Wonder
| Things Super Mario Bros. Wonder Got Right |
|---|
|
Fun Levels and Interactive Power-Ups Superb Sound Design and Great Soundtrack Badges and Minigames Keep Things Fresh Game Progression is Newbie Friendly |
Fun Levels and Interactive Power-Ups
Right out of the gate, the gameplay carries much of Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s weight. If not for its amazing level design and its interactive usage of power-ups, this game would not have anything to stand out with, as it very much looks like every other game in its franchise.
The Item Balloon is a mechanic implemented right from the start and is available to the player at all times. It works rather simply, allowing the player to store an overwritten power-up for later use instead of just losing it. It only triggers when the player already has a power-up. Said power-up is stored in the item balloon and the new power-up takes its place. At any point, the player can hold down the A button to switch between power-ups after a brief delay.
That by itself already grants plenty of versatility, but there’s more to be had, as each power-up can do more than meets the eye. The Elephant Fruit, one of the game’s new power-ups, normally makes you heavier and lets you break blocks next to you using your trunk. After touching the water, you can spray water in an area, earning you coins from hidden flowers in the grass and hitting targets through walls. This is not taught to the player but can be discovered as early as the first level.
All power-ups have more than one use and it is up to the player to discover them. This approach is why the game has high replayability, as each level can be played more than once, each time with newer uses for tools the player didn’t know before.
Such ingenuity in level design, power-up usage, and planned progression makes this game more accessible to more players. Nintendo’s meticulous design philosophy shines through once more.
Superb Sound Design and Great Soundtrack
This game’s soundtrack and music were composed by Sayako Doi and Shiho Fujii of Splatoon 3 fame. This duo in particular was responsible for many of Nintendo’s most memorable tracks, including songs from their best-selling games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon, and Metroid. Their talent and skill certainly come across here, as the game’s soundtrack can’t be described as anything other than an absolute banger.
While each of the six worlds has its unique design elements and aesthetics, none would be as immersive as they are now not for the resounding musical scores that came with them. Each level’s theme song punctuates its design to the point of memorability and enhances it greatly in most respects. Simply put, this game is fun and engaging because the music pulls you in.
One song I’d like to highlight is the score for the final boss fight, "The Final Battle! Bowser’s Rage Stage", which is a medley of all the musical stages mashed together with a rock n’ roll twist. Nothing else hits quite as hard as the guitar riffs of this song as you fight Bowser for control over the Flower Castle.
Combine this duo’s amazing soundtrack with the legendary sound design of Koji Kondo, and you’ve got some of Nintendo’s greatest sound work yet.
Badges and Minigames Keep Things Fresh
One of the game’s innovations is its Badge system, which grants the player a new passive or active ability that they can use within levels. The badges are quite similar to power-ups, but they cannot be lost when you get hurt and are often pivotal to a level’s completion. These can be purchased or obtained from various nodes around the map and can only be equipped one at a time. Badges can be switched out before each level or between each attempt on the same level, making it easier to experiment.
Badges add a new layer of strategy to every level, as some areas are only reachable through the special abilities they grant you. Players are encouraged to revisit and replay each level with different badges equipped to see what gets them to the end faster, or what gives them access to the hidden Wonder Seed in each level.
Minigames also litter the map, interrupting the standard progression every so often with a refreshing spin on established game mechanics. Some examples include a racing minigame that pits you against a Wiggler (a very fast centipede), an arena minigame that forces you to run a gauntlet of enemies as quickly as you can, and a hidden object minigame that forces you to suss out hidden blocks and tokens.
Platforming as a genre has the pitfall of becoming boring over time as it adheres to its core game mechanics stricter than most games. It’s safe to say that this game manages to bypass that pitfall completely by keeping things fresh up until the last level through badges and minigames.
Game Progression is Newbie-Friendly
Platformers occupy a unique design space, one where the game is easy to learn but hard to master. Almost anyone can pick them up and start playing immediately, but very few can execute the commands needed to run a level in the shortest time possible. Super Mario Bros Wonder treads that balance by implementing three design choices that make the game easier for newbies without necessarily undermining its challenge.
The first design choice lies with the game’s characters, of which there are 12 in total. The first seven, comprised of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Blue Toad, Yellow Toad, and Toadette, all operate the same way and are essentially the same character in different skins. The last five characters include four differently colored Yoshis and Nabbit. These five operate differently and have their own abilities, with the ability to ignore damage from enemies common among them.
With this ability, only pitfalls and stage hazards can kill the player. The trade-off is that these five characters cannot benefit from power-ups, rendering their gameplay monotonous and some levels completely unfinishable. Newbies can simply use these if they feel stuck in a level while veterans can simply not use these characters. These benefits aren’t mutually exclusive during multiplayer either, allowing players of all skill levels to play together.
The next design choice that helps with the game's accessibility lies in its overworld map progression. New levels are unlocked using Wonder Seeds, which can be earned upon level completion or by finding them somewhere within the level. Just grabbing the guaranteed Wonder Seed at the end of each level will usually be enough to unlock the next one, but unlocking will take longer as you’ll need to finish more levels in total. Creative platforming and some out-of-the-box thinking can get you the extra Wonder Seed per level, making the unlock that much shorter.
If you’re new, use those newbie characters and finish levels more easily without needing to find the hidden Wonder Seed. If you want a challenge, go for that hidden Wonder Seed and unlock levels faster.
The last design choice can be seen with the game’s two other in-game currencies: Gold Coins and Flower Coins. You get an extra life if you collect 100 gold coins. The amount carries over between levels, so you will always eventually regain a 1UP if you just keep playing. Flower coins are rarer, but can be used to purchase new badges, new standees, Wonder Seeds, and most importantly, extra lives.
The game also goes out of its way to give you more lives than you would normally need. This gives newbies a safety net to operate with while capable players can simply keep playing, knowing that they’ll never run out of lives either.
Cons of Super Mario Bros. Wonder
| Things Super Mario Bros Can Improve |
|---|
|
Uninspired Storyline Limited Voice Acting |
Uninspired Story
The Mario franchise doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to writing compelling stories. While this game isn’t the most serious offender in its franchise, it, too, fails at creating an inspired setting through its narrative.
You get the exact story one would expect from an arcade platformer, an uninspired adventure full of MacGuffins, non-characters, and surface-level world-building. The plot follows the generic hero’s journey with little to no changes along its progression. There’s no nuance to it either. You are adventuring through the Flower Kingdom, here are some flowers.
A game isn’t required to have a novel’s worth of story and background to be engaging, especially not a platformer, but this game could have benefited greatly from standing out narratively, if not aesthetically. That being said, the story is effective in what it’s meant to do, which is to move the plot forward and bring cohesiveness to the game’s otherwise disjointed levels and themes. There was certainly room for improvement, but it does well enough as a basic narrative that most can follow.
Limited Voice Acting
The game lacks full voice-acting for its characters in-game or during cinematics. The closest the game has to full voice-acting is with its flower characters, which are small plants that speak fully voice-acted blurbs at the player when they reach a checkpoint. Main characters either do not speak during cutscenes or speak short non-words to indicate that they are talking as dialogue boxes scroll past.
This isn’t too dire a critique as an arcade platformer isn’t expected to have full voice-acting. But the game does have a story and, simple and cliche as it is, it could have been enhanced if the characters at least spoke.The Mario franchise isn’t well-known for its voice acting anyway, so this is a minor criticism.
Is Super Mario Bros. Wonder Worth It?
Yes, If You're Looking For A Great Platformer and Hours of Fun for Everyone.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an arcade platformer through and through. Its level design, power-up management, and game mechanics have been fine-tuned to provide a high-quality platforming experience for all to enjoy.
The game retails for $60 and comes with 20 hours of main story content for that price. Factor in each level’s high replayability and all the side content (minigames, badge courses, map puzzles), and you’re looking at around 25-30 hours of gameplay.
The online and local multiplayer feature only adds to the game’s value by allowing you to enjoy all of it with your friends and family.
This game is worth its price, and then some.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Overview & Premise
The story revolves around Bowser’s takeover of the Flower Kingdom through his abduction of the Flower Castle using the power of the Wonder Flower. You (and your friends) will embark on a journey across the Flower Kingdom’s many territories to liberate them from Bowser’s control, all while jumping and dashing through his loyal subjects.
Bowser has spread his corruption and control over the Flower Kingdom. Will you go on this wonderful journey to save the Poplins?
Super Mario Bros. Wonder FAQ
Will Super Mario Bros. Wonder be Released on Other Platforms?
Super Mario Bros. Wonder was released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. It is currently unknown if the game will be released for other consoles in the future.
How does Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s Multiplayer Work?
Super Mario Bros. Wonder supports local and online multiplayer, though the two differ in how they operate. Local multiplayer supports up to 4 people at a time and lets them play through levels in real time. This allows players to interact with each other more directly through emotes and standees.
Online multiplayer is different in that it lets you see the live ghosts of other players as you go through a level, but you cannot interact with them directly as you would in local multiplayer. You can resurrect but that’s it. Online multiplayer also lets you make a private room for up to 12 players, who can then split off into 4-player groups.
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| Title | Super Mario Bros. Wonder |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 20, 2023 |
| Developer | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch |
| Genre | 2D Sidescrolling Game |
| Number of Players | Single-player; Local Co-op (up to 4 players); Online |
| ESRB Rating | E |
| Official Website | Super Mario Bros Wonder Website |
