New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Hard-core/casual fusion Nintendo’s been looking for?
Posted in: Today's Chili
It's retro right down to the box art.
(Credit:
Nintendo)
This holiday season, amid an economy that’s still in the tank, game companies are stingier with their first-party release schedule. In fact, each of the Big Three (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) are only targeting one or two games for their systems before Christmas. Nintendo has one single title that’s prominent for the Nintendo Wii, and that’s New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
We got a chance to play one or two of the side-scrolling title’s multiplayer modes awhile back, but we didn’t know whether Mario’s home console return to 2D platforming would also feature a single-player mode that had as much going for it as old-school favorites like Super Mario World.
After last night’s playthrough and a discussion with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto (translated via Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen), the answer to that question is undoubtedly yes.
Mr. Miyamoto answered questions regarding his new game, in particular why it’s a 2D game when Super Mario Galaxy achieved such great success both critically and financially as a 3D Wii title.
According to Miyamoto, who participated in a reporter’s roundtable Thursday night in New York City, what makes a Mario game is being “simple to control and easy to understand.” The multiplayer modes of New Super Mario Bros. Wii include both four-player competitive Smash Bros.-inspired modes such as Coin Battle, as well as hop-in four-player co-op throughout the entire single-player story mode of the game.
“We wanted the game to appeal to and be accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and because we wanted to make it multiplayer, we felt that the original concept for Mario Bros. was the one best suited to multiplayer gameplay,” Miyamoto added. “Multiplayer platforming is much better suited to a 2-D environment versus a 3-D one.” He was referring specifically to same-room gaming as opposed to online gaming, raising a point that we’ve often thought about with the Wii–namely, other than Wii Sports, that there just aren’t a great number of multiplayer games for the console.
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