[Valigarmander]

New Super Mario Bros Preview for the Wii from 1UP.com

With less than two weeks to go until Nintendo unleashes New Super Mario Bros. Wii upon unsuspecting Americans, your excitement should be building to a fever pitch. After all, this is the old-school Mario game you always wanted to play in 1990: Classic Mario, but for four players. Rather than simply give you a blow-by-blow hands-on preview, though, we've decided to focus on a dozen little details that have caught our attention as we've played through the game.

No. 1 -- It's relentlessly cheerful.

Everything in New Super Mario Bros. Wii dances to the beat of the music. That relentlessly infectious, almost offensively happy music. This isn't a new idea -- New Super Mario Bros. for DS is where this particular embellishment first appeared -- but this time around, it's not just the bad guys that bop to the beat. When you find Yoshi and let him stand idle for a moment, he'll come down with a case of happy feet, too. Even the flowers in the background bounce in time to the music.

No. 2 -- It's full of small, unexpected details.

Speaking of those dancing flowers, the secret of Mario's success has always been attention to detail. Those flowers dancing in the background? If you spin jump in front of one, it'll spit out a coin. It's a minor detail that you could easily overlook, but for the attentive player it's another miniscule bonus to liven up the already perky gameplay. There's plenty of care given to the way the big things work, too, such as how Mario's new ability to freeze enemies in a block of ice works. Freeze an underwater foe and it will drift upward to bob along the surface of the water like an ice floe, helping Mario reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Different enemies react in different ways to being frozen in mid-air. Zap a ground-based foe while it's dropping or jumping and it'll immediately plummet to the ground. Certain other enemies, such as Koopa Paratroopas, will remain frozen in place momentarily (Metroid-style) before dropping to the ground and shattering. And light aerial enemies like Bullet Bills will simply remain suspended in midair indefinitely.

No. 3 -- Mario has lots of new options

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is full of elements carried over from older Mario games, but many of them are presented in new ways. The always-infuriating Hammer Bros. become much less threatening when Yoshi can snatch one of their hammers in mid-air and spit it right back at them. Other traditionally infuriating enemies, like the nigh-indestructible Dry Bones, have new weaknesses to even the playing field -- or, at the very least, to make it a little more strategic. Hit a Dry Bones with your ice powers and it'll freeze solid, allowing you to fully destroy it by hitting it from beneath, stomping it from above, or tossing it at a fellow foe.

No. 4 -- Its whimsy manages to be incredibly compelling.

Perform certain feats -- collect all three Star Coins in a stage, or snag all the blue or red coins that appear briefly when you activate certain triggers -- and the game offers you a round of applause. This is a completely useless reward, yet it's inexplicably addictive. Being cheered on by an invisible audience is, believe it or not, far greater motivation to excel than some mere extra life.

No. 5 -- It takes its cues from the best parts of the older Mario games.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii isn't short on new ideas, but some of its best moments are those lifted from its predecessors. The power-up system, for example, comes closer to matching the much-loved costumes from Super Mario Bros. 3 than any other game in the franchise. Each ability feels useful in its own right, though most power-ups are doled out in sufficient numbers that they usually come off more as playthings to enjoy than as tools deliberately placed to help player surmount specific challenges. There's even an echo of the Raccoon Tail/Tanooki Suit from Mario 3 in the dichotomy between the Ice Flower and the Penguin Suit. The former simply allows Mario to fire blasts of ice that can freeze enemies solid. The latter doesn't just give Mario ice powers, it also provides superior traction on slippery surfaces, and with a running start Mario can slide on his belly to slip past certain obstacles as well.

No. 6 -- It has airships.

The airship stages were arguably the coolest part of Super Mario Bros. 3 -- no small claim for such a superlative game. They created an ominous, oppressive atmosphere that hinted at genuine menace lurking behind those smiling clouds and cheerful calypso themes. New Super Mario Bros. Wii has an airship, too, although it's less about ambience and more a straightforward opportunity to create some tricky platforming stages. Familiar enemies like Mecha-Koopas return, along with classic elements like the nut-and-bolt style platforms that rotate as Mario stands on them, threading the giant nut along the thread of the bolt in order to advance. Of course, there's no Koopaling at the end of the ship, since they've taken up residence in the fortresses and castles along the length of the stage. Instead, Mario and friends face off against Bowser Jr.

No. 7 -- It makes Bowser Jr. seem actually kind of... cool.

Impossible, you say? Well, maybe "cool" is a slight stretch, but at the very least Bowser Jr. comes off as an interesting minor player here rather than the series' very own Jar-Jar Binks. His first appearance as a boss comes at the end of the airship in World 4, the midpoint of the game -- and unlike his boring battles in the first New Super Mario Bros., this time he's followed in his father's footsteps by adopting Bowser's flying propeller car from Super Mario World, clown paint and all. Since you can't kick things into the air in this game, however, you're left to find other means by which to triumph.

No. 8 -- It's not just a lot of recycled content.

Despite the fact that so much of what makes New Super Mario Bros. Wii fun is the way it touches on familiar, classic Mario mechanics and concepts, the game is hardly a rehash. For every flash of "Oh, I remember that," you experience, the game just as quickly throws new elements your way. Be it special abilities like the new propeller suit or background features like rolling hills that literally roll, Mario's latest feels far more inventive than his DS adventure.

No. 9-- The new material is carefully designed to work with any number of players.

Because Super Mario Bros. Wii is designed to be played with one to four players, the game feels completely different as a solo experience than it does with friends -- despite the fact that the levels are 100% the same. The trick is that each level is packed with stuff, and with four players on-screen the camera view zooms out somewhat to reveal just how busy the game world is. This is especially obvious in some of the later sky-based levels. World 5-3 incorporates giant beetles that drift lazily through the air to serve as footing; dozens of them rise and then fall in a slow parabola, forcing players to constantly find new footing or grab a propeller block (an item that works like the propeller suit while being carried by a player) to stay aloft. And 7-2 is even trickier, as it's thick with Bullet Bill launchers that rise and fall like pistons and fire when aligned with a player. That would be perfectly challenging in its own right, but the only way to navigate the level is to swim through the air by leaping and paddling through spheres of water suspended over the bottomless pits that comprise most of the level. It's tough enough for one player, but when four people are jockeying to find purchase in the limited balls of water while dodging Bullet Bills, the game becomes downright manic.

No. 10 -- It makes tastefully restrained use of motion controls.

While New Super Mario Bros. Wii draws plenty of inspiration from its 8- and 16-bit predecessors, it doesn't incorporate many ideas from Super Mario Galaxy. Outside of the Ice Flower, there's only one other feature from Galaxy present: The game's use of motion controls. Rather than overcomplicating things, Nintendo has used the Wii Remote's motion functionality to keep things simple. The entire game can be played with the remote held sideways, using the 2 button to jump and 1 to run, hold, or shoot. Shaking the controller activates Mario's spin jump, which helps you launch into the air with the aid of a propeller suit or block. Shaking the controller while standing next to an item or character and holding 1 allows you to lift it. Besides that, though, motion functionality is used only situationally: You tilt the controller to activate certain devices, rotate platforms, or direct beams of light. This helps keep the button-wrangling to an accessible minimum while still offering Mario and crew plenty of abilities and options.

No. 11 -- It has tons of hidden secrets.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii has a lot of secrets to uncover; in the tradition of Super Mario World, most of these discoveries are unlocked by finding alternate routes through stages. Simply completing certain stages will open branching routes through a world, but in other cases you'll have to sniff around for less-than-obvious secrets in order to find an alternate world. In fact, Nintendo gave us clearance to write about World 7-6 in this preview, which would be great... except for the fact that we haven't found it yet. It's one of the game's secret levels, and while we have our suspicions about how to unlock it, we haven't had any luck. Yet. Just you wait, though.

No. 12 -- It's seriously tough.

There's been endless grumbling among forum-goers that New Super Mario Bros. Wii would be dumbed down for casual gamers, and news of the now-infamous Super Guide (an interactive help tool) only fueled fears that the game would play itself. But that's really not the case at all: This is a tough game. It hands out extra lives like candy, sure, but just because you have nearly limitless opportunities to try again when you screw up doesn't mean you'll screw up any less. Life is cheap in the Mushroom Kingdom, and you'll be hearing the famous "you died" theme more times than you can count. The difficulty steadily ramps up over the course of the adventure until you reach the game's latter levels, which throw a ridiculous amount of hazards at you. One level in particular has you riding moving platforms over lava -- platforms which you control by tilting the Wii remote. As you navigate, you'll also have to avoid Bob-ombs that constantly parachute into the level, massive geysers of fire that erupt from the magma below, and dive-bombing crows that hover at the top of the stage before swooping down and strafing at Mario in clusters of two or three. However you choose to play it, and no matter how good you are, this sort of thing makes for tense, sweaty-palmed challenge. And that's hardly the trickiest situation the game has to offer....

It's like they're trying to psyche me to death. Check out the link for pics and videos.


Also, as it says here, the game can be played holding the Wiimote sideways.