New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009)

I remember loving this game back in the day. It was a blast playing this with three other friends recently, ensuring full chaos mode was engaged. This is one of the few games I can think of where co-op actively makes the game significantly more challenging. Your friends are your greatest enemies when it comes to chaos Mario. Especially towards the end of the game when platforming becomes significantly more challenging and you are jockeying with your friends over a very narrow platform. You learn to become good with bubbling yourself to avoid dying. Bubbling is when you press the A button to put yourself in a bubble to float around. You can move yourself towards another player to set you free. But this technique can be used to avoid death or make risky plays.

The gameplay itself isn't particularly novel. It's a cool throw back to the original 2D Mario games with 2.5D graphics. But Nintendo certainly pulled out all their tricks for this one. Most levels introduced a new mechanic or challenge to keep levels feeling fresh. The themes of each world are predictable and been seen in many Mario entries, but the introduction of 4-player co-op and each level feeling like an escalation keeps it very fun and engaging from start to finish. Especially if you are playing with particularly devious friends. Which I was.

World 8 is a pretty big jump in difficulty with the first level actually being one of the hardest. It's a side scrolling level where a wave of lava is slowing moving towards you. Creating pressure and forcing you to keep moving. With 4-Player co-op, this ensures maximum chaos potential. This isn't a bad thing by any means and I did find the final fight with Bowser to also be cool. In fact, it's probably one of the best Bowser fights. It starts off as a call back to the original NES Mario games, where you need to get around Bowser and hit a switch to destroy the bridge, so Bowser falls in the lava, but then there's a phase 2. Bowser gets massive and starts spitting fireballs and crawling towards you as a giant Kaiju monstrosity! What's great about this fight is how it makes the final fight a platforming challenge. This is a Mario game ever all!

This is a lot of fun and is possibly the most fun I've had in Mario game. That said, I feel this way because I played it with 3 other friends. If I played this game solo, chances are I would feel tepid about it. It's by no means bad, in terms of design, but the co-op really elevates the experience to a whole new level. I do respect how the game is balanced around being beaten solo, that's good design, but this game is clearly meant to be a multiplayer game and that's where it truly shines.

First Impressions / Setup: I started playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii back on 1/27/2022 w a friend). It became one of those co-op games where you laugh, get mad, and somehow keep playing anyway. Finally finishing it 100% felt like an achievement in itself.

Gameplay / Co-Op: The core platforming is classic Mario — tight controls, creative levels, and plenty of chaos in multiplayer. Playing together was fun, but also led to its fair share of frustrating moments (especially when one of us kept accidentally knocking the other into a pit). The Star Coins added an extra layer of challenge, but collecting them all sometimes felt more exhausting than rewarding.

Difficulty: The game isn’t unfair, but going for 100% completion can definitely wear you down. World 9 was especially brutal — I ended up finishing most of it solo, since it was too difficult to grab all the Star Coins while playing co-op.

Atmosphere / Style: Bright, colorful, and packed with Nintendo charm. The mix of classic Mario nostalgia and new mechanics made it fun to keep coming back, even when things got frustrating.

Conclusion / Personal Take: New Super Mario Bros. Wii is best enjoyed as a co-op experience — full of laughs, chaos, and the occasional argument. While the Star Coin grind can be exhausting, the game as a whole is a fun and memorable platformer. Finishing it after so long felt great, even if World 9 nearly broke me.

I had a roommate in college who hated (and still hates) video games. The only game I could get him to play was this. I was patient, waited for him to figure out jumps, and carried him when there was stuff he couldn't figure out.

Then we got to World 3 and I got tired of that so I just ran as fast as I could and dragged his bubble across the screen followed by popping his bubble and throwing him into a pit.

One bit I don't get is Nintendo is anti competition. They're the gang that keeps leader boards out of their games so you don't feel like you're bad at it. But in "New Wii" you can pick your friend up and throw them to their death.

Four stars.

Having played before it's DS counterpart, which end up being one of my favorite DS games, I never thought this game could be as good as the first. I will gladly admit, I was wrong. This could have been a typical average Mario game, but instead ended ended up being a true gift to old time 2D Mario fans.

The level design in this game is great. Every level feels different from the other, as does every world. Having the Koopalings AND Kamek on the game along with Bowser and Bowser Jr. made each boss battle feel different. It's still the "jump three times on the head and you win" formula but, unlike it's counterpart, doesn't feel always the same because each villain has different abilities that end up changing the battle. Then there's the multiplayer. I know many people say it is chaotic but I just love it. You can have up to 4 players on the game and it is just a lot of fun. You can screw your friends and they can screw you. I never said it was the game's fault when I died, and neither did my friends. There are three new power ups, and each one of them plays and feels great.

To end this review, let's talk about the difficulty, which was one of my only complains in the DS game. Here, they made the same choice. Fun over challenge. However, the difficulty isn't easy throughout the entire game. In the two final worlds, the difficulty is upped, making the levels challenging while never losing the fun aspect. The final boss is definitely one of the hardest Bowser battles in Mario games history.

So, for every Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 3 fan, go play this game. Don't except the same level of perfection that was present in those games, but it serves perfectly as reminder of the 2D Mario era greatness. I give this game a 4/5 stars.