Super Mario Bros. Wonder: A Wondrous Adventure

By: Matthew Rouker 1/22/24

Bowser in his castle form.

Super Mario Bros Wonder, created by Nintendo, was the first 2D Mario game since New Super Mario Bros U in 2012. It was also recently nominated for multiple game awards, so I decided to play it. Suffice to say, it was pretty good. As you will see, the title of “Wonder” fits this game very well as it’s pretty all over the place. The game begins when Bowser, the villain of every Mario game, steals the Wonder Flower in an attempt to take over the Flower Kingdom. When he steals the Wonder Flower he fuses with the Flower Castle. Prince Florian, the prince of the Flower People, asks Mario to rescue the Flower Kingdom. Of course, Mario agrees to rescue their kingdom; this event sets up the plot of the whole game.

As for gameplay, most levels are pretty good, and each level is unique. A different enemy is the center of each level, with few repeats in the whole game. You don’t lose a lot of lives, but when you do, they’re super easy to restore; this is my biggest complaint with the whole game and is a major problem with every recent Mario game. Whenever you die, you don’t feel upset at all because you know that lives are replaceable, and this causes you to play way more recklessly. There are multiple different ‘challenge levels’ such as Badge Challenges, Break Time, Search Parties, Wiggler Races, and KO Arena levels.

Badges from the game.

As for gameplay, most levels are pretty good, and each level is unique. A different enemy is the center of each level, with few repeats in the whole game. You don’t lose a lot of lives, but when you do, they’re super easy to restore; this is my biggest complaint with the whole game and is a major problem with every recent Mario game. Whenever you die, you don’t feel upset at all because you know that lives are replaceable, and this causes you to play way more recklessly. There are multiple different ‘challenge levels’ such as Badge Challenges, Break Time, Search Parties, Wiggler Races, and KO Arena levels.

Finally, we just have other facts about the game and its gameplay. The game ranks the difficulty of each level using a star system; in my playthrough, I discovered that there was a ‘Special World’ with super difficult, five-star levels. I’ll let you find it for yourself though. Along with the elephant power-up, there are two more power-ups specific to this game. SMB Wonder added the ‘Drill Mushroom’ and the ‘Bubble Flower’. The Drill Mushroom allows you to burrow into the floor and ceiling; it also gives you the ability to crush through certain blocks. The Bubble Flower acts like a normal Fire Flower but instead allows you to shoot bubbles, which when impacting an enemy, will defeat them immediately. The progression, or the way the game progresses the player to more challenging levels, feels smooth and assures that you won’t get stuck on a level for too long, and if you need more time to improve you can always go back and play levels you’ve already beaten.

I really enjoyed Super Mario Bros Wonder and I think it was a great continuation of this historic series. That being said, the game isn’t flawless and could use improvement in some aspects. But finally, my rating of Super Mario Bros Wonder is 7.9/10. IMDb rates this game 8.8/10 and Metacritic rates it 91%, so I’m a little more negative than others. I hope that if you decide to play SMB Wonder you enjoy it as much as I did.