This Week’s Releases (May 15-19, 2006)

  • Reading time:5 mins read

by [name redacted]

Episode forty of my ongoing, irreverent news column; originally posted at Next Generation

Game of the Week:

New Super Mario Bros.
Nintendo
Nintendo DS
Monday

Out of all the pre-release devisiveness, in my experience New SMB takes the ribbon. Every time the game’s brought up, the Internet melts just a little. There’s no pleasing anybody! Maybe that has something to do with the game’s own conflicts: it wants to both revisit the style of Super Marios 1 and 3 for the NES and to “update” it with all the advances since Super Mario World. It wants to both play on nostalgia and to attract all the new and disillusioned eyes who have gravitated toward the DS. It wants to both be the successor to the Super Mario Bros. mantle and to come off as something altogether new.

So what we’ve got is a forward-pressing 2D platformer (as with the NES games) that calls upon the moves introduced in Super Mario 64 to help Mario more precisely explore a 3D world, flashy gimmicks introduced in Smash Bros. as a kind of a joke, and a whole lot of silly scripted events and mechanic-wanking intended to impress the pants off of anyone who thinks he knows how Super Mario Bros. works. And yet, it’s kind of fun. Maybe it’s a little too concerned with the past instead of with doing its own thing – and maybe it’s too concerned with making the past appealing to people who weren’t there at the time – yet maybe the gamers are a little too concerned about Mario.

In its overkill, its mix of old and new, the game clearly isn’t taking itself very seriously. The game gives off an air of exuberance; it knows it’s just screwing around, and it doesn’t care. Within those constraints, New SMB is pretty neat. The past has had its time; if you’re going to bring it up again, you’d better either take it somewhere new and inspirational or have shameless fun with what’s there. Ikaruga and Jonathan Blow’s Braid do the former; New SMB does the latter. Fair enough.