An article that I pretty much completely agree with about the laziness of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The article is from Waluigious : http://www.waluigious.com/2010/07/in-which-this-smbw-is-everything-but-n.html
There are several layers of delicious irony in remaking a game that had the unusual prefix "New" - in a market unparalleled in its impermanence, too - using the same prefix but not contributing much that would be truly new both with respect to the franchise nor to the prequel. "Improved SMB Wii" would have fit much better.
To dissipate all misconceptions, NSMBW is rather a re-imagining of the events in the DS original than a separate story - more than a port, but less than a follow-up. The levels are new, the worlds are the same. The levels are FEWER than on the weaker, slower, older DS, although there is one more world! Why? No, this is not a question, a question would imply that I don't know the answer. The right form of this statement would be "Why." Why. Why, Nintendo.
This is laziness. This is quick marketing, this is cashing in, this is stooping to EA Sports level. A game released only for its multiplayer - draw in the people too cool and casual to ever play alone and monetize on their faded memories of choking on a controller as a toddler playing "Super Mario Bros. World" or however they remember it. The people who laugh at true Mario fans and who are only willing to be seen playing anything "kiddy" ironically. It's a game that does away with any kind of NPCs beside Toads because the average person it's aimed at would only laugh at any attempt to deepen the experience. Mario is only about running and jumping after all, right? Stomping those brown hamburger thingies and those flying tortoises.
But venom aside, let's break it down objectively. We have Mario, Luigi, PLACEHOLDER_3 and PLACEHOLDER_4 as playable characters - not for single players, though! Those desperate enough to buy this without having anyone to jump on their heads only get to play as Mario. Luigi takes the troll role of the Super Guide, a "feature" that allows "differently abled" players to see what lies beyond that one level they keep losing in. An idea good in theory, bad as soda-powered jetpacks in execution - it unlocks disproportionately fast. Back in the days of SMB3, we lost 100 lives on Bowser's fleet and loved it - this skipping is just unnatural. Would your karate sensei accept it if you skipped punching and went straight to kicking?
The levels are nice. Every single one is based around some sort of environment gimmick, be it giant Wigglers, a raft through a dark cave with a waggle-control floodlight, or floating orbs of water. If there's something NTSCWii can be praised for, it's the variety of the levels - there's always something different lurking after the stage intro screens... which might be why there are so few of them. Throughout the game, you can perceive the programmers getting visibly exhausted from having to introduce one-time elements in every area. The 2-D, tiled nature of the game would have lent itself to dozens upon dozens of more levels, but with the amount of extra programming (and surely bugfixing) going into everything the team just scrapped together some spare ideas, threw them into the bonus world and told everyone else to shut up.
Compare the gimmickiness of the features to, say, Yoshi's Island. Most of us can remember the levels of Yoshi's Island pretty well, even though they reused gameplay set pieces left and right. The key is new combinations - all music is 12 notes, but there are infinitely many melodies, there are more than 100 chemical elements, but nature uses about 20 to create most of everything in existence. Hacks of Super Mario World still manage to have something new! There's no need to top yourself with new toys all the time. Except in the fortresses and castles, which are done masterfully this time around.
A lot of the awesomepants ambiance in the evil lairs comes from the castle music, a great quasi-remix of the SMW boss levels - however, this and the map themes are among the only new tunes in the package. The main NSMBros. theme still haunts you throughout the majority of the game - as well as the "DAH" sound in every song that messes up the enemies' paces right when you jump on them. Yoshi has his old squishy sound effect back... which you will only hear in six levels. Problem, Yoshi fans? They sure trolled you good, with three of them on the cover there. It's actually possible to beat the game and see Yoshi less times on your TV than on the packaging. Programmers' excuse: too overpowered! My bull detector: 100% match! How about making him less overpowered or invest in more Yoshi-in-mind level design instead of treating him like the most unwanted just-for-money add-on since the inclusion of Sonic in SSBB? SUPER SONIC/YOSHI DOUBLE SALES POWER!
With that said, it's very unbalanced how despite the apparent ambition of the makers to create gimmique stages, no one on team seemed to object to reusing the world themes again. Oh, sure, Worlds 3, 4 and 5 have rotated, but that's like a hypothetical New Super Mario World (Miyamoto hinted at something similar on the 3DS, don't mess that up, people!) having Chocolate Island after Vanilla Dome, but before the Cheese Bridge. The real sucker-punch comes from not only reusing the general themes - after all, no one can criticize "grass", "ice" or "lava" by themselves - but also the style of the backgrounds, the Mushroom Kingdom's striped hills, the beach's tiny islands, the forest's purple poison puddles, the ice world's... everything...
...the spiralling mountains, out of ALL mountain styles possible in fiction, and only the Bowser Badlands now being completely lava-filled instead of half-haunty-wasteland (the sole improvement, since everyone hated those levels. Mega Unagi chase, eek.) Nintendo calls this "a homage". I call this "real design is bleh, interns redrawing old graphics is yey!"
So, what do we have here, after all this? It's a game that has great potential to be hacked, and will provide future generations of customizers with more fun than SMW ever did. I, for one, am looking forward to NSMBW levels playing themselves and generating pop songs with enemy sounds in 2020.
There are several layers of delicious irony in remaking a game that had the unusual prefix "New" - in a market unparalleled in its impermanence, too - using the same prefix but not contributing much that would be truly new both with respect to the franchise nor to the prequel. "Improved SMB Wii" would have fit much better.
To dissipate all misconceptions, NSMBW is rather a re-imagining of the events in the DS original than a separate story - more than a port, but less than a follow-up. The levels are new, the worlds are the same. The levels are FEWER than on the weaker, slower, older DS, although there is one more world! Why? No, this is not a question, a question would imply that I don't know the answer. The right form of this statement would be "Why." Why. Why, Nintendo.
This is laziness. This is quick marketing, this is cashing in, this is stooping to EA Sports level. A game released only for its multiplayer - draw in the people too cool and casual to ever play alone and monetize on their faded memories of choking on a controller as a toddler playing "Super Mario Bros. World" or however they remember it. The people who laugh at true Mario fans and who are only willing to be seen playing anything "kiddy" ironically. It's a game that does away with any kind of NPCs beside Toads because the average person it's aimed at would only laugh at any attempt to deepen the experience. Mario is only about running and jumping after all, right? Stomping those brown hamburger thingies and those flying tortoises.
But venom aside, let's break it down objectively. We have Mario, Luigi, PLACEHOLDER_3 and PLACEHOLDER_4 as playable characters - not for single players, though! Those desperate enough to buy this without having anyone to jump on their heads only get to play as Mario. Luigi takes the troll role of the Super Guide, a "feature" that allows "differently abled" players to see what lies beyond that one level they keep losing in. An idea good in theory, bad as soda-powered jetpacks in execution - it unlocks disproportionately fast. Back in the days of SMB3, we lost 100 lives on Bowser's fleet and loved it - this skipping is just unnatural. Would your karate sensei accept it if you skipped punching and went straight to kicking?
The levels are nice. Every single one is based around some sort of environment gimmick, be it giant Wigglers, a raft through a dark cave with a waggle-control floodlight, or floating orbs of water. If there's something NTSCWii can be praised for, it's the variety of the levels - there's always something different lurking after the stage intro screens... which might be why there are so few of them. Throughout the game, you can perceive the programmers getting visibly exhausted from having to introduce one-time elements in every area. The 2-D, tiled nature of the game would have lent itself to dozens upon dozens of more levels, but with the amount of extra programming (and surely bugfixing) going into everything the team just scrapped together some spare ideas, threw them into the bonus world and told everyone else to shut up.
Compare the gimmickiness of the features to, say, Yoshi's Island. Most of us can remember the levels of Yoshi's Island pretty well, even though they reused gameplay set pieces left and right. The key is new combinations - all music is 12 notes, but there are infinitely many melodies, there are more than 100 chemical elements, but nature uses about 20 to create most of everything in existence. Hacks of Super Mario World still manage to have something new! There's no need to top yourself with new toys all the time. Except in the fortresses and castles, which are done masterfully this time around.
A lot of the awesomepants ambiance in the evil lairs comes from the castle music, a great quasi-remix of the SMW boss levels - however, this and the map themes are among the only new tunes in the package. The main NSMBros. theme still haunts you throughout the majority of the game - as well as the "DAH" sound in every song that messes up the enemies' paces right when you jump on them. Yoshi has his old squishy sound effect back... which you will only hear in six levels. Problem, Yoshi fans? They sure trolled you good, with three of them on the cover there. It's actually possible to beat the game and see Yoshi less times on your TV than on the packaging. Programmers' excuse: too overpowered! My bull detector: 100% match! How about making him less overpowered or invest in more Yoshi-in-mind level design instead of treating him like the most unwanted just-for-money add-on since the inclusion of Sonic in SSBB? SUPER SONIC/YOSHI DOUBLE SALES POWER!
With that said, it's very unbalanced how despite the apparent ambition of the makers to create gimmique stages, no one on team seemed to object to reusing the world themes again. Oh, sure, Worlds 3, 4 and 5 have rotated, but that's like a hypothetical New Super Mario World (Miyamoto hinted at something similar on the 3DS, don't mess that up, people!) having Chocolate Island after Vanilla Dome, but before the Cheese Bridge. The real sucker-punch comes from not only reusing the general themes - after all, no one can criticize "grass", "ice" or "lava" by themselves - but also the style of the backgrounds, the Mushroom Kingdom's striped hills, the beach's tiny islands, the forest's purple poison puddles, the ice world's... everything...
...the spiralling mountains, out of ALL mountain styles possible in fiction, and only the Bowser Badlands now being completely lava-filled instead of half-haunty-wasteland (the sole improvement, since everyone hated those levels. Mega Unagi chase, eek.) Nintendo calls this "a homage". I call this "real design is bleh, interns redrawing old graphics is yey!"
So, what do we have here, after all this? It's a game that has great potential to be hacked, and will provide future generations of customizers with more fun than SMW ever did. I, for one, am looking forward to NSMBW levels playing themselves and generating pop songs with enemy sounds in 2020.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I208t7ix-Jc[/youtube]
And as for Yoshi, I think Nintendo should keep him in the games, but thatas just me.