GOTY 2023 NOMINATION - Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Mushroom goes the Kingdom.

By Jonathan Garrett
03/01/24

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is Nintendo at their GameCube era experimental best. Equal parts gorgeous as it is marvellously unhinged, this is a special and refreshing take on what should be a thoroughly mined 2D formula. There’s flashes of innovation all over the place, from lovely new stylised animation, to voice acting (!) and a well integrated co-op mode.

That good ol’ fashioned Nintendo Seal of Approval shines brightly throughout; it’s every bit as polished and well optimised as we’ve come to expect from their first party efforts (wonky framerate in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom notwithstanding). There is a very specific kind of joy to navigating the world, poking around for hidden secrets, and reacting to whatever curveball those wacky Wonder Seeds might throw at you.

It all comes together to form a supremely well crafted and massively fun adventure that works just as well on your own as it does with friends. If this is the kind of experimentation we can expect from Nintendo’s main line releases moving forward, then a potential Switch 2 spontaneously became much more interesting.

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TARPS?

At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.