(I decided to do this mainly in honor of what was a great man who knew how to offer great experiences and entertainment to all types,and you may know him as Satoru Iwata,the passed away leader of Nintendo(1959-2015),who now rests in peace with passion in our hearts. 
You could say this was one of the company's most ambitious projects on his first years as the fourth CEO of Nintendo,and since this is Mario's 30th year as well,let's look upon what could be considered as one grand revival to the whole 2D platforming formula,being one of the many things the company is great at,and mostly thanks to a remarkable person that we will never forget about)
After years upon the 2D platforming that Mario has been running and jumping through since the 80s and the early 90s,the mustached Italian returns to its original routes on the Nintendo DS,but will this comeback triumph in a amazing matter,or should Mario not even pass the first goal pole?
New Super Mario Bros. was released as a Nintendo DS title on 2006 as,to what I suppose,something close to a 20th/21th anniversary collaboration game bringing Mario once again to the simple level routes of going left or right and reach the end of the level.
The story is more of the same you probably have heard a thousand and a half times as of now,with Peach being kidnapped,but now by Bowser's son,Bowser Jr.,who takes his chance to take the princess away while Mario's observing some sudden lighting that stroke the castle while he was having a peaceful stroll with her.It's funny how we don't seem to get old of that story once we enter the gameplay.
Old and new players of Mario games will be almost as equally familiar to this new 2D adventure.As before,Mario still has the basic moves,like running,jumping and picking up stuff like shells.It doesn't stop there though.Mario has new moves to help throughout the game,such as wall-jumping,ground-pounding and more,and let's not forget to mention what also made the man fun and noticibly remarkable to play as throughout the years,and those are the items.There are items old and new to be seen here with classic items like the Mushroom,the Star and the Fire Flower,to newer inclusions like the Mini-Mushroom,Blue Koopa Shell and the Mega Mushroom.The Mushroom,Fire Flower and Star are classic items,with the first one giving more vulnerability and let's you grow in size,the second able to allow you to shoot fireballs out of your hands,and the last letting you literally invicible and agile for a matter of seconds.The newer additions to the item mania here are not as memorable as the others,but still have their own traits.The Blue Koopa Shell gives the opportunity to wear a blue shell from a Koopa,and do actions like hide yourself in the shell by ducking,or running fast enough to get inside the shell and be an unstoppable object moving around,which only stops when you release the running button;the Mega Mushroom grows you to an enormous size allowing you to destroy everything you come across as suspected,again within a short period of time(and if you fill a "destruction meter" enough times,you even get 1-Up Mushrooms for extra lives) and the Mini-Mushroom,as guessed,shrinks your size and lets you jump higher and run on water,but get hit once while on this format,and you lose a life.Most of the time,you'll need some of these items in order to find secret passages or Star Coins throughout the level,remaining the difficulty factor of older platforming games,which is a nice and fun challenging task.
Of course,one important aspect in a game like this is the gameplay and level-design.Let me just say that Nintendo shows they still have nice and creative ways of making this genre so grand and fun,and New Super Mario Bros. is a great resemblance of that fact.Throughout the game,Mario will travel between eight different worlds,like the original Super Mario Bros. trilogy,accordingly,a normal-themed world(the starter world,precisely),a desert themed world,a water/beach themed world,a jungle themed world,a snow themed world,a rock mountain themed world,a sky themed world,and at last,a lava themed world.Quite simple,yeah,but don't get misjudged by the simplicity,because there's a lot of creativity that came from the company within each world's levels.Each world map(very alike from those of Super Mario Bros. 3) has a number of levels,a boss tower and a boss castle,as well as Toad Houses where you can get items,extra 1-Ups or a Giant Mushroom,and you gain acess to them by either paying 5 Star Coins in the map or reaching a specific timer number when you complete the level on the Goal Pole.Some item blocks with wings and Hammer Bros, also come by from time to time in the map and appear in the level of you select the same area they're on.By the way,with the mention of Star Coins,allow me to explain their purpose.Each level has 3 of these objects in the level,and sometimes,even if they are noticeably visible,most of the time they require real skill and knowledge of the level in order to actually get to them.Star Coins are mostly a side thing to collect in the game,with a only usable purpose to unlock new Toad Houses and obtaining acess to other levels,which make them usable every once in a while.Also,if you want some of the game's most hard aspects,collecting and finding them all will be your main task.
The game's difficulty is a bit easier than expected,but does get challenging later in the last worlds.Also,you can activate a secret Challenge Mode by pressing a good ol' combination of buttons(L R L R X X Y Y),and when activated on a level,just like the classic Super Mario Bros.,you can only make the screen move forward,and you can't turn left to the already past parts of the level.Remember the warp zones in the original game as well?Those have been replaced by Warp Cannons,who have a similar function of shooting you straight to a far world,like from World 1 to World 5,and they are accessible when you pass through secret passages in a level when seen on screen.The gameplay in general of the game is a lot of creative fun,with replay factor to the levels and very controllable method of controls mixed with old and new movements to help in the adventure,as well as some nice challenge to offer.
There is a multiplayer alternative for the game as well,where one plays as Mario,and other as Luigi,and at least one of players need to have one copy of it,and two DS systems in order to play multiplayer.Essentially,multiplayer is a competition of who can get the most stars between five different levels,and the one who wins most rounds wins.Pretty similar to Super Mario 64 DS's multiplayer,only that you're not in a 3D environment,and not playing as Yoshis.It's chaotic fun for most of the time,even if it gets a bit repetitive after a lot of matches.
Other than the game and it's multiplayer option,you also get to play with minigames as another option in the title menu,and they can be played alone or with friends in a local wireless connection.There are more than 15 of them,and most of them are actually the original or updated versions of some of the minigames included in Super Mario 64 DS,like Snowball Slalom being the same as before(where you move a snowball by rubbing it forward without hitting rocks and penguins in the way before the timer runs out),and Coincentration only having updated graphics,still being a game where you have to memorize where each coin has fallen in to which bricks by Wario.There are still other games that haven't appeared in Super Mario 64 DS though,like Balloon Racing,where you use the console's microphone to blow and raise Yoshi into the skies without being hit by other enemies,and it worked just fine on mine.They're all fun to play,and also hard for most of the time,with another classic feel of a group of arcade games mashed into one package.
The music here is not spetacular,but still good.Most of the tracks here have a more happy and upbeat tone,and some of these have inspirations from other older Mario musical tracks as noticed through gameplay.All n' all,it still is fun to listen to while playing the game.
Back at the early days of the 2000 decade,2D platformers were left as a side-genre,but then from all the sudden,the king that started it all shows that these games still got a lot of potential and showed us why we even liked platformers to begin with.New Super Mario Bros. has what makes a great platformer game,with simple,yet replayable and fun level design,awesome items,great challenge,precise controls and generally triumph respect to the genre as a whole.If you're a fan of these types of games or games in general,you will enjoy this game until the end without question.Thank you Mario and Iwata-san,for demonstrating how these types of games still got potential and why we played them,and redefining old gaming once more with a definitive experience for all types,and for all the experiences you gave to us throughout the years.
Rating:
What an amazing comeback,bro!
You could say this was one of the company's most ambitious projects on his first years as the fourth CEO of Nintendo,and since this is Mario's 30th year as well,let's look upon what could be considered as one grand revival to the whole 2D platforming formula,being one of the many things the company is great at,and mostly thanks to a remarkable person that we will never forget about)
After years upon the 2D platforming that Mario has been running and jumping through since the 80s and the early 90s,the mustached Italian returns to its original routes on the Nintendo DS,but will this comeback triumph in a amazing matter,or should Mario not even pass the first goal pole?
New Super Mario Bros. was released as a Nintendo DS title on 2006 as,to what I suppose,something close to a 20th/21th anniversary collaboration game bringing Mario once again to the simple level routes of going left or right and reach the end of the level.
The story is more of the same you probably have heard a thousand and a half times as of now,with Peach being kidnapped,but now by Bowser's son,Bowser Jr.,who takes his chance to take the princess away while Mario's observing some sudden lighting that stroke the castle while he was having a peaceful stroll with her.It's funny how we don't seem to get old of that story once we enter the gameplay.
Old and new players of Mario games will be almost as equally familiar to this new 2D adventure.As before,Mario still has the basic moves,like running,jumping and picking up stuff like shells.It doesn't stop there though.Mario has new moves to help throughout the game,such as wall-jumping,ground-pounding and more,and let's not forget to mention what also made the man fun and noticibly remarkable to play as throughout the years,and those are the items.There are items old and new to be seen here with classic items like the Mushroom,the Star and the Fire Flower,to newer inclusions like the Mini-Mushroom,Blue Koopa Shell and the Mega Mushroom.The Mushroom,Fire Flower and Star are classic items,with the first one giving more vulnerability and let's you grow in size,the second able to allow you to shoot fireballs out of your hands,and the last letting you literally invicible and agile for a matter of seconds.The newer additions to the item mania here are not as memorable as the others,but still have their own traits.The Blue Koopa Shell gives the opportunity to wear a blue shell from a Koopa,and do actions like hide yourself in the shell by ducking,or running fast enough to get inside the shell and be an unstoppable object moving around,which only stops when you release the running button;the Mega Mushroom grows you to an enormous size allowing you to destroy everything you come across as suspected,again within a short period of time(and if you fill a "destruction meter" enough times,you even get 1-Up Mushrooms for extra lives) and the Mini-Mushroom,as guessed,shrinks your size and lets you jump higher and run on water,but get hit once while on this format,and you lose a life.Most of the time,you'll need some of these items in order to find secret passages or Star Coins throughout the level,remaining the difficulty factor of older platforming games,which is a nice and fun challenging task.
Of course,one important aspect in a game like this is the gameplay and level-design.Let me just say that Nintendo shows they still have nice and creative ways of making this genre so grand and fun,and New Super Mario Bros. is a great resemblance of that fact.Throughout the game,Mario will travel between eight different worlds,like the original Super Mario Bros. trilogy,accordingly,a normal-themed world(the starter world,precisely),a desert themed world,a water/beach themed world,a jungle themed world,a snow themed world,a rock mountain themed world,a sky themed world,and at last,a lava themed world.Quite simple,yeah,but don't get misjudged by the simplicity,because there's a lot of creativity that came from the company within each world's levels.Each world map(very alike from those of Super Mario Bros. 3) has a number of levels,a boss tower and a boss castle,as well as Toad Houses where you can get items,extra 1-Ups or a Giant Mushroom,and you gain acess to them by either paying 5 Star Coins in the map or reaching a specific timer number when you complete the level on the Goal Pole.Some item blocks with wings and Hammer Bros, also come by from time to time in the map and appear in the level of you select the same area they're on.By the way,with the mention of Star Coins,allow me to explain their purpose.Each level has 3 of these objects in the level,and sometimes,even if they are noticeably visible,most of the time they require real skill and knowledge of the level in order to actually get to them.Star Coins are mostly a side thing to collect in the game,with a only usable purpose to unlock new Toad Houses and obtaining acess to other levels,which make them usable every once in a while.Also,if you want some of the game's most hard aspects,collecting and finding them all will be your main task.
The game's difficulty is a bit easier than expected,but does get challenging later in the last worlds.Also,you can activate a secret Challenge Mode by pressing a good ol' combination of buttons(L R L R X X Y Y),and when activated on a level,just like the classic Super Mario Bros.,you can only make the screen move forward,and you can't turn left to the already past parts of the level.Remember the warp zones in the original game as well?Those have been replaced by Warp Cannons,who have a similar function of shooting you straight to a far world,like from World 1 to World 5,and they are accessible when you pass through secret passages in a level when seen on screen.The gameplay in general of the game is a lot of creative fun,with replay factor to the levels and very controllable method of controls mixed with old and new movements to help in the adventure,as well as some nice challenge to offer.
There is a multiplayer alternative for the game as well,where one plays as Mario,and other as Luigi,and at least one of players need to have one copy of it,and two DS systems in order to play multiplayer.Essentially,multiplayer is a competition of who can get the most stars between five different levels,and the one who wins most rounds wins.Pretty similar to Super Mario 64 DS's multiplayer,only that you're not in a 3D environment,and not playing as Yoshis.It's chaotic fun for most of the time,even if it gets a bit repetitive after a lot of matches.
Other than the game and it's multiplayer option,you also get to play with minigames as another option in the title menu,and they can be played alone or with friends in a local wireless connection.There are more than 15 of them,and most of them are actually the original or updated versions of some of the minigames included in Super Mario 64 DS,like Snowball Slalom being the same as before(where you move a snowball by rubbing it forward without hitting rocks and penguins in the way before the timer runs out),and Coincentration only having updated graphics,still being a game where you have to memorize where each coin has fallen in to which bricks by Wario.There are still other games that haven't appeared in Super Mario 64 DS though,like Balloon Racing,where you use the console's microphone to blow and raise Yoshi into the skies without being hit by other enemies,and it worked just fine on mine.They're all fun to play,and also hard for most of the time,with another classic feel of a group of arcade games mashed into one package.
The music here is not spetacular,but still good.Most of the tracks here have a more happy and upbeat tone,and some of these have inspirations from other older Mario musical tracks as noticed through gameplay.All n' all,it still is fun to listen to while playing the game.
Back at the early days of the 2000 decade,2D platformers were left as a side-genre,but then from all the sudden,the king that started it all shows that these games still got a lot of potential and showed us why we even liked platformers to begin with.New Super Mario Bros. has what makes a great platformer game,with simple,yet replayable and fun level design,awesome items,great challenge,precise controls and generally triumph respect to the genre as a whole.If you're a fan of these types of games or games in general,you will enjoy this game until the end without question.Thank you Mario and Iwata-san,for demonstrating how these types of games still got potential and why we played them,and redefining old gaming once more with a definitive experience for all types,and for all the experiences you gave to us throughout the years.
Rating:
What an amazing comeback,bro!
Everyone said this today and yesterday,but still;rest in peace Iwata.We won't forget you from our deepest hearts. :,(