New Super Mario Bros. 2

3D Mario games have always excelled at renewing themselves, making their most basic mechanics – like jumping – more interesting in the most imaginative ways possible, either by abusing and twisting gravity in Super Mario Galaxy or by prolonging the jump in Super Mario Sunshine. The current 2D titles appear to follow a different guideline, basing their design on familiar elements while highlighting their main gimmick: the Wii version, for example, focused on its multiplayer mode and was reasonably successful. The point of New Super Mario Bros. 2, however, is the collection of coins, which is a poor decision that goes against the intricate level design that the franchise has always cherished.

Super Mario games rarely boast a deep storyline: the Italian plumber is usually there to save Princess Peach, who was abducted by Bowser, or something along these lines. And they’re rarely complex when it comes to their mechanics either, trying to be intuitive in their design. The first Super Mario Bros.’ stages are excellent examples in this regard. All of their elements are there to help drive us to the final flag. The initial goomba introduces us to the urgency of jumping. Pipes accustom us to this essential mechanic in a safe way while serving as secret shortcuts, inviting experimentation. Coins also encourage exploration, offering a reward if we collect them. And the music tries to follow the rhythm of all these actions. It all works perfectly together.

This is not the case with New Super Mario Bros. 2. The goal in the game is to collect a lot of gold coins, or, more precisely, one million of them. However, rather than reworking the whole design of the levels to better accommodate this new approach, the game just litters regular stages with coins. The result is levels that struggle with signposting and pacing. The purposes of coins in a conventional Super Mario game are numerous: they reward us with one life after we collect a hundred of them; those placed in dangerous places allow players to adjust the difficulty at their own pace and be rewarded for it; and they also encourage exploration, with their careful positioning revealing hidden passages, shortcuts, and other secrets. The problem is that for these factors to work effectively, the coins’ positioning in the stages is crucial and needs to be meticulously planned: Mario’s basic path to the flag should not contain too much of them, as this would discourage exploration, and they should not exist in large numbers, which would prevent them from alerting the player to the importance of their locations.

The abundance of coins in New Super Mario Bros. 2, then, goes against their usual purpose and even affects other elements of the game’s design. Finding a secret block or collecting eight red coins to get a life is made irrelevant now, as the thousands of ordinary coins collected throughout the game quickly give us more than four hundred lives – no exaggeration here – to spare. At the same time, taking the risk of picking up five coins positioned along a pit is of little value, as there will be twenty more on the next platform. And exploration is turned into searching for a needle in a haystack, since it becomes more difficult to perceive which coins are actually indicating something important when they are everywhere.

The S-3 stage serves as a good example of this problem. To get the third Star Coin, we should limit our search to the final area, to the right of the second coin. After thoroughly exploring the environment – testing all pipes, killing all enemies, jumping against all blocks, and jumping randomly for invisible ones, too – we should encounter a high platform that can only be reached with the Raccoon Suit. When flying there, we can perceive a line of coins, rising out diagonally off the screen in the exact direction of our flight. Following this line of coins, however, doesn’t lead us to a secret area containing the Star Coin. Following the line of coins will make us just collect all those irrelevant coins – for we certainly don’t need more lives at this point – and fall to the ground. Now, on firm ground, frustrated, we could then notice the existence of two other platforms high above us. We would have to fly back to the first platform, ignore the coins, and then fly to those two. As they are separated by a small gap, we could then assume that this is the visual indication of an invisible block, but jumping between them reveals… nothing. To find the Star Coin we should return to those two platforms, and jump randomly until we discover the invisible block above the platform on the left. That is, not only the coins can lead us on the wrong path here, but the lack of logic in the position of the invisible block also serves more as a source of frustration than reward.

Even the act of collecting coins, the supposed focus of the game, is not a fully developed idea. There is a gauge informing us how many we have collected up to that moment, but there is no online leaderboard, which would serve as a great incentive to acquire a new score. Its absence means that the record the player achieves will be almost exclusively personal; “almost” because at least you can show it to another player through the 3DS Street Pass functionality, which, well… I hope you’re lucky.

The new powers are, at least, better suited to the goal of collecting coins. The Gold Flower turns the plumber into gold and makes him capable of casting golden energy balls that turn any block or enemy into coins – and is possible to increase the amount gained if you can eliminate several at the same time. The golden circle makes the enemies golden – they also produce coins when killed – and finally, there is the golden block, the best of them: after being hit several times it fits on the protagonist’s head and starts to generate coins over time. What makes this power more interesting is the risk-reward element it adds to the game: if positioned in a dangerous place, the block can leave the player undecided about staying put for a while to grab it. And since the block generates more coins if the player is running, it still encourages and rewards dangerous behavior.

The Coin Rush mode is equally exhilarating. In it, players will go through three stages in a row, with limited lives and time, with the goal of collecting as many coins as possible. The difference of this mode is that when jumping on top of the final flag, instead of earning a useless life, the player will have the number of coins they’ve collected doubled. Coin Rush, therefore, is a fun mode that implements the collection of coins better than the main adventure. It is only stupefying that the reward for so much work, when reaching the goal of one million coins, is absurdly disappointing (spoilers)…………… a new title screen.

Regarding its presentation, New Super Mario Bros. 2 uses the same art style as its predecessors, adding little of notice. The themes of the levels are the same and follow practically the same order – the second “world” is a desert, the fourth is ice, and so on – and they are all organized in that same linear way, being linked by lines, which eventually diverge in some rare parallel path that can be opened if five Star Coins are paid. Even the stereoscopic 3D, which might have added some air of novelty, is not well implemented: due to the small depth of field, the difference between foreground and background is barely noticeable – only in stages filled with fire particles or snow can we see the slight increase in depth. And the soundtrack is completely reused from previous entries as well.

What saves New Super Mario Bros. 2 then is the solid foundation on which it is built: it is still a 2D Mario game after all. This means that the action is extremely fluid, the mechanics around the enemies stimulate fast and continuous thinking, and the Star Coins, which still reward exploration, are present. New Super Mario Bros. 2 can still be a reasonably decent platform game at times. Too bad it is built around the wrong gimmick.

December 04, 2018.

Originally published on March 11, 2015.