The Obligatory Mario Wonder Blog
31 May, 2025
I realized I never made a post about Mario Wonder; so I'm deciding to use this as a way to look back on the game over a year after its original release.
The Revival
We all know the story by now. After the release of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Nintendo thought it a great idea to avoid making another 2D Mario game for 14 years. Then, of course, New Super Mario Bros blessed everyone with its release on the DS; and the "New Soup" series was born! Nintendo decided to milk the shit out of it though; pulling a Sega and essentially destroying the reputation of their own series. The NSMB games are not bad at all, and I don't think any of them are really a waste of development time besides maybe NSMBU, but their repetitiveness certainly made 2D Mario out to be a bland genre. So, Nintendo threw the concept away again. Following the trend Mario kart 8 set, Nintendo would just re-release the Wii U game without making anything new for 10 more years. Mario Wonder is then revealed, woopdie-doo, let's move on.
Level Design & Power-Up Selection
I'm just gonna merge these two into one section because I don't have much to say about the level design aspect of Wonder. They're all really good levels. Nintendo did a good job avoiding the "annoying" levels in this game; like Wii's numerous dark and auto-scrolling levels. The Power-Ups, though, are kinda lacking in my opinion. First up, the newbies: The Drill Mushroom and Bubble Flower are both very fun Power-Ups with a huge variety of shit you can pull off with each. I especially like the Drill Mushroom, though it felt under-utilized compared to the other Power-Ups. That's probably just because of its strength, though. One gripe I do have with the Bubble Flower is that it replaced the Ice Flower >:( . The Ice Flower is (for whatever reason) one of my favorite Power-Ups in the 2D games, and having it replaced feels wrong to me. They definitely could have made it work alongside the Bubble Flower, but I understand the choice to remove it due to overlap. The Elephant Fruit honestly wasn't my favorite. The trunk-swing is nice, but the larger hitbox does not help this thing. I feel like it should have given you immunity to certain weak attacks or somethin', but instead it just makes you way more vulnerable with little benefit. I'd rather take the Fire Flower over this thing any day.
Playable Characters, Wonder Effects
One thing I adore about this game is the sheer variety in the playable roster. Basically every character playable in a 2D Mario title previously is here, even with new additions like Daisy. I know people complain about them, but I'm honestly a fan of how Nabbit and the Yoshis were implemented. They work well as beginner-friendly characters, and their differing immunity to damage helps differenciate them and pays homage to their previous playable appearances. I'm also, obviously, a big fan of the game's main focus; the Wonder effects. I do agree that some of them sorta lose their charm in repeat playthroughs, but the game leaves such a good impression during the intial playthrough that I feel it makes up for that. Semi-related; I'm a fan of the post-game offerings. Not needing to collect Star Coins to unlock the difficult levels is a nice change of pace, and I think the two final challenges were designed well.
Badge System, Miscellaneous Gripes
The Badge system is really well made, I like the variety of Badge types, but certain badges feel a bit too useful. The mid-air jump one and the parachute cap especially feel a bit overtuned, though if you don't like them it's as easy as just not using them. The Bosses in this game also left a lot to be desired; considering only 3(?) Worlds actually had one, and the ones that were in were pretty similar. The final Bowser fight is really good, but I honestly would have preferred the Koopalings return to make use of Wonder power than just fight Bowser Jr in three repetitive fights.
That's all I have to say. It is a very good game, but honestly I don't ever feel the same urge to return to the game as I do with the NSMB titles. I don't know whether it's nostalgia or what, I just find those titles to be more fun to just pick up and play through every now and then.