OF A GOLDEN AGE

I realized recently that we had a little turf war between my childhood home and my best friend’s house across the street. We had a Nintendo and he had a Sega Genesis: On my side of the street was a neverending carousel of Excitebike and Super Mario Bros. and when I crossed over it was strictly Sonic the Hedgehog.

(Of course, Nintendo brought them all together in the new Super Smash Bros. Brawl. +1 cooperation!)

My brand allegiance to Mario goes way back. Even today, when I look through the NES catalog, the only games I can even play for more than a couple of minutes are the Super Marios — they’ve aged well because of strong pacing, clear design, and easy controls. My friend Nathan lured me into the treacherous world of RPGs starting with Super Paper Mario, a delightful platformer-RPG hybrid that was the beginning of the end for me. Even in elementary school, a frend’s Super Nintendo, and Super Mario World, kept our friendship alive longer than it had any business doing. And we all know my feelings about Mario Kart.

But when he got and played through Super Mario Galaxy, the latest incarnation of 3-D games starting with Mario 64, all it did was give me vertigo. The answer for old-fashioned schmoes like me is New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a classic 2-D side-scrolling platformer enhanced with the more powerful graphics and capabilities of the Wii. New features include some Wii-catered controls:

• Platforms which tilt based on your controller’s positioning
• Bonus round in which you aim and shoot a cannon with your controller
• Several applications for which you shake the controller

Sometimes the two means of control interfere with each other. Holding the controller at an angle while doing other things with the buttons is confusing even at its easiest, and I don’t play video games to test the limits of my hand flexibility or prehensile strength.

Another good and bad addition to the game is the expanded multiplayer mode. Instead of alternating turns between Mario and Luigi, or choosing one of four playable characters in the Surrealist weirdoworld of Super Mario Bros. 2, New Super Mario gives you multiple characters on-screen at once. Not only that, they interact with each other and present new possibilities for multiplayer moves. Also, if you’re like me and you’re the weak link, a more dominant player can sort of carry you in a bubble through difficult parts and bring you back afterward. Yeah! Loopholes to avoid failure!

I have triumphantly weaseled my way through almost the whole game without help, and with only a medium amount of infuriation and controller-hucking because of my own ineptitude. The game is wonderful and challenging and gets moreso in bursts: Some levels in the earlier worlds were incredibly difficult for me, and some levels in later worlds seemed bizarrely easy, but overall the play gets tougher as you move forward. There are a few levels that stood out to me as nonsensically difficult, and I’m sure there will be more to come as I finish world 8 and attempt world 9.

To that end, the game builds in a new feature: the Super Guide. If you lose 8 guys while attempting one level, an alert box appears and offers to show you an example video of Luigi completing the level. I didn’t ever use this, although it appeared in at least half a dozen levels because I am not particularly gifted at video games. If you choose the Super Guide and watch through to the end, you are given an option to skip the level completely, which some purists (code for “able-fingered meritocratists”) criticize as a dumbing-down of the franchise.

Well. Those people should know by now that without some kind of safety net, people like me would simply have a nerdy friend over, pass the controller, and say, “Beat this for me.”

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