For the first half of my time with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I was desperately trying to work out why the characters turned into elephants. If the main dude was an elephant, I’d get it. But no, he’s a little caterpillar fella. If the Petal Kingdom was inhaജbited by a bunch of elephant people instead of, you guesse🥃d it, more insect folks, I’d understand. But no, Mario is an elephant and he’s accompanied by the cast of A Bug’s Life.
Despite saying Mario just there, I’m playing as Peach, who also turns into an elephant (all the characters do). And since I couldn’t work out a lore reason for the characters to turn into elephants, I looked at the gameplay options that th⛦e new power-up offered. Peach’s newfound mass can crush blocks and Koopas alike, and her long trunk can hit things or store water to spray as a ranged attack. The latter is a particularly fun mechanic, one that requires set-up and can only be used in certain levels, something that seems new for Mario. But surely Nintendo didn’t make an elephant upgrade just so Mario could use his nose like a hose?
I spe🌜nt so long contemplating the reasons for Mario’s elephantine upgrade that I forgot the most important part of it: it’s great fun. And once you embrace this philosophy, Super Mario Bros. Wonder makes a lot more sense.
Mario (or Luigi, or Peach, et. al) turns into an elephant because it’s fun. It’s a fun character with a fun design with fun abilities. I’m sure there’s some part of the Nintendo marketing team who wanted a bankable meme t😼emplate or plush toy sales magnet, but for the most part, I think that, much like girls, the developers just wanted to ꦕhave fun.
This philosophy of fun extends to൲ the entire game. While the Petal Kingdom has traditional biomes – snowy mountain, lava, 💫etc. – the levels within them are incredibly varied, to the point where you’re not sure which badge you need to wear in order to aid you through each course. It’s most clear, however, with the Wonder Flowers.
Wonder Flowers drastically change every level you play, offering new platforming routes and opportunities to grab more Wonder Seeds, the currency with whic🌳h you unlock gates to progress through each world. But you knew all this already, seeing as it’s the most advertised mechanic in the game. What you probably didn’t know if you haven’t played the game, however, is that they’re so brilliantly weird.
Every Wonder Flower does 🎃something completely different to the level it resides in. The st simple turns the air to water and the water to air, reversing the polarity to make a boring, samey underwater level interesting. But the more creative Nintendo gets with the Wonder Flowers, the big♋ger the smile grows on your face.
One of them releases a surge of bubbles that carries you vertically through a level that was, until then, pretty much entirely horizontal. They pop as you jump on them and the light refracts of their surface with pastel rainbows.🔯 I’ll admit that I’ve got a lot more into bubbles after having kids, but if you can play through this without a smile plas✤tered wide across your face, I’ll shoot you in the face with a bubble gun.
Mario Wonder’s eponymous Flowers are random, whimsical, and utterly brilliant. I bought this game hoping for nostalgia to blast me in the face and, while it hasn’t quite l🍌ived up to the Super Mario World 2 of my youth, the sheer creativity on display has made it a joy to play.
Over the course of defeating Bowser, I learned that not everything needs an in-universe reason for existence. Why does Mario tag with Bowser for a tennis match? Why is Luigi a part-time ghostbuster? Why are Wario and Waluigi not brothers? Mario doesn’t need to explain himself to you, you don’t need to know where he got his medical degree. Mario is the anti-MCU, the chief proponent that million-dollar characters can just be themselves. Not everything needs a two-hour origin story hitting cinemas next summer, not everything needs to be steeped in deep lore. Sometimes, things can just be fun.
