New Super Mario Bros. Wii -- Final Opinion.

I have fully completed New Super Mario Bros. Wii as a single player game. That means I completed every level. I found every secret exit. I found all of the star medals hidden in the stages. I completed the bonus world nine stages and collected those star medals. Although not flawless, I do have to say I thoroughly enjoyed New Super Mario Bros. Wii and I come away with another serious Game of the Year contender. The developers of New Super Mario Bros. Wii have seemingly combed the entirety of the Mario series history and cherry picked the absolute best moments for each of the titles and included them in the new game. The game just never stops with the nods to previous titles, be it enemies, stages, music, or gameplay concepts that haven't been seen in ages. Stuff you just never expected to see again. Barrels and conveyer belts from Donkey Kong? Airships with the guys throwing wrenches at you? Bowser's floating clown face propeller thing? Fortresses and castles and ghost houses? Switch palace blocks and P blocks and those damned biting things you had to use the boot to walk on in Super Mario Bros. 3? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii is like a great walk through Mario nostalgia. Aesthetically the game looks amazing. The character and world designs are perfect all around. As far as the graphics are concerned on a technical level, they suffer from the system's lack of high definition output. On an HD TV you'll see an abundance of jagged lines on the player characters. But at least Nintendo is finally outputting in a true widescreen format. New Super Mario Bros. Wii will fill your widescreen TV entirely. Musically the game is rather impressive. It's great to hear new mixes of so many older classic themes. Especially in the underground levels, as well as the ghost houses, fortresses, castles, and airships. The level designs are wonderful and are just filled top to bottom with true platform greatness. The numerous boss battles are fun and about as inventive as can be while staying true to the series' established concepts. The controls initially felt kind of floaty to me but you'll quickly adjust to them and be pulling off all of the needed precision in no time. The game does include a fair bit of waggle, and said waggle will kill you from time to time. That's easily the biggest blemish on this nearly perfect title. The difficulty is balanced with the gamer in mind more so than the casual focus Nintendo has been on this generation. The much talked about Super Guide system makes its debut with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Gamers are up in arms about the end of video games because of this new system. It allows players struggling with the game to have the game finish a level for you. If you've died eight times in a level a green block with an exclamation point will appear. Hitting the block will have Luigi appear and show you how to finish the level and you'll be taken back to the world map. The Super Guide will not show you how to get the star medals and it won't show you the secret exits. I never used the Super Guide, and that's the bottom line on the guide. You don't have to use it, so don't. Does it offend you that it exists? It exists to help a new player to continue to play and grow and become a gamer. How the hell could that bother you? I was hoping for a return to classic Nintendo and it's good to be able to say that Nintendo delivered with New Super Mario Bros. Wii in more ways than I could have hoped for. New Super Mario Bros. Wii for me is a brilliant nostalgia trip that I'm giving a 9.5. I think I'd go so far as to call it the best Mario title on the Wii.