New Super Mario Bros

You could forgive Mario for looking a little tired these days. He has, after all, been wheeled out just a little too often by his makers in recent years, used to boost ailing franchises and prop up struggling handhelds. Indeed, the ‘New’ of the New Super Mario series was beginning to look decidedly like a contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act earlier this year in New Super Mario Bros 2.

So it’s a pleasure to report that Nintendo’s mascot seems to have a new spring in his step as he bounds onto Wii U, arriving with a crisp HD makeover that hasn’t just given his kingdom the freshest face it’s had in years, but which seems to have perked up the plumber himself no end.That isn’t to say there’s anything too surprising about the setup. Nintendo isn’t one for changing tradition without good reason, and it sees no excuse to mess around with the standard Peach-in-peril plotline that it’s fallen back on so regularly. It’s a way of allowing the player to get on with things, burdening them with nothing more than a brisk (and amusing) cutscene, and a simple motivation to run and jump through eight worlds, rescue the princess and defeat Bowser.

What does make an immediate difference is the game’s world map. It’s a sprawling patchwork of familiar design standards – ice world, rock world, desert world - stitched together in a way that makes little topographical or meteorological sense but which feels like a cohesive universe nevertheless. It’s every bit as immediate as the pick-a-level structure of past New Super Mario Bros titles, but it’s more intricate, more attractive, more interesting. It’s a world where you want to uncover every secret and locate every path because you might just be rewarded with a funny little animation or a minigame aside, or an unexpected encounter with a roaming enemy. You’ll dig out its secrets not through some innate gamer-centric desire to simply find everything, finish every level and get 100% completion, but because it’s a fascinating place packed with fun stuff that begs to be discovered. In short, it’s a world you want to explore.