The Best Nintendo Game Every Year 1983 - 2024
2. 2023 - Super Mario Wonder
We all take it for granted now but, when Mario debuted, it was weird. A little plumber man smashes bricks, eats mushrooms and grows, stomps on turtles, travels through pipes and beats up a king turtle. But when something becomes franchisable, it’s easy for it to be pushed into a box.
This is part one of what Super Mario Wonder does so well: change up the formula and surprise long-time players. The other, however, is that most of these inclusions feel so much like they belong that if you were told they’d have been a part of Mario canon since the Super Nintendo you’d believe it.
The stages across the Flower Kingdom contain a mix of enemies both classic and new in equal measure, and the debuting power-ups (like elephant, and bubble) feel so naturally Mario.
Of course, the central element is the Wonder Flowers, which warp reality around the player in whatever way the stage needs them to. This means that Mario Wonder can repeatedly throw curveballs on a stage-by-stage basis. One level you’ll be riding a line of bulls, another might make all the pipes in the stage start moving, another you’ll be playing as a Goomba… and it looks gorgeous every second.
2D Mario had been stale for a long time, but Wonder takes it to strange, new places and we thank it for it.