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Platform game veterans won't have any trouble blazing through the game in short order, but going back to find the three Star Coins in each level and discover each secret exit will take a bit more time and determined exploration.Īnd it's not like running through these levels isn't generally enjoyable, especially for those with a strong response to nostalgic cues from earlier Mario games.
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The cleverly designed levels show plenty of imagination and include more than their fair share of hidden nooks and crannies and branching paths to explore.
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2 a bit, it doesn't completely destroy it. While the glut of coins deadens the soul of New Super Mario Bros. The careful risk/reward balance that's so crucial to appealing gameplay is thrown off by rewards that are so common they're hardly worth any risk to collect. 2 are utterly divorced from their historic role of granting rare extra lives (I had over 200 in reserve by the time I finished my first playthrough, without even trying very hard) or rewarding careful exploration, making them seem like just another part of the scenery. There's a sort of inflationary effect at play here that drives each individual coin right up to the edge of valuelessness. 2 quickly starts to feel like a cheap ploy to keep you interested. felt like a special event, finding similar rooms hiding around seemingly every corner in New Super Mario Bros.
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Where finding a hidden room full of coins in the original Super Mario Bros. 2 just makes it too easy to ratchet up that cumulative coin count, practically throwing the little buggers at you at the slightest pretext. Advertisementīut like a junkie developing a pesky resistance to a drug's high through persistent overuse, the thrill of the coin hunt wears off quickly. It's a fever dream of easy, virtual riches that tickles pleasure pathways that were engraved into your brain long ago in a way that will likely take you right back to the joy of your first gaming experiences. Like a kid in a candy store, you'll revel in pipes that spew golden showers of coins just for standing underneath them, golden helmets that disgorge coins just for moving around, golden fire flowers that turn walls of normal bricks into lucrative fields of coins, and even golden rings that briefly turn every defeated enemy into an opportunity to collect even more coins. The easy flow of gold is pleasant enough, at first. 2, by far the most coin-filled Mario game of all time, manages to diminish the coin collecting experience to the point that hunting for that "ba-ding" starts to feel more like a chore than a labor of love. So it's a bit paradoxical that New Super Mario Bros. Hunting for that "ba-ding" sound effect has been as integral to the appeal of Mario as the precise parabola of his running jump. Even when the prevalence of frequent game saves started making extra lives a bit meaningless, Mario games repurposed coins to serve as important secondary goals, from hidden red coins to special collectible stars for tracking down 100 coins in a single level. The reaction to that little "ba-ding" sound effect triggers a downright Pavlovian rush of endorphins and pleasant nostalgia-tinged memories for practically any gamer who ever owned a Nintendo system.Įarly side-scrolling Mario games trained us well to appreciate that sound, which meant you were a bit closer to an extra life and a bit farther from the dreaded "Game Over" screen that meant you had to restart from the first level (or, if you were lucky, the beginning of the current world). Links: There's always been something deeply, innately satisfying about collecting coins in Mario games. New Super Mario Bros.Platform: Nintendo 3DS (retail and download)