Super Mario Bros. Wonder is officially out, and it’s downright superb. I absolutely loved playing this one prior to release, and I’m so excited the rest of you can experience this wonderful side-scrolling platformer too. I had to make that pun somewhere. I’m not going to apologize for it.
To be clear, Super Mario Bros. Wonder isn’t a hard game. There are stages you can unlock here that will test your skill, but overall, this one’s 100% casual friendly. That said, as I was playing the game, I did come across a few quirks that I would have liked to know before I started playing. These are, ultimately, rather small things, but honestly, I’m just writing this as an excuse to chat more about this game with you all. So for those preparing for their foray into the Flower Kingdom, here are five spoiler-free tips to kickstart your adventure.
Also, I don’t know what spoilers are. That’s how you know you won’t find spoilers here.
1: A check mark means you’ve 100% cleared a level
For those serious about their Mario games, simply getting to the credits isn’t enough. It’s only when every possible secret is uncovered that the game is well and truly finished. Super Mario Bros. Wonder helps you achieve this goal with a handy course list that shows you what you’ve collected in each level.
You’ll notice that the game records whether you’ve found each Wonder Seed and 10-Flower Coin, as well as whether you grabbed the top of the flagpole in every stage. However, even with seemingly everything unlocked, you may notice that some levels will have check marks on them while others lack them. That means there are things hiding in those stages that you’ve yet to uncover.
What are those things, you might ask? I’m not gonna tell you. You clicked an article called “5 spoiler-free tips for Super Mario Bros. Wonder.” Let me know in the comments if you’d prefer me to write “5 spoiler-ridden tips for Super Mario Bros. Wonder” instead.
2: Badges you unlock later may make earlier secrets easier to find
I don’t want to say there’s power creep in a Mario game, but there’s power creep in a Mario game. The Badge system lets you equip a myriad of abilities, ranging from new moves to passive effects. You’ll have some nifty Badges to try out early on, but some of the late-game Badges are just categorically better than earlier ones. I ranked all of them here, so you can read that if you just want to know what everything is before you even play. I’m totally killing this spoiler-free thing.
Getting back on track, I bring this up because, if you try to 100% the game as you go, you may bash your head wondering where certain secrets are. A full set of Badges will help you out immensely, as even otherwise niche abilities can come in handy.
3: You’ll keep collectibles upon death, but will lose them if you select Restart Course
This is a weird mechanic, but I did run into it on a couple of occasions. In Wonder, any Wonder Seeds or 10-Flower Coins you collect in a stage will stay collected if you lose a life. In other words, if you feel like tossing Mario off a cliff just to get a 10-Flower Coin, that’s technically a valid way to use a life.
However, if for some reason you decide to manually restart a stage in the pause menu, you’ll lose all those pickups. No, you won’t get your lives back, but you will lose everything else you got during that run. A pretty raw deal, honestly, but this fortunately doesn’t cause many problems for the vast majority of the game. Does implying that this could become a problem count as a spoiler? If so, apologies to the Destructoid community.
4: Pits without shadows won’t kill you
Pits are bad in Mario games. I’m sure all of us have fallen down one and lost a life once in our gaming lives. If you tell me you haven’t, then you are lying. And if you continue to insist you haven’t, then I will spoil the entire plot of Kingdom Hearts 4 for you. That game was only just announced, but I know Mickey dies in that one. I know, I know, I can’t believe Goofy would do such a thing either.
Anyway, you may very well come across some secrets that you just cannot track down. Some require you to fall down those otherwise dangerous-looking pits, but who wants to keep throwing lives away until they find the pit they want? Fortunately, there’s a subtle tell to help you notice what pits hide secrets or not. If a pit has a light shadow effect on the bottom of the screen, that will take a life from you as usual. However, if a pit has no visible shadow, there’s something for you to find down there.
I mean, if you want to throw Toad into pits indiscriminately because you didn’t approve of his turnpike in Mario Kart 64, I’m not going to stop you. I’m just saying you don’t have to.
5: There’s a late game level that is great for quickly obtaining power-ups.
Okay.
Okay.
OKAY. Maybe this one might count as a spoiler. Spoilers in Mario games are weird, man. I still think this is a really good tip, and I won’t reveal any details about the world itself, so I guess you can decide if you consider this spoilery or not.
Anyway, in World 6, you’ll find a stage called “Search Party: Item Park.” At the beginning of the stage, you’ll have the ability to grab any of the three new power-ups in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. However, in an interesting twist, nothing is stopping you from immediately leaving with your loadout of choice. Typically, you’d have to complete a stage to retain power-ups, but not in this one. Walk in, pick your item of choice as well as one to put in reserve, and be on your merry way.
Most players probably won’t need to farm power-ups like this. However, I did find one occasion where I really appreciated this trick. If I said anything more than that, I’d definitely be revealing spoilers, so I’m going to end this article here.
Why did I start this off so enthusiastic about Mario, only to immediately devolve into a series of gags about spoilers? I wish my brain was normal sometimes.
