Hand-held game of the year.
Reviewed by Cannon Fodder on or around 31st Dec 1969
This is a nearly perfect game. Instead of waxing on about all the reasons why it's so good, let me just say this: If you own a DS and have the means to purchase this game but you haven't yet, then you don't have a soul.
So why did't it get a 10? Well, part of the blame goes to marketing. The box art shows SUPER-DUPER Mario, implying that his super-growth might have some important impact on the gameplay. Though I grew to that SUPER-DUPER Mario size a bunch of times (the mega ...mushrooms were perhaps too easy to come by), it was always a gimmick. Sure, it was fun to destroy most things on the screen, but there wasn't any benefit to doing so unless you destroyed enough for the 1ups.
Conversely, NSMB's genius level design relied pretty heavily on mini-mario (providing pipes that only he could get into, for example), but finding the mini-mushroom was an unwelcome chore. If NSMB had been more generous with the mini-mushrooms and if the Nintendo devs had thought of a more motivating reason to use SUPER-DUPER Mario, then this game would have scored a 10.
Despite that, though, NSMB is easily the best game I've played all year, and definitely the best hand-held game I can remember playing since Zelda: Minish Cap. Time with New Super Mario Bros. is time well spent.
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