January 15, 2010 - By now 2009 has been put on the shelf and attentions have turned to 2010. But there is a lingering injustice I am having trouble letting go of. When it comes to the question of what was last year's best platformer, gamers seem to have settled on New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a title I find to be derivative and dull. It's the perfect example of how lazy Nintendo has become: just take a four-year old DS game and create new levels for the Wii, add the multiplayer technology of 1990, and call it a day. Despite the lack of effort on Nintendo's part, the game received great reviews, sold millions of copies, and won Platformer Game of the Year awards.
While the platforming genre isn't gaming's feature presentation as it was back in the day, there were still a number of quality platformers released this year to contend with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, LittleBigPlanet PSP, and Trine were all a good time. But I submit that the best platformer of 2009 was one that received less attention than all of these titles (except maybe Trine): Twisted Pixel's 'Splosion Man. While New Super Mario Bros. Wii brought relatively nothing new to the table, 'Splosion Man was brilliant and original.
'Splosion Man blows New Super Mario away.
In a side-by-side comparison, I don't see how the two even compare. 'Splosion Man is more imaginative, technically more impressive, and a much better value than Nintendo's tired game. Consider the evidence:
Exhibit A: 'Splosion Man is more original
Twisted Pixel delivered a hilarious new videogame hero brimming with personality and the unique ability to self-detonate. "New" Super Mario Bros. Wii offers a couple original features like the ice flower or the propeller suit, but with the exception of the drop-in/drop-out four-player multiplayer, there are really no major new features. It should have been called More Super Mario Bros. 'Splosion Man also has a much more interesting premise: a horrible experiment has stripped you of your humanity, rendering you an insane, smoldering wreck that must continuously explode in order to escape your former colleagues – colleagues that hemorrhage deli meats when murdered, I might add. The premise of New Super Mario Bros. Wii? Rescue the princess again.
Exhibit B: 'Splosion Man does four-player online co-op
New Super Mario Bros. Wii's one selling point? Four-player co-op -- only the company couldn't be bothered to support online play, a very basic feature of modern gaming. Four-player local co-op? Big deal, the NES could do that with the Four Score peripheral released in 1990. Nintendo is a colossal, international corporation with thousands of employees, decades of experience making games, and, most importantly, the money to do whatever the hell it wants. So how is it that Nintendo can't figure out online co-op but a small indie developer – with fewer people, less experience, and muchless money -- can? 'Splosion Man goes even further and includes online leaderboards – another elemental community feature that Nintendo's game can't comprehend.
Exhibit C: 'Splosion Man offers more content for a fraction of the price
New Super Mario Bros. Wii includes 77 levels. 'Splosion Man has 100. So even though the downloadable title offers more gaming and more features, at $10 it only costs one fifth as much as the $50 Wii game. 'Splosion Man is easily the better value. And since it doesn't tap into even the Wii's modest capabilities in terms of graphics or technical ability, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is way overpriced.
So how did the lesser game win? Well, for starters it has the word "Mario" in the title. Super Mario Bros. is the ultimate platformer, right? In a year when a Mario game is in the running, how could any other title conceivably win? People don't even try to conceal this bias. On sites like IGN you'll find readers leaving comments such as "Its mario!? mario should win anything hes in." I didn't make that quote up, that's a real reader comment.
I know a lot of gamers played 'Splosion Man and loved it, but it doesn't offer the brand recognition or conjure the years of great gaming memories that the word "Mario" does. New Super Mario Bros. Wii makes a lot of gamers feel nostalgic as they remember all the good times they've spent playing the series. But it's stuck in the past while we're supposed to be moving forward. Nintendo's mascot is so beloved, so entrenched in our gamer minds that even though he and his company are pale shadows of their former selves they still hog the spotlight – to the detriment of more innovative, more impressive, and more deserving games.
This is a WiiWare game, right? Wait, you're telling me this is a $50 retail game? Huh?!
And there's also the fact that instead of putting money towards developing exciting new games, Nintendospends that cash marketing the holy hell out of its good-but-not-great lineup. Last fall you couldn't turn on the TV, go to the mall, or fire up the internet without seeing ads for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. That's the kind of reach a tiny developer like Twisted Pixel can only dream of. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of consumers who have made New Super Mario Wii such a success have never even heard of 'Splosion Man.
Of course, I'm not saying New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a terrible game. Far from it. Its mediocrity doesn't keep it from being fun. But every game is supposed to be fun, so you don't earn extra credit for that. You need to do something special to achieve greatness; go beyond the call of duty. New Super Mario plays it very safe.
IGN has already written about how lazy Nintendo has become, which is a fairly recent development. The reason a lackluster game like New Super Mario Bros. Wii still gets a pass from gamers is because for many, many years Nintendo made the absolute best games around. There were first-party Nintendo games and then there was everything else. The arrival of a new Mario, Zelda, or Metroid title was a monumental occasion that often revolutionized the entire industry. Compare that to the Nintendo of today, a company that has been phoning it in ever since it realized it doesn't have to make the best games – it only has to make the cheapest, simplest ones. The "expanded audience" that has made the Wii so successful doesn't care about what made Mario 64, The Ocarina of Time, and, more recently, Metroid Prime incredible. They're perfectly content just waving their arms around, so why should Nintendo provide anything more? I'd like to think Nintendo is selling people short. My five-year old nephew has a Wii now and I know he'd be psyched if we could play New Super Mario Bros. together even though he lives in Kansas and I'm in San Francisco.
So if you haven't figured it out by now, I think New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a half-assed effort from a company that previously set a standard of excellence. Mario Galaxy was pretty amazing, right? That's the level of quality we should be demanding from Nintendo. New Super Mario is a harmless little game that reminds people of simpler times and is definitely fun, but it is not the best platformer of the year. That honor belongs to 'Splosion Man. The lumbering colossus is letting sharper, scrappier little studios make the great games – Nintendo is just coasting on fumes.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/106/1061550p2.html
i agree with this he has blinded us all with the mustache
Pixel Art can be fun.
