The follow conversation took place between my sister and me while playing a particularly difficult level of the newest entry in the Mario Brothers franchise:

Me:  I won’t jump on your head over the lava this time.

Sis:  You had better not.

Five seconds later

Me: Oops.

Sis: IF YOU JUMP ON MY HEAD AND PUSH ME INTO THE LAVA AGAIN I WILL MURDER YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY!

Me: Wouldn’t that include you, since we’re related?

Sis: THAT’S THE DAMNED IDEA!

So, the multiplayer is fun.  Keep reading after the break to see if this Mario game will have you yelling “Woo hoo!” or sighing “Oh no!”

As Mario games go, Nintendo decided to go balls out with the plot this time.  Instead of the normal Mario Bros clichéd “Covenant vs.  Space Marines” plot, this time, Mario is simply chasing after a stolen Princess.  It happens to be this Princess’s birthday.  Shocking!

The only way to judge a Mario Brothers game is against other games with the Mustachioed Plummer in Red Overalls.  Like most gamers my age, playing the original Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System was a watershed moment in my life.  The curtains drew back on the single screen monotony of the most popular Atari games and opened up a gigantic world through which you could jump and bounce off of enemies’ heads.

Therefore, the question of whether you will enjoy this particular iteration of platforming from Nintendo rests largely on the question of whether or not you’ve enjoyed previous entries in the series.  Nearly everyone has had some experience in the Mario universe, so you probably know whether you’re going to enjoy this game or not already.

Basically, New Super Mario Brothers Wii takes you back to a time that never existed, where Mario games looked fantastic and you were terrible at them.  While the level design is excellent and varied (a particular sequence in which the wind blows coins and rope ladders along with your character stands out), the controls are not as precise as previous games in the series.  Momentum was not a concept integrated into the old games; momentum is everything in the New Super Mario Brothers Wii.  Prepare to slide off the same one-block platform into the lava a mind-numbing number of times.

As a single player experience, NSMWii is very similar experience to playing Super Mario Brothers 3 or Super Mario World.  It’s also a similarly satisfying experience, and much of this owes to nostalgia.  It’s nice to play a game where you’re not concerned about picking up the right weapons or getting the highest kill count.  Mario Brothers games always excel because they are simply about survival.  Can you jump from this block to that one while dodging a fireball and a Bullet Bill?

You can?  Fantastic!

As a multiplayer experience, NSMWii is completely different from any other Mario game.  Everyone can play together and have a great time, especially if you get a very diverse group of gamers together.  You will laugh, get angry, and then laugh again.  But you’re not getting anywhere.

As an actual game mechanic, multiplayer is a broken failure.  The obvious problems arise when the players need to stay together so they aren’t crushed between the side of the screen and a wall, but the problems become more complicated when you realize you can push each other off of any platform or even pick up a partner and throw him into the lava!

The experience is similar to Super Smash Brothers, but it’s not supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be a cooperative experience, and in that sense, it is a disaster.  But you’ll laugh a lot.  And maybe, just maybe, if you got the right group of players together, you could make progress in multiplayer.

Good luck resisting the urge to throw your sister into the lava, though.