I’ve been playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder for about a week now, and my head is full of it. What’s more – and slightly less convenient – is that my house is full of it too. I’ll play and make a note about something incredible but then I’ll move on, play somewhere else, make another note, move on again. And all of this brings us today. Let me look around. Stuck to the back of a shirt in the closet is a Post-it with “Platforms of Doom!” written on it. Down by the cactus lamp is a piece of paper talking about Ice Block Tennis. Two pages of my diary are filled with huge letters spelling Young’s modulus. What to make of it?
Super Mario Bros. Wonder previewDeveloper: NintendoPublisher: NintendoPlatform: Played on Nintendo SwitchAvailability: Out 20th October on Nintendo Switch
Let’s make something of all that first. Platforms of Doom! is my reaction to a level in which the enemies are birds, and the birds shoot projectiles that are dangerous, but which also stick in walls and telescope out to become platforms. A game about jumping and avoiding deadly things is suddenly a game in which you need to avoid deadly things until they suddenly become very useful when it comes to jumping. Mobius Mario! Platforms of Doom!
Ice Block Tennis. This was a discovery from an early level in which you face small enemies with largish boots. It’s a frozen level and I was slipping around and having fun and I didn’t pay enough attention to those small enemies and their boots at all. That’s until they started kicking ice blocks at me, and I discovered I had to knock the ice blocks away or be fatally crushed. Serve and return! Ice Block Tennis!
Young’s modulus. Okay, this is a reach and rather pretentious, but I was talking to a developer once about the way they measure the way a balloon, say, deforms when you squeeze it. Surface area and tension and where does everything go and all that jazz. He told me – might have this wrong, it’s been a while – that it was all governed by something called Young’s modulus. And this is everywhere in Mario Wonder, because it’s all about squeezing things, squishing things, popping stuff, bursting stuff. It’s Mario but it’s also slime YouTube videos, squishee reviews, people mucking about with kinetic sand.