New Super Mario Bros. DS

I bought New Super Mario Bros. DS a couple days ago, it's on sale at Future Shop for $30.00.... basically the game features the old-school, cheap, stingy kind of outdated gameplay that should be extinct in this day & age. It is fun to be sure, but "deliberate brokeness" really keeps this game from being nearly as good as the reviews claim it is. Highly overrated.

It's a stubborn throwback to the games of 1992, even though it came out in 2006. One of the biggest problems is the save system. The game is broken up into 8 worlds, and each world has a bunch of levels that need to be completed to advance. But there are only 2 ways to save progress in the game: you can save after completing a tower or castle; there's 1 of each in each world. Or you can spend Star Coins to open up areas, and it will ask if you want to save after spending them. You can collect up to 3 Star Coins during each level.

Because of the sparse save points in the game, you can do quite a few levels between castles & towers that are lost because you can't save unless you do a castle or tower (Boss levels) ... or spend a limited amount of Star Coins (provided you have enough) EACH TIME you want to save without having to finish a castle or tower.

What's particularly galling is that this is not an accidentally flawed system; it's completely deliberate. Because once you beat the game, you can THEN save at any time. In typical Mario game fashion, they give you what you need ONLY after you don't need it.

Then of course there's the archaic & outdated use of limited men. I think the game starts with 5 Marios, but you can increase your Mario count by collecting 100 coins, and bonus men powerups, etc. Still, it's not like Super Mario Galaxy where they're fairly generous with the men; New Super Mario Bros. DS is very stingy, and it remembers how many men you have when you save. So if you're down to 2 Marios when you save, that's how many you start with when you next play. There is a "glitch" where you can get up to 99 Marios, but you have to play through a level, and it's not easy to time it properly, meaning that sometimes you may not even get it... so you have to replay that level until you do.... again oldschool & outdated.

The powerups are very limited, there's only the fire Mario, and a few new ones. The new ones, like being a giant, should be hella cool, but instead result in a premature death for the most part, which makes them not all that useful.

Couple that with the way Nintendo games hardly ever go down in price.... this game came out 3 years ago, and has gone down maybe $10.00 since it came out. What a ripoff. And yet, suckers like me will still pony up the $$$.

Between this, Wii Sports Resort & WarioLand Shake It!, I've been spending way too much on games lately....



later
don