This January, I ended up going to three different child-oriented stage shows involving puppets in the space of four weeks. Fortuitously, we saw them in ascending order of sophistication. First, a Peppa Pig show where the porcine family were played by felted-over office chairs and everything wobbled. Then an on-model and on-point adaptation of CBeebies’ charming and funny Hey Duggee. Finally, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s remarkable version of Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro, with soot sprites flitting around the stage and an enormous, scene-stealing Totoro. Across all of that, we experienced successive additional levels of wonders. Of course, we also saw three different stories from the screen adapted, each making for a fresh starting point.
In Super Mario Bros. 3, Nintendo made no secret of their desire for Mario to take to the stage, to forge puppets from the sprites of Super Mario Bros.. As I put it when I covered Super Mario Bros. 3 as part of Super Mario All Stars: “Its brilliance as sequel and as theatre is in taking the solid and dependable gameplay and mechanics of the original and using those as building blocks, the platforms of its stage set, then rearranging them.” New Super Mario Bros. Wii doesn’t open with a safety curtain, but is nonetheless another step along that process, a bit of larger-than-life musical theatre where enemies stop and swing to the beat. Its two-and-a-half-dimensional looks and new mechanics could most generously be seen as part of a progression of increasingly sophisticated wonders.
Whatever the trappings present, whatever the technological advances, adapting a video game into its own sequel is not the same thing as adapting from one medium to another. Particularly not in this case. Those building blocks of style and gameplay established by Super Mario Bros., the exact form of the pre-eminent jump among them, were too fully formed already for that. Nintendo were correct in recognising that (even if some other parts, like the princess-rescuing framing, became much more needlessly ossified). There can be no real tension in wondering how 2D Mario and his main movements will look and work on a new system. Give or take a new wall jump, they will look like Super Mario Bros.. Some things don’t change.
That should still leave space for new imaginative staging around those certainties. Admittedly, Super Mario Bros. 3 did so much of it so well that it even further defined the space. There can still be new powers and new enemies and new designs besides, but the shape of the possibility space for what more Super Mario Bros. could be was defined a lot back in 1988. Variations on the fire flower, changes to movement abilities; paths between stages on a world map; the power of flight. New Super Mario Bros. on DS took lots from Super Mario Bros. 3 and from its successor Super Mario World, and in doing so was inherently more conservative than either.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii firms up a lot of the bright and cosy aesthetics of New Super Mario Bros., a lick of candy paint here and there on dusted-off standards, producing a look which has pretty much served as one continuous Mario default since, right through to the movie. The structural increase in power-ups, and giving you the tools to reach three star coins per level as an additional challenge, come along from the DS too, as do the cannons as visible short-cut clues on the map. Even some of the new things are expansions on minor elements of the DS game, like the propeller hat power-up which works the same way as some upwards-launching flowers from that one.
There are places where it gives some inventive twists to the familiar. Using a POW block to shake a star coin down from a separate scheme made me smile, and there are some near physics-based puzzles like climbing higher on floating frozen fish as well as the occasional nice use of tiny Mario with his ability to run along the surface of water. Penguin-sliding through the snow is a cuter version of the DS game’s similar bits.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is also where one aspect of the Wii controller’s design most comes into its own. You play with the controller turned sideways, a bar with a d-pad and two buttons, the old NES controller configuration, all the old moves in all the old ways. When you then get asked to, say, turn the controller to tilt a platform on screen, the feeling that this is a newly upgraded stage set built on the original Super Mario Bros. becomes tangibly physical.
The other new thing which gives it a Wii feel of its own is that Mario and Luigi can take on each of its levels together. With two Toads for company, even! The mechanisms for doing so are deceptively simple, but the bubbles that return fallen players and the way characters bounce off each other are perfectly turned for a level of anarchy that’s enjoyable rather than confusing. From memory it actually adds more to the game as it reaches the later stages, as well. There’s something about all failing in sync at riding a lava bone rollercoaster that’s extra delightful.
Leave that aside and the enhancements are limited, but there’s something else there too, and not just that any new set of tightly designed Mario levels is something in itself. Seeing a much-loved film or series brought to life in a new way on stage is a wonder, but there were other people there seeing My Neighbor Totoro for the first time and having a different delightful experience. The same thing goes here; when looking at videos of New Super Mario Bros. Wii it took no time to see comments from people about how it was their childhood and their introduction to Mario. Nintendo’s jealous grip over its old games and attempts to sell them again and again in different ways complicates how to feel about that, but it is a reminder that in some ways, looking for transformation is besides the point. There are other reasons to restage the familiar regardless.
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