Christian Donlan is a features editor for Eurogamer. He is the author of The Unmapped Mind, published as The Inward Empire in the US.
There's a moment early on in Super Mario Wonder that genuinely surprised me. I laughed out loud. I was shocked, almost scandalised. I had run up to a pipe, right, these staples of every Mario game reaching back into the series first appearance. I thought I knew the deal. Some pipes are just obstacles. But some are hollow, and you can drop down inside them to find new areas.
Not this one. This one - whisper it - moved. As I reached it, I must have pushed against it, and the pipe slid across the ground. I know, right? I am still getting over it. Super Mario Wonder has a lot of stuff like this. I can't remember the last Mario game that made me laugh as much, or the last Mario game that made me question basic Mario lore, if such a thing exists. We're back in 2D Mario territory - a series of games that, over the last few outings, have perhaps unfairly gotten a reputation for playing things a bit safe. The theme this time around is secrets and surprises, though. And gosh, does Wonder deliver. A pipe you can push across the ground.
There are so many new ideas here, pretty much shaken into every stage like seasoning into a bag of popcorn. It can be hard, at first, to get your bearings. Eventually I realised that not getting my bearings was the point.
At some point in this last level I triggered an event which sent the Bulrushes charging en masse, until there was a huge herd of them rushing over the landscape and blasting everything in their path. I was just about clinging on top, in the game's new Elephant Mario costume, and wondering if the pace of the level would ever return to normal. I'm sure I missed dozens of funny little things I could have done here, but that's the point, I think.
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