Starmen.Net

Looks pretty neat! It’s a bit closer to the standard 2D Mario formula than I was expecting, but they’re at least getting a lot more creative with it than the New Soup games.

I love the badges in particular. They’ll give players some level of creativity, and I’m sure the speedrunning community will go crazy with them.
They mentioned some challenge levels that require certain badges… I wonder if there’ll be any secret paths in regular levels that are also locked behind badge abilities?

First and foremost I’m super hyped about this game’s artstyle. It’s so refreshing how they’re changing it up a bit, it’s not too far off from the standard designs we’ve had for a while, but it’s a bit more cartoony and the animation is so cool looking, with its snappiness and smear frames, giving it all a vibe of older games like Super Mario Bros 3 and World. It looks to me like it’ll feel really good to play too so I’m pretty excited for it!

The badge system seems pretty interesting, I’m automatically a fan because it’s something being brought from the RPG games to a mainline game which is always cool to see. It reminds me of Kirby in a way, with a bunch of different abilities to try out. I’m wondering how “easy” it’ll make some levels? But I can also see it providing an extra challenge as well.

The online play seems like a really cool concept to me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this in a game before? I probably won’t get the chance to try it out since I don’t have an online subscription, but if I did I’d definitely want to give it a try.

I think the bubble power up is my favorite, in fact I’d be satisfied if it was the only one hahahaha, using the bubbles as platforms sounds super fun and I kinda want an entire game designed around this sole concept.

Honestly I’m pretty happy for just about everything I saw in the trailer, there’s really only one thing I kinda don’t like which is the flower voices? I think their lines and speech bubbles are pretty funny actually but I just don’t know about the actual speaking voices. It just doesn’t fit very well I don’t think, it’s a weird thing to have in a Mario game where usually no one else talks besides a few exclamations and short phrases. I wonder if there’ll be an option to mute the flowers, but if not it’s fine, it doesn’t bother me that much.

Speaking of voices, the bit of Mario we can hear, our first listen at Non-Charles Martinet Mario, sounds cool in my opinion. If that was Mario’s voice shouting “Wonderful!” somewhere in there than I’m actually quite satisfied. Hot take but I would like it if this new voice actor didn’t just try to replicate Martinet’s voice exactly. With how much this game is switching it up with the aesthetic and all, I think a fresh voice would fit great as well.

This is the most excited I’ve been for a Mario game in a good while. It’s nice to see Nintendo break from making everything Mario so “on-model”, which was what made the NSMB games start to feel a little stale, imo. The weird little things the older Mario games included were some of my favorite things about them — they gave them so much character and life, and that’s what excites me the most about Wonder.

Outside of the presentation, it looks like a solid, fun 2D Mario game! The badges are exciting as well, it’ll be neat to use them and see what other players can do with them. Overall I’m super happy to see Nintendo taking risks and breathing new life into Mario, I can’t wait.

I really enjoyed the trailer a lot! Lots of cool stuff.

Personally my favorite powerup is actually the drill one. They’re adding spiky shellmets into a mainline game? And it can also drill into the ground a la the Mario & Luigi series? AND it can drill into CEILINGS TOO??? SIGN ME UP

ALL of the new powerups this time around look awesome though. The bubble powerup seems super diverse and interesting, and almost reminds me of the cloud powerup from Mario Galaxy 2. And the elephant just has so much going on. It’s like if you combined the giant mushroom with the tanooki leaf, with its heavy brick-breaking capabilities plus its close-range combat. Seems super unique!

I love the badge concept and I’m interested to see how it’ll shake up in actual level design. Some of them just make the game easier, but others might add more depth to the levels, and I’m really interested to see how it plays out. The idea of unlocking some of them though challenges testing your skill with the new badge is super cool too.

One of my biggest questions is: will there be a green star/star coin equivalent in this game? We know there are wonder seeds, but you get one for beating a wonder flower section and the other for beating the level, so they seem if not required at least very hard to miss, so I don’t think they’re really the same as the optional collectibles in previous games. The UI didn’t seem to show any additional things to collect—just vanilla coins and purple coins, neither of which seem like they’re part of this. So it seems pretty likely that there aren’t any green star/star coin equivalents in this game. Which has me wondering, will the levels all be super linear? Will there be branching paths that don’t actually amount to anything? Is there no reward for exploration, or is the reward implemented differently? I’m really curious about this because while I don’t think star coins were a perfect system, I do think they added a lot of depth and replayability to the levels that wouldn’t normally be there, and if there isn’t anything to replace them the levels in Wonder might be more boring and linear than I would like, and that kinda worries me. So I really hope they have some kind of branching level design/exploration reward system in place.

ADDENDUM: I just rewatched some clips on the website for the game and the 10 coin purple coins are this game’s star coins, the UI only pops up when you collect it and then it goes away. Well I’m relieved I guess lol

BossCrafty:

The online play seems like a really cool concept to me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this in a game before?

Okay so as my brother pointed out to me this is pretty much exactly like the online features in Dark Souls 3, of all things. You can’t play with others physically, but you can see their ghosts play, and you can help out other players or leave messages for them if you want to. Which is really really funny to me

Speaking of online play, the entire time I was just laughing at the absolute lengths they’ll go to to avoid actually physically letting you play with your friends. But I do think it’s the right choice considering, well…Mario Maker 2’s online was…VERY flawed. So this system will probably significantly cut down on online lag. And being able to race people even if your opponents are technically ghosts is pretty cool. The standees are a fun concept too, I like that they can take on different forms (flex on people for having the rarest one lol), it’s kinda weird that you can revive on a standee but hey why not. I’m also wondering if there’s a reason for the heart points system to exist, or if it’s just that classic “haha my score is higher than you!!” thing that many games also have. Which honestly fair enough. But it’s kinda funny that this time they’re encouraging being helpful over being competitive lol, it’s somehow very Nintendo and also so unlike Nintendo to do.

OilFreak:

It’s kind of weird that the main playable characters all control the same, but that could theoretically mean very tight and well thought-out level design.

Yeah, it’s a little disappointing that we’re back to all of them playing the same but if that means the level design is consistent and consistently good the whole way through I’m all for it. On that note I do think it’s stupid that not only do we have Nabbit back as our baby mode character, but we also have Yoshis serving the same function. Yoshis would be really cool with their diverse moveset but the fact that they don’t take damage and are functionally the stupid baby choice kind of hurts that extra functionality in that if you’re actually looking for a challenge you’re never going to pick them. Like sure, give them the tradeoff of an interesting moveset for not being able to use any actual powerups, but having them not take damage either kind of removes that interesting depth. I think Nabbit should have been the only baby mode character and the Yoshis been the way I just described, but they can still take damage. Just kind of a weird choice imo.

But yeah, I’m obviously super hyped for the game, I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to play it in action!

Hm, I suppose you have a point. It just bothers me because no self-respecting adult would ever choose the baby mode character, and so that just kind of inherently lowers Yoshi’s value as an included character. But you’re probably right, trying to invent a new small Yoshi design and mechanics probably is a lot harder than just making him invincible.

IgneousWyvern:

It just bothers me because no self-respecting adult would ever choose the baby mode character

I would.

Also, I want to add that I would rather have games have the option of being easier for folks when the regular and harder difficulties aren’t going away just so I can play with my partner who isn’t a gamer but wants to play video games with us, than to have games keep casual gamers out.

I’m okay with Yoshi being impervious to damage, it’s nothing we’re not used to.