New Wii “Mario Brothers” Allows Up To Four Players

One of video gaming’s biggest names is back.

Mario is back in an all-new game for the Nintendo Wii, reports USA Today.

The game, hitting stores this week, will be a side scrolling game along the lines of the classic hits that began the Nintendo craze so many years ago.  But for the first time, up to four players will be allowed to join in the side-scrolling fun.

Previous games had only allowed two players at a time to play.

The game also features a help feature to allow novice game players to quickly get up to speed on Mario and the rest of cast of characters.

“If Nintendo still needed a reason for people to buy a Wii, this is the ultimate argument winner,” Brian Crecente, editor in chief of game website Kotaku.com, says in his review, describing the game as “goodhearted” and “delightful.”

In addition to controlling Mario, players can control his green-capped brother, Luigi, or one of two toad characters. Using the Wii remote like a standard game controller, you move the characters across the screen, collecting coins and evading enemies. Occasionally you shake or twist the Wii’s motion-sensitive controller for special moves. You also can help or hinder other players, depending on your strategy.

“You might see players picking one character up and throwing them across pits and things like that,” says Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. With this new game, “you are really able to bring a lot of people together to experience the game at once, particularly people who have differing skill levels,” he says.

“If a father is very good at playing Super Mario games, but maybe a child is not as good, they can play together and the father can pick the child’s character up and run through the level together or help them along in different areas,” he says. “Or if a child is better at the game and their mother is not as good, they can still play and experience the game together.”

Also new is the Super Guide feature that appears after players fail a level eight times. Opt in and the game shows Luigi making his way through the level. Miyamoto describes it as a “movie system” for stuck players. The movies “show them a simple way of getting through a level that may be difficult for them to clear on their own,” he says.

Other “hint movies,” unlocked by collecting coins, reveal game secrets. “Those will serve as an opportunity for more advanced players to look at the degree of game play that they can execute and challenge themselves,” Miyamoto says.