Holism: Putting the “Wonder” into Super Mario Bros. Wonder

This article contains details on some Wonder Flower effects in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Thanks to Cart Boy for edits.

There’s a delightful moment in Taily’s Toxic Pond, a level within the Fungi Mines of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Mario jumps across mushrooms and acid on the vines of sentient pitcher plants (those are the Tailies), avoiding dangers, when suddenly he stumbles upon a magical flower. Upon being touched this Wonder Flower shifts the world entirely, rewriting reality into… a pop quiz. Mario is given a series of questions based on the game, and if he answers three of them right before the time limit ends—specifically, by pulling on the vine of the right Taily—he gets the flower’s Wonder Seed. After that it’s a quick journey to the end flagpole, where a much less chaotic seed waits as a second prize. But that quiz stays with you. It’s something Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie did, but for Mario… ?

Image: Source Gaming—many of ours in this article, though not this one, were taken by another person on a different Switch controller. Here’s World 5’s out of nowhere pop quiz.

The Wonder Flower, this thing that disrupts the world when touched, is not itself a unique mechanic. It’s merely a conduit for unique mechanics, as almost every single level and every major one in Mario Wonder has one, each holding a hallucinatory shake up that collectively range from the flamboyant to the dangerous to the inscrutable. That’s the signature feature of the Flower Kingdom, Wonder’s painterly setting. Plenty of other games, including other Mario games, incorporate sudden or controllable one-off changes that don’t have this broader world building behind it. But what makes it important is in its theming. The Wonder Flower is, essentially, the core of the game, the impetus for its ideas and vision.

Image: Nintendo. The Wonder Flower, poised to create some magical, world-changing effect.

Before Wonder released, Mario’s iconic platforming was in an odd space. His 3D games, entries like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, were trailblazers that helped define the medium. They invariably proved themselves among the best of the industry’s output. But the 2D counterparts that were released alongside them, despite being the hallmark of the company’s entire brand, were second tier entries (albeit with first tier sales numbers). Ever since 2006, the New Super Mario Bros. line defined Mario and arguably Nintendo in 2D. And unfortunately, their genuinely high polish was marred with an antiseptic, perfunctory quality. Their graphics were generic. Truly new or memorable moments, things like a beautiful Impressionist background or a weak gimmick based around collecting coins, were in short supply. The industry was rediscovering its love of sidescrollers, yet the most famous sidescroller of all was merely doing “fine,” not leading the pack.

Image: Nintendo. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is pretty enough and photogenic enough, it’s also kinda lifeless. It’s crazy that this was Nintendo’s first high-definition game, and in 2012.

It reached a peak with the release of the first Super Mario Maker, a brilliant and accessible level editor. A common statement by journalists and players was a question of whether we would ever need a new 2D Mario, given that players were making millions and millions of levels that took Mario through obscene trials, Metroid-esque mazes, and impromptu musicals. To an extent, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an attempt by its creators to answer this, and almost every piece of its content is part of that: more mechanics, a giant roster of playable characters, and dozens of charming new enemies. But the Wonder Flower is the most important. Made as a catch-all feature that could incorporate new ideas in a second, it’s a venue for surprise, whimsy, and creative abandon.

Image: Source Gaming. The magical, moving pipes feel more atypical than they are, which is fine. Sometimes creating a feel is more important.

Fittingly, the first Wonder Effect you see is one of the first that was made: making one of Mario’s classic green Warp Pipes crawl on the ground like an inchworm. One of the foundational elements to the series goes from passive to active. It’s shocking… though not so upending, since in practice you mostly wait for them to lower to the ground and then ride the rising middle section. What it creates is more a sense of weirdness and unpredictability. If a pipe can come to life, what else can? Soon after you’re contending with Piranha Plant musicals and buffalo stampedes and the Mario Bros. turning into spiked balls or balloons. There’s an implicit promise that every level will throw out the bathwater, and generally that promise is only broken for gimmick levels that are entirely about their effect.

Image: Source Gaming. This effect has removed gravity and sent Toad floating through a deadly thunderstorm. The basic anti-gravity effect is reused several times, each with different obstacles or enemies.

You can generally place Wonder Effects into one of three categories, though plenty fit into multiple. Some alter objects, like super-sizing enemies you have to navigate around or summoning some intrusive monster from the ether. Others alter the world itself, like turning the level at an angle and slathering every surface in slippery goo. And there are the ones that change Mario and his friends by transforming them into funhouse caricatures of themselves, enemies, or something even weirder. Beyond assuming that they’ll typically follow the direction of the level, there’s no way to know what you’ll be experiencing before touching the flower.

Image: Source Gaming. Under their effect, these new Missile Meg enemies fire en masse like a fireworks show, forcing Daisy to ride each increasingly complex wave to get to the end.

While some of these effects can be found in other Nintendo games, plenty can’t, and all of them are comfortable acting as though they’re in that second column. Constant surprise. It means you can see impromptu genre change-ups, like a stealth segment where your character is turned into a helpless Goomba and has to very slowly evade monsters trying to eat them. It also means that the game can incorporate ideas “too weird” for a Mario game, or at least unusual enough to not be part of the creative process. Many of these were taken from an early workshop involving the entire studio, allowing one-off moments that might be too small or too off brand to come in. The many musical sequences feel part of that—well, that and an apparent riff on the fan-made Mario Maker levels that existed just to play instrumentals of famous songs.

Image: Source Gaming. Yoshi has become a gelatinous slime capable of crawling across walls and ceilings, leading to levels whose kind of precision platforming is far different from the version you get in most Mario games.

Looking at fan-made ideas from a level editor falls in line with how Wonder explores aspects of Mario’s history that the New Super Mario sidescrollers largely ignored. There’s the way the secret exits and world map aggressively harken back to Super Mario World, the plumber’s last truly great 2D adventure. A new system that could have powered a game of its own is reminiscent of Cappy or F.L.U.D.D.; you unlock badges that give you new moves, passive effects, or completely altered gameplay (many of which bring back tropes from older games, like ! Blocks or the Charge Jump). And its structure draws from what makes the 3D games so excellent. There’s a soft collect-a-thon element like in 64, where goals are gated not by the levels you beat but how many Wonder Seeds you’ve collected. It’s part of a general nonlinearity that even removed the sidescrollers’ longstanding time limit.

Image: Source Gaming. And one Wonder Flower twists a classic moment from early 3D Mario into an entirely new purpose.

But the thing that really comes most from those 3D games is this sense of pleasant chaos. Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, and the rest were unparalleled at throwing out new mechanics and level designs. The New Mario entries never had that; they were very good as Mario product but never essential, beyond the first one’s general role in the resurgence of sidescrollers. This new game is a rather frenetic experience, which has always been important for the plumber and his adventures. Maybe the new Hoppycat enemies will go from shellfish mimics to titans who break the walls with each jump, or maybe Mario will turn into a Hoppycat himself and have to think through every jump he makes. You don’t know until you try. The general promise that touching the flower will do “something” special is deeply exciting, and a continuation of the sights older entries concocted. Naturally, its staff includes many veterans of those 3D games, most notably Super Mario 3D World director Koichi Hayashida.

Image: Source Gaming. One of the crazier effects switches the game from being a 2D sidescroller to a 2D, top down action game à la The Legend of Zelda. Nabbit here has to navigate both a different kind of movement and the level-specific gimmick of blocks that only appear when you look at them.

Other sources contribute to this energy. The greater expressiveness of the characters was inspired not so much by The Super Mario Bros. Movie itself but a belief that new players used to the film would expect a high caliber of animation; either way, it led to the first vital looking 2D Mario in thirty years. The light riffs on standard environmental themes add a bit of pep. The already-iconic new Elephant power feels distinctly like another stab at Donkey Kong-style gameplay. If the last few Mario sidescrollers were too inward-looking, too standard, this one is going out of its way to court new inspiration. After all, some elements—like the Condarts, new enemies that are dead ringers for Hollow Knight’s Belflies—create the distinct impression that Nintendo has been looking at some of the best indies on the market.

Image: Source Gaming. The new, much-improved animation for Mario, Luigi, and the rest goes hand in hand with the Wonder Effects’ grand, wild energy.

Many of the Wonder Flower effects could have come right out of an indie game, if they haven’t already. The one that turns Mario into a gelatinous slime that can crawl up walls is the most obvious on that front, but it’s far from the only one. And yet here, they’re simply tossed off, maybe to be returned to later. When combined with the greater nonlinearity, a casual playthrough can potentially skip over moments like riding a dragon or being chased by a singing King Boo for something equally wild. This is that frenetic element. Mario is about constant movement, exploration, and discovery. Whether it’s a movie that moves at perhaps a bit too fast a clip for its own good or an RPG that uses tactile action commands, you go to Mario for energy. Wonder is filled with that energy, and the Wonder Flowers bring that again and again.

Image: Source Gaming. The most memorable—or at least memetic—effect of the game comes from “Piranha Plants on Parade,” in which Mario’s plantlike foes put on a Disney-style musical number.

If there is one problem (beyond that several of the Wonder Effects do repeat, albeit usually in ways that are at least distinct enough each time), I suppose it’s that the levels are definitely made for them and aren’t as interesting without their effects. The music is fine, but the standouts of the soundtrack are the songs that play during the Effects, especially the vocal ones. Perhaps there should have been a few more levels with secret exits and alternative Wonder Flowers, continuing the Mario World referencing. As it is, it is definitely gimmicky—arguably the single most gimmicky Mario platform game since New Super Mario Bros. 2. And while gimmickry has always been an important part of Mario’s toolkit, this game leans hard on it to a degree that is intermittently, if not often, to its detriment.

Image: Source Gaming. This Wonder Effect plays with these Pole Blocks, new objects that sprout out of boxes. The main level uses them in increasingly elaborate ways; the Effect instead builds a jungle gym out of them.

Still, what gimmickry there is. Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game that understands the fun of surprise, and the value of surprise. It just so clearly loves existing. The Wonder Flowers are delightful, and their effects are important for driving the game, but they’re also a manifestation of a specific creative energy. This is the product of a studio with every advantage: a commitment to new ideas, a wealth of experience, and for much of development a free rein to experiment without a strict timetable. Every hazy, psychedelic warp Mario and friends find themselves in comes from that. If you want to see the ideal video game marriage of planning, design, philosophy, mechanics, and attitude, look no further. Because it’s damn fun.