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That said, Mario Wonder is not without its faults – most notably, the bosses. Here, for some baffling reason, Wonder blows it on every level, with the boss battles not only completely failing to measure up to the rest of the game, but even feeling like a DOWNGRADE from what we got in the New Super Mario Bros. games. The Koopalings are gone again, so what you get is a surprisingly low number of fights (two of the main worlds literally have NO boss battle at the end!), against Bowser Jr. only, until the very final boss battle against Bowser himself (which is a decent enough battle I guess, but still disappointing). And while a few different Wonder Flower gimmicks are thrown in to spice up the Bowser Jr. fights, they’re all still extremely easy, short boss battles against the same character, who basically attacks the same way every time, and who you keep defeating in the very same manner.

Nani dafuq? What even happened here? How can a game be THIS good, boast SUCH ridiculous levels of variety and creativity, yet feature such lazy, repetitive and uninspired boss battles? Supposedly the developers had no hard deadline to worry about while developing Mario Wonder, so it shouldn’t be a case of the game being rushed – did they just not care about boss battles? Maybe this too was Mario Maker influencing the devs – it’s really hard to create truly good boss battles in the Mario Maker level editors, given the limited tools available (and Meowser in the 3D World mode is SUCH a fucking nigger, holy shit, that fucker has ruined so many levels on his own!). It’s a crying shame, because despite Mario 64’s bosses being kinda shit, the boss battles in the 3D Mario games have consistently improved over the years (3D Land and arguably 3D World excepted), with Mario Odyssey especially boasting a great selection of bosses. This is one area where even a radically improved 2D Mario still trails far behind the best 3D efforts.

There are other issues too – while pretty lengthy for a 2D platformer, this is still a game that merely takes like 15-20 hours to 100%, which might seem inadequate for a full price 2023 console release. Most of the levels are also quite easy, even if you don’t play as Easy-Mode characters like Yoshi and avoid the badges. The fact that the game's Purple Coin collectables stay collected even if you die right afterwards, without reaching a checkpoint, is really stupid too (I know the 3D World Switch port also implemented this kind of dumb change, but somehow it feels worse here) since, as that one famous Mario essay pointed out, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value - a tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. Perchance.

...or to put it more succinctly, such easily collected Purple Coins rob the levels of potential challenge and replay value for no good reason.

That said, in terms of the amount of fun packed into each hour, I struggle to come up with a single other game that beats Mario Wonder. And the game DOES boast some genuinely challenging (as well as really cool and well-designed) bonus levels, some of which can become available relatively early, quite unlike certain modern 3D Mario titles, which reserve all the actual challenge for the post-game. The final challenge level in Wonder legit came close to breaking me. Remember what I said about each level in Mario Wonder being like a Christmas present you unwrap? Well, the final gift box turned out to contain a spanking paddle – Ouchy ouch!

As for where Mario Wonder ends up on my Based Morality Scale, it’s an easy Neutral score – this is a thoroughly apolitical game, focused purely on being fun for everyone. There are multiple playable female characters this time around, and no Rescue The Princess plot, but there’s absolutely zero attempt to push a Girl Power narrative, with nothing even resembling the borderline case we saw during Mario Odyssey’s ending. I also only counted one case of singular they being used, and it was arguably justified (one of the chatterbox flowers that comment on what’s happening during gameplay mention some unidentifiable figure in the background of the level and refers to said character using the “they” pronoun). At worst, it’s somewhat bad writing, but it sure as hell doesn’t push the “non-binary” gender neutral nonsense, which games games like Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 4 now do. And compared to ACTUAL Cultural Marxist games, like that Soyny Spider-Man garbage which released the same week as Mario, the purity and innocence of Mario Wonder is all the more welcome.

….and no, I’m not gonna bash Mario Wonder for some of its voice actors apparently being total faggots. First of all, voice actors are tools, nothing more, they have no “ownership” of the characters they voice. Remember Pyra’s English-language VA trying to rewrite the ending of Xenoblade 2? Yeah, it doesn’t work like that, you have no power here bitch, you’re not Pyra, you’re just one of the femoids who over the years have voiced her. As fun as it is to imagine characters like Broly and Edward Elric WELL AKTHUALLY being anti-Yaoi Christians, voice actors aren’t that powerful. Secondly, pretty much all English-language VAs are evil nowadays, that should be your default assumption. Remember how Vic Mignogna, the guy I just referenced, got MeToo’d and Blacklisted specifically because he wasn’t an SJW freak? So yeah, odds are that any given English-language vidya VA is gonna be a piece of shit, but when I judge a particular game, I judge it on the basis on the content that’s actually there in the game, not by whatever stupid shit some stupid VA says on social media.

When all is said and done, Mario Bros. Wonder feels like a giant leap forward for the 2D Mario series. For a 2D Mario to be THIS gorgeous, and THIS varied, imaginative and unpredictable still feels kinda surreal – but of course, being surreal and surprising is a big part of this game’s identity. The end result has been an absolutely incredible experience, and my 2nd favorite 2D platformer of all time, only trailing Yoshi’s Island. And if we ever get a Mario Bros. Wonder 2, with even more levels, and boss battles that are actually good, even that timeless classic would probably end up dethroned.

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