Super Mario Bros. Wonder: This Switch Game Feels Like a Magic Reboot

Midway through a quick playthrough of a course in Super Mario Bros. Wonder‘s new Flower Kingdom, I find that I’ve suddenly turned into a Goomba. Shrunken down to angry mushroom size, I’m reduced to trying to hide behind bushes and scramble as I find a way to where I’m going next. Hey, at least this was less chaotic than the level where I inflated like a balloon and bounced up through the sky.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder, coming Oct. 20, is Nintendo’s biggest new Switch game, and it’s trying to bring back the whimsical magic Nintendo has always coded into Mario games. This time it’s even more overt: The 2D Mario game, Nintendo’s first truly new 2D Mario platformer since New Super Mario Bros. U, has little Wonder Flowers that turn levels into hallucinogenic multiverse versions of themselves.

In a year when the Mario Bros. movie made a ton of money, and Nintendo opened a Mario theme park in LA, it all looks like perfect timing. But it’s also a game that Wonder’s creators say is establishing a new platform for the next decade. 

“As we were wrapping up development for New Super Mario…