10 things I learned while playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder

8. Not all characters play the same

Here’s the character select screen for the game. It was kind of hard getting a clear shot as it was chaos in the area and it was hard to stand far enough back without getting clobbered but I got a decent one (condolence to the Nintendo rep in the pic).

As you can see, you can pick from Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toads (Yellow and Blue), Toadette, Yoshi (Green, Red, Yellow, Light-Blue), and Nabbit.

Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Toads, and Toadettes all play exactly the same. They’re all capable of the same moves and have the exact same power-up effects. I was a little disappointed that my girl Daisy (who I won’t shut up about) didn’t have any new abilities, I was told that this was to make the multiplayer more fair which, as I got to play with my family, it would be absolute chaos if they were all playing differently.

The Yoshis and Nabbit, however are not affected by power-ups. In exchange, they also do not take damage. This makes them really good for players who are having a hard time navigating the world.

In addition, if you have someone in your family who has a harder time with some of the bigger jumps, you can play with them as Yoshi and they can ride on your back allowing you to do some of the bigger jumps while carrying them.

7. Badges change up the whole game

The majority of the characters playing the same means that some familiar elements are gone. Luigi, for example, no longer has his giant floaty jump. Peach no longer has her gliding. Things of that sort, they all play the same. But that doesn’t mean the options aren’t there.

One thing you can unlock throughout the game are called Badges. Badges give you the option to add a new traversal move to the R button.

When I played, the default Badge was a glider option. When you jumped and held down R a massive hat would appear over your head that allowed you to glide a distance while falling slowly. I switched it in another stage and had the spin jump that allowed me to add additional height to the end of a jump. The person I talked to also let me know that the famous Luigi jump was unlockable allowing for a massive jump at the cost of it being harder to control.

I could see from the Badge select screen that there were a ton of options to unlock so I look forward to seeing more.

It should be noted that in multiplayer everyone shares the badges.