One of the demos I had a chance to try in the Wii U showcase area was an HD update to New Super Mario Bros Wii, adding Miis as playable characters. Really, all that New Super Mario Bros Mii does is take an already delicious game and bake it in an HD oven. The levels I played looked polished, and it was nice to see a slightly super-deformed Mario & Luigi in HD gloss. The Miis were in there, too, and were now in HD. It looked like the game was just upscaling the Wii’s Miis, since they didn’t appear to have any better polygonal modeling. They were just crisper on the screen.
Speaking of the screen, the game did look great in HD. Flipping it to the small screen didn’t seem to deteriorate anything, so even though the controller is somewhere around 480p it downscales extremely well to hide it. The visuals on the controller looked beautiful, and my fingers didn’t obstruct anything, even when using the analog slider to control the game. I preferred to look up at the big screen, though, since IT’S MARIO IN HD. So, there.
I was able to select my character from between Mario, Luigi, and a few Miis. The levels I played (out of the 5 available) were a desert, underground, and mushroom platform zone, and all looked and played just fine. The HD wasn’t highly detailed, and looked more like an upscaling of some of the assets (trees, background elements) from NSMBWii, but for a fast-paced multiplayer demo that was fine. Still pretty to look at, to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being a launch game when it gets fully fleshed out.
In the video above I was given a quick rundown by the very lovely Nintendo booth babe attendant about the game.
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