Loved it more than the Wii game. Despite the somewhat repetitive Bowser Jr. fights in every Tower, I do like that they get progressively harder every World and he eventually hides in his shell whenever you get near him and you have to throw shells at him. Every Castle boss was unique and weren’t Koopalings and sometimes you had to use a Mini Mushroom to get to a certain world if you wanted to 100% the game. The final fight with Bowser Jr. and Bowser was decent for what it was but definitely the weakest final boss out of the NSMB series. I loved the Blue Shell and Mini Mushroom and having to use them to get secret exits and star coins wasn’t as annoying as I thought it would be. The Ghost Houses are easily the best they’ve been in the NSMB series, all of them were really fun to play and never had me confused or frustrated. Overall a great start to the New Super Mario Bros series. Although that third Star Coin in W7-Castle can go fuck itself.

The Worlds are pretty much the same as NSMBDS but the addition of the spin jump, propellor mushroom, penguin suit and ice flower make the experience more fun. The Koopaling castle fights can be fun at times and the Bowser Jr airship levels and fights in World 4, 6 and 8 and the Bowser fight at the very end of the main game are really good. However, after you beat the main game there’s a bonus world with eight challenging levels, one of those is 9-7 which might just be my least favourite level in the entire game as its really unfair and cruel to the player at times. Also, I didn’t even bother rescuing Toad outside of World 1, but I did collect all the Star Coins and get every Secret Exit and the Ghost Houses are nowhere near as annoying as they were in New Super Mario Bros. U and the difficulty is perfect. Overall, I had quite a fun time playing this game and I’ll definitely play it again in the future at some point.