Perhaps like many of you, it has certainly been while since I have went back to Super Mario Run on mobile. As a matter of fact, I probably haven’t played the game since 2016. At the time I remember enjoying it, but like a lot of mobile offerings, the game just didn’t compel me to keep coming back. Well, the Super Mario Bros. Wonder event has started offering an interesting addition to the game in the form of Wonder Flowers. Is it worth digging this one out of your digital closet? Or is it worth throwing down for if you don’t already have the game? That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today.
Background
This Super Mario Bros. Wonder event in Run started back on December 20 (19 in some regions) and will be around until March 14/15 (again, depending on your region). This free update is available to everyone that owns the game and requires version 3.1.0 of the game. To promote this, Nintendo says, “Wonder Flowers are blooming in the Super Mario Run game.”
Experience
Obviously, Nintendo couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go in and completely rework the base of Mario Run to implement the same effects of the Wonder Flowers that you would find in the main game on the Switch. What they did do is a pretty clever addition. Once you you completely fill up the coin gauge in Toad Rally, a Wonder Flower will appear. Once grabbed, all coins in the game are transformed into Gold Goombas. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about squishing these like you would a normal Goomba. You can just simply collect them by touching them. For every 50 that you collect, you will receive a stamp on your stamp card. If you fill up 20 of these, you can get some in-game items to decorate your Kingdom. The implementation here is cool and it does feel pretty good to collect the Gold Goombas before the timer runs out. It’s not going to blow you away visually, but it is an interesting workaround to add a similar kind of effect from Wonder into Run.
The Wonder Flower segments were some of the coolest segments of Mario Wonder, transforming stages and changing up gameplay with some really memorable moments. I really think Nintendo did all that they could to capture that feeling, however, they had to work within the framework of what was already available in the game. It’s great that they added this to the game, but it is a little bit underwhelming.
Going back to Run after all these years, especially after just coming off of Wonder, it was quite a shock to see the difference in visuals styles. While subtle, Wonder really blew me away with its attention to detail in animations, both the characters’ actions and facial expressions. Run and the New Super Mario games aren’t bad, but Wonder really knocked it out of the park in that respect.
Conclusion
If you already have Mario Run on your smartphone, I’d say it’s worth digging out the game to give this event a try. If anything, it could be fun to romp through for a few minutes. If you don’t have the game because you weren’t sold on it in the first place, this update will definitely not change your mind. Although it is cool to see Nintendo trying something interesting with one of their current new games as a form of cross promotion, this will likely just serve as a curiosity for most. For others, just stick to watching about the game for a few minutes on YouTube.
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