The Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade for 'Super Mario Bros. Wonder' has a little bit for everyone

I'm going to get one thing out of the way first: The full, official title for this game is Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park. I'm saying this now because I don't want to ever type all of that out again.

Anyway, that's the name for the $20 Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade (or $80 if you don't already own the original game) for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a rather excellent 2D platform adventure for Nintendo's venerable mascot that came out a couple of years ago on Switch. Nintendo's "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" experiment has yielded fascinating and inconsistent results so far; some games like Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition got barebones $5 graphics upgrades, while Wonder is getting a whole slew of new stages, modes, and boss fights for $20.

I've gotten to play some of this new version of Wonder and while it's not all for me, I do think there's roughly $20 worth of fun to be had here for almost any kind of player. I don't think all of it is super great, but as a de facto DLC add-on for an already very good game, it's hard to complain.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Switch 2 is a grab bag of varied activities

I love the Koopalings. Credit: Nintendo

When Nintendo first announced a paid Switch 2 upgrade for Wonder, my mind immediately went to "oh, they're going to add a bunch of new levels, awesome!" That's not exactly what happened here.

Instead, the contents of this Nintendo Switch 2 Edition do a pretty nice job of remixing and reusing what was already there to add several hours worth of gameplay on top of the existing adventure. On the single player side of things, the Toad Brigade has arrived in Wonder's world with seemingly several dozen "training exercises" that are actually really cool little challenge levels to test the skills of anyone who has already played a decent amount of Wonder.

There are a handful of different variants here. Some levels ask you to collect a certain amount of coins within a time limit, others ask you to do the same but for defeating enemies instead of collecting coins, while my favorite category challenges the player to get to the end of the level without ever losing the power of an invincibility star. Even as a lifelong, veteran Mario platformer fan, I found these levels appropriately challenging, and surprisingly some of the early ones actually made me sweat a bit. Like the optional late-game challenges in Wonder's base game, I imagine the later Toad Brigade challenges are legitimately extremely hard.

The other main pillar of Wonder's new solo content on Switch 2 is a series of boss fights against the Koopalings. Each one shacks up in a different part of the game's overworld map, waiting for Mario to come challenge them. While there's a short, pretty basic level before each boss, the main appeal here is the fights themselves. Each Koopaling uses the power of Wonder Seeds (which made every level wild and wacky in the base game) to transform into some kind of nonsensical, unpredictable form for Mario to fight. Without spoiling them, as there are only a handful of these fights in the game, they're genuinely pretty neat and give Wonder some fun and creative boss fight juice the original release didn't really have.

I'll admit that I was initially pretty turned off by these single-player offerings (some of which can also be played in local co-op, though I didn't get to try that). In my mind, a Switch 2 Edition of Mario Wonder should've provided maybe a whole new world with new music and backgrounds, rather than remixed challenge levels. However, after actually playing this stuff, I can't say with any honesty that it's bad at all. The Toad Brigade challenges in particular are meaty enough to satisfy Wonder fans, I reckon.

There's also some multiplayer stuff

It can get pretty chaotic. Credit: Nintendo

The "Meetup in Bellabel Park" part of that gargantuan title I referenced earlier refers to a new area on the map called, well, Bellabel Park. It's essentially a hub for a whole gang of new local and online multiplayer activities, meaning those who prefer solo play like me will get next to nothing out of it. Bummer!

Still, having said that, my limited experience in playing these modes at press events and during the review period was still fairly fun. Most of them are some variant of "race to the end of the level before everyone else," though obviously with some fun modifiers for each mode. Different races use different power-ups, stage features, and badges to create unique experiences for different skill levels. It's pretty fun when you get a GameChat session of 12 people together, though I can't speak to the local experience, as I am a single man with no children.

I'm simply not the target audience for the multiplayer side of Wonder on Switch 2 and that's fine. If I had kids, I could easily see getting hours of playtime out of this part of the game. It's basically a series of Mario Party minigames that play better and don't have a bunch of random board game nonsense between each round.

Overall, I don't quite think Wonder on Switch 2 is an incredible standard-bearer for Nintendo's Switch 2 Edition release strategy, but for $20, you could do a lot worse. If nothing else, you get native 4K resolution in TV mode, and it looks fantastic. That's going to be worth the money by itself for some people.