When I was in elementary school my cousin had a Nintendo and I used to always come over and we’d play Super mario bros. So needless to say the Mario series takes me way back so I decided to give this game a shot!

The story is the usual tale of King Koopa abducting Princess Peach, taking over her castle and it’s up to you, Mario to save her. This time though, aside your sidekick Louigi, you also have your friends Toad and Toadette to help. Inspiring the famous Bowsette meme, Toadette can take peach’s crown item and become peach herself which allows her to jump high and float above enemies.

I’m gonna be real here though, this game is HARD. I’ve beaten Super Mario World and it was NEVER THIS HARD. In addition to just jumping over enemies and avoiding ghosts, there’s some puzzles involved. As you get into further worlds it just gets more and more difficult to the point of rage quitting. Fortunately Nintendo didn’t want to completely punish their players so they have created several ways for you (and your children) to beat the game.

First up is the bubble mode. You can literally tell your friend/child/parent to just bubble themselves while you complete the level for them. While they are in a bubble they are immune to everything however if the non-bubbled player dies, both players are out.

The next feature is LOUIGI CHEAT MODE. Basically if you die 5 times on the same stage, you get an option to have Louigi clear the whole thing for you, which includes fighting the koopa gang and defeating the castle bosses for you as well. If you have pride in you, you can always watch him do it, then try it yourself. If you don’t give a rat’s ass and just wanna move on, you can count the stage as “cleared” via your green suited friend. 😂😂

And finally if you absolutely suck at this game (i.e. me), you just go as the Nabbit! It’s this funny thing that looks like it escaped out of Rabbids Kingdom but he is INVINCIBLE TO ALL ENEMY ATTACKS. Literally only a handful of things even “hurt” him if you even count that. He just gets knocked back a little bit but overall he pretty much ignores everything – except for the floor being literal lava. If you fall into anything that’s not water (like soda/lava) or you get crushed between moving panels you will die. So by playing the rabbit all you have to do is worry about platform location/puzzles/mechanics and you can easily clear the level.

Needless to say, this made the final boss fight trivial as pretty much nothing could kill you, there was no place to fall from and all you had to do is figure out how to get above bowser’s head (hint: you jump into bowser jr’s flying car). Once you defeat the final boss you get to save peach…except suddenly the poor Nabbit watches from behind as Mario takes all the credit. 😂😂😂😂

Well it’s okay, I’m sure the Nabbit wanted to ship them anyway right? 😂 Once you beat Bowser you will unlock star road but in order to do any of the levels there you had to have gotten all the star coins from every level in the overworld zones. NOOOOO thanks. I’m just gonna call it a day with this game because even getting to the ending was too much for me lol.

Overall I think if there’s a sale on it or something, or you’re really into challenging puzzle side scrollers I think you will enjoy it. If you’re just a Mario fan and are curious your victory is just a Nabbit away. This game is supposed to be multiplayer but my husband and I found that with multi player you end up killing one or the other if someone gets too far ahead. It actually made the game harder so I would definitely not recommend 2 players. 😅 The music in the main overworld was cute and some of the turtles would dance to the “pah pah” part in it which made it more fun to watch. Unfortunately the difficulty level was just too much for me and it ended up just being something frustrating that I wanted to finish and clear out of my backlog.