New Super Mario Bros 2

New Super Mario Bros 2, Nintendo’s ramping up its publicity for New Super Mario Bros. 2 already, as just two weeks after the end of this year’s E3, a new array of promotional art from the upcoming 3DS sequel has arrived. Headlining this latest wave of imagery is an attractive panoramic scene of Mario and Luigi happily hopping their way through the new gold-washed Mushroom Kingdom. We’re going to break it down piece by piece to extract whatever new details about the game we can.

Let’s begin.

Reading the image from left to right – since it’s laid out as a traditional side-scrolling Super Mario level – we see some good old staples of the Mario series. There’s a Koopa Troopa, a Goomba and a Spiny. There’s a hovering Question Mark Block and a green pipe. There’s a Super Mushroom and a vine climbing up into the sky. All standard stuff.

The trio of blocks with rounded corners in the center is new for New Super Mario Bros., though – they’re drawn from the NES Super Mario Bros. 3, where white-colored ones famously let Mario hide “behind” the scenery and discover hidden Toad Houses. No word on whether or not that feature will make a return, but continuing on in the image reveals three more encore elements from SMB3 – the P-Switch, the bouncy Note Block and the Super Leaf, which transforms Mario into his Raccoon Suit. That transformation has been confirmed to return, as our hero will once again have the power to take to the sky by shaking his rear end around.

The last part of this segment worth pointing out is the color transition in the background, with everything suddenly taking on a golden hue past the right edge of the vine. We know that New Super Mario Bros. 2 has our heroes going coin crazy, with gold fever taking command of their minds as they race to collect a total of a million coins. But could the Mushroom Kingdom itself actually be transformed in some way, to explain the coin focus? Mario games aren’t too big on plot, but perhaps this gold-wash background effect is a clue that the very environment will change in the new game’s open moments.

Next up we have Mario and Luigi themselves, now caught in the middle of a full-on golden world. Look at this – it’s coin madness! Coins are everywhere. Everywhere. Wario would have a heart attack at the sight. (IGN)