Nintendo officially announces New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which boasts "classic 2D gameplay of the original Super Mario Bros. with four-player co-operative play to create a new Mario experience." 

E3 2009 Gameplay Demo:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-new-super/50245

I'm getting a sort of LittleBigPlanet vibe from the four-player description -- but with the potential for tighter platforming gameplay.  Let's hope multiplayer extends to online.  Let's also hope the game will feature the meat and potatoes of a true 2D Mario platformer: a robust, single-player adventure.

Nintendo's got the official trailer out now.

E3 2009 Debut Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRlDUbRQ4UA

The single-player elements look like a straight expansion from the DS NSMB.  And that's great by me: I LOVED the DS NSMB. :)

Looks awesome to me.  Can't wait.

It has the glorious return of the Koopa Kids, therefore it will win. The new suits look great, too. I can't believe it's taken this long for Mario to have ice powers.

Why no Peach in 4P mode, though? It would've been great to have the entire SMB2 gang playable again.

I would guess that Peach is kidnapped yet again, hence why she's not in the playable characters.  She really should get herself some decent security heh.  I'll probably pick this up as I liked NSMB for DS too.

This looks like more fun than Galaxy 2 for me.

Looks great!  Just the idea of Mario and Luigi working together on the same screen at the same time feels rewarding.  Like they're actually working as a brotherly team instead of individually.

Its cool and all but I dont get the whole thing about making a "New" version of Mario Bros 1. I mean if they were going to use anything as the basis SMB3 or SMW or just something original. Yay we can finally use Luigi but y'know whats annoying? Yellow guy and blue guy. Those rightfully must be Wario and Waluigi respectively. I don't care for the art style and I hope this plays much better than NSMB for the DS. It had a sloppy, slippery banana feel to it. Not the tight platforming I've come to expect.

Maybe they have forgotten how to make a Mario game after all......

Surely Mario's 3D-games don't have "tight platforming" controls either...

Having to adjust camera angles all the time is far more annoying to me than any slippery banana-peel 2D controls.

It's a funny thing.  After spending so much time with DS NSMB, I've found it tough to near impossible to re-acclimate myself back to SMB3/SMW controls.  I guess I'd gotten so used to the weighter feel of the former, that the latter(s) are now much too loose for my liking.

I hope they include a few throwbacks to Super Mario Bros. 2 (U.S.).  Granted it's not a "real" Mario game, but with multiple characters being playable akin to that game it would be a neat thing to do.

I wasn't overly impressed with New Super Mario Bros. for DS either but hopefully there'll be some improvements this time around, and multiplayer looks like good fun in any case.

the only problem I had with super mario bros ds, was the lack of difficulty, it was just so easy.
looks great though, shame Nintendo hasn't announced DS player for Wii or something like that, was kind of hoping for that.

Yeah 2D Mario will always be more appealing to me than 3D Mario. The problem is not 2D controls, the problem is NSMB controls. They feel awkward to me in ways I can't fully describe. I feel like Im on the ice level in SMB3 constantly when I play NSMB. Its a good game but not what I am expecting.

Really?? Wow, You must have had some intense play sessions of that game to not be used to the old ones anymore. I just can't get into it when I play. I slip off things that I would never have before and make silly mistakes that would never had happened to me before. I like new games but this feeling kills me. The fact that its also based off of the look and feel of 1 is kind of a mistake in my opinion.

Out of everything I do have to admit the Propeller and Penguin suit are cool.
I suppose in the end what I want is an upgrade to Mario similar to KoF XII and not just a jump to 3D that really loses a lot of the charm the first 4 games had.

I wouldn't expect them to make this one any harder either. Nintendo this year has made it perfectly clear that they would like to make the game all accessible which ultimately means the difficulty is once more taking a hit.

I agree that NSMB DS was too easy, but I think the reason for that wasn't so much in the gameplay as it was that they gave you way too many extra lives.  I died plenty of times, but I pretty much always had 50 or more extra lives, so it didn't matter.

Well, that's out:

http://kotaku.com/5278060/no-online-pla … mario-bros

I think this is BS.  High Voltage is promising 4-player online co-op in its upcoming Wii FPS The Grinder.  I'm betting that is using a good deal more processing power than New SMB.

This was one of the few games I kept coming back to at E3. It's a great co-op and competitive experience all at once. It's handles almost exactly like New Super Mario Bros. The neat part about playing it was I ran into Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario himself. He seemed really enthused watching people play, so that made things even more fun.

I have to agree. I know that the Wii isn't a graphics powerhouse and was never meant to be - but if it's true that it uses up all the Wii's processing power, well, that's just sad.

This is definitely a ton of fun.  Got the chance to play four players, and it's like Four Swords meets Mario Bros.  It's cooperative and competitive at the same time.  Very neat level designs.

Regarding the music, couldn't hear anything from the TV, but they were pumping this really catchy samba track in the speakers above the area where the NSMBW kiosks were.  It's been stuck in my head for days.

Also, Koopa Kids rock.  If only they had been in Galaxy.

At least this shows that Nintendo was listening to the criticism about the overuse of Bowser Jr.  Here's hoping the Koopa Kids will get to make their 3D debut in Galaxy 2.

Finally, we're getting to hear a little more about the game:

http://kotaku.com/5374669/new-super-mar … -the-chaos

It's good to see that there's going to be a fully fleshed out single-player adventure.  Still a damned shame about lack of online, though.

That game sounds like so much fun I almost laughed out loud in delight reading that report in the office.  Lack of online play is pretty ridiculous but there will certainly be an added dynamic playing it with a group of friends all in the same room.  Can't wait!

I'm hoping the game is actually a challenge. The last few Mario 2D sidescrollers have been massive bores because Nintendo just throws unlimited 1-Ups at you.

I was hoping this update would also reveal that the blue and yellow toads were just placeholders and now actual characters were players 3 and 4. At least give us the Toad with a capital T. Still, it's reassuring to know the single player experience will deliver.

IGN's got a few new gameplay videos up, including the boss battle with Lemmy:

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/143/14354229/vids_1.html

Oh, how I miss them Koopa kids. 

GameLife has the full Miyamto transcript:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/10/shigeru-miyamoto/

Miyamoto's answer to the below question perfectly nails why I love Mario games:

Tom Holoien, Nintendo Power: What elements would you say a Mario game has to have whether it’s 2-D or 3-D, and for you personally, what makes a Mario game a Mario game besides the characters?

Miyamoto: So to me, what’s really important about a Mario game is that it be simple to control and easy to understand. And that when you as the player is playing the game, the physics in the game are understandable to you, so that when you hold the controller, you play it in a way that you understand what you’re supposed to do, you understand the environment, and then you begin to unleash your own gameplay creativity. You try different things. The response that you get from the environment into what you attempted to do in the world feels natural to you, and ultimately the game itself becomes kind of a back and forth between us the developers in trying to expect what types of creative things you might try to do as a player and you the player in terms of the response that you’re expecting to get in the game. And to me, a Mario game is really unleashing the player’s creativity within the world that you’ve created.

Well, at least they're honest about why they didn't include Peach: they're extremely lazy. I don't get why they couldn't have just outfitted her in her usual Mario Sports attire instead.

Yeah, they could have just said that they didn't include her because someone had to be rescued.

Gametrailers has their preview up:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/previ … 7913#_text

We get a look at a rendering of all the Koopa kids, glimpses of new scenes and world maps, and a brief description of the new power-ups and Super Guide feature.

Don't mind the exclusion of playable Peach so much, and I am happy to hear that the game will be significantly more challenging than what NSMB DS offered.  What I'm hoping, though, is that the game as a single-player experience will be balanced as such without the inclusion of multiple players.

I would think that the game would be much harder with multiple players since jump timing is so critical in Mario games, and I don't see how you're going to be timing much of anything with everyone scampering around.

Can you say platforming bliss?

Maybe it's just me, but seeing that trailer brought to a realization that the "New" 2-d Mario series seems to have taken a step back from the obscenely superb Super Mario World and its sequel.  I miss having the cape so you could fly all over the place.  I miss the expansive levels that weren't just one long corridor from left to right.  And lastly, I miss the pinpoint accuracy that we were afforded in the first Super Mario World.

The hype for this game is pretty huge but I'm trying to remain cool-headed. There is a chance this will be another underwhelming big name/series/advertising thing that the game media drums up which ends up a dud, and I don't want to put my dwindling cash into a boring game.

On the other hand - what if it's good?

To me, all signs are pointing to a winner.  C'mon, we've got the return of the Koopa kids, Yoshi, and airships -- all wrapped up in a full-fledged eight world (nine, as a rumored bonus) 2D Mario platformer that's confirmed to be nominally challenging.  The Star Coin collecting, four player co-op play, mini-games, and new music score that nostalgically fuses the best of Kondo's SMB1 and SMB3 and Asuka Ota's NSMB are all icing on the cake.

The reviews are in:

-IGN AU Review: 9.2
-CVG: 9.0
-Destructoid: 9.0
-IGN Review: 8.9
-Gametrailers: 8.9
-Gamespot: 8.5
-Gamesradar: 7
-Kotaku, Joystiq

Check out Kotaku's footage of the Mario museum featured at the Nintendo World Store launch today:

http://kotaku.com/5404799/nintendos-tem … video-tour

The exhibit was very cool.  Seeing the old NES cartridges brought back a wave of nostalgia where I used to lovingly stack all three of my copies in a row and thinking I was hot shit for actually owning all three games.  (Back then, it was rare among my circle of gaming friends for any one of us to own all three Mario titles.  For myself, I was always lending out one game or another, so it was usually a rare occurrence to have all three games in my possession at any given time.)

Will have impressions on New Super Mario Bros. later tonight.  Can't wait!