Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park Review

Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park is a word jumble that doesn’t clearly describe what this rerelease actually is: Mario Wonder Version 2.0. It’s everything a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition should be, as it offers elegant solutions that fix the original’s biggest pain points, a challenging lineup of varied missions and boss battles that are meaningfully different than the base game’s content, and a mountain of cooperative and competitive multiplayer minigames that recontextualize Wonder’s brilliant platforming mechanics in clever ways, all while improved graphics and performance make its gorgeous art style and expressive animations pop even more than before. Whether you’re returning to the Flower Kingdom or visiting for the first time, this Switch 2 Edition makes Wonder even more of a must-have.

Before we go any further, I want to lay out exactly what I’m reviewing here. Since the new stuff in Wonder’s Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is available either as a $20 upgrade pack for existing owners of the Switch 1 game or as part of the full $80 Switch 2 package, that’s the only content I’m discussing and scoring here. You can basically think of this as a DLC review. If you want to learn more about vanilla Super Mario Bros. Wonder itself, I’ll point you to Ryan McCaffrey’s review from 2023, which I completely agree with. Three years later, Wonder remains an absolute joy to play. Mario has never looked or felt better to control in two dimensions, and its incredible foundation means that any new content you stack on top is elevated by the already excellent controls and enchanting art design.

Bellabel Park is the home of Wonder’s new modes, and it opens up after clearing just a few levels in the main story. You need a group of friends to access a lot of its main attractions, but there’s still plenty here to do for solo players as well. The new Koopaling boss battles can be tackled alone or in a group, and they’re a huge highlight of this expansion. It feels like Nintendo heard the complaints about Wonder’s lacking boss battles and decided to go harder than ever before, as I think this is the best lineup of bosses in any 2D Mario game. Granted, that’s not the highest bar to clear – 2D Mario boss fights have always paled in comparison to the top-notch platforming – but it’s still an impressive feat.

Each of the seven Koopalings has been gifted Wonder Power from Bowser, leading to epic battles that are significantly more creative than the traditional “jump on their head three times” setup. Wendy gets transformed into a large Cheep Cheep and summons dozens of enemies through portals, while Morton turns into an enormous puppet and attacks you from the level’s background. These fights felt like a chance to show off my skills in a way the main game never reached, and that extends to badge selection, too. For the first time, it was actually helpful to consider which ability I should bring into the fight, like equipping the Crouching High Jump to reach Morton’s ropes faster. Later, you’ll unlock even tougher versions of each Koopaling battle. I can’t even remember the last time a 2D Mario boss took me multiple tries, but some of these ones did!

These harder fights are found at the Toad Brigade Training Camp, which has more than 70 bite-sized challenges to tackle either on your own or with friends. Some ask you to collect coins or defeat enemies before time runs out, while my favorites force you to clear a course without touching any enemies, sometimes requiring you to do so with a specific badge equipped. Most of the missions are still relatively easy, but the final third or so you unlock are tougher than pretty much anything in base Wonder, which was a very welcome challenge. Wonder feels so good to control that it deserves a set of brutal tests to push Mario to the max, and I got a taste of that here.

I love how these courses reuse levels, powerups, badges, and enemies in brand new ways. It was genuinely tense to use my Parachute Cap to barely glide around an endless horde of floating Bloomps, where hitting just one would end my run instantly. I let out a huge sigh of relief after finally clearing a stage where I needed to bounce off shells spaced out in the lava to beat the timer that left almost no margin for error. There’s also an entirely new powerup – Flower Mario – which comes with a Yoshi-like flutter jump and a projectile that Mario launches straight upwards. Being able to eliminate enemies from below is a game changer, and several trials make use of this great ability, which fits perfectly alongside the classics. Plus, the way Mario skips along when he has this powerup is just too cute.

This is exactly what I want out of endgame Mario: Stages that forgo exploration and spectacle in favor of whiteknuckle platforming that demands expert timing and precision. My only complaint here is that I could’ve gone for 100 more of these challenges. It took me about six hours to 100% the Toad Brigade Training Camp, and I still feel like there’s plenty of room to experiment with levels that force me into using a specific badge, or challenge me to figure out the best one for a given situation. Bellabel Park introduces new Dual Badges that combine two abilities, but there were only a small handful of missions that actually made me use them, like one where I was both invisible and unable to stop jumping while being forced to avoid enemies. There’s so much untapped potential with endless combinations of badges, levels, enemies, and objectives, and it’s a shame that this DLC introduces even more badges but still falls into the same trap as Wonder did by failing to get the most possible out of them.

Let’s Meetup in Bellabel Park

With that said, there’s no shortage of fun stuff to do, especially when you get a few friends together. Attraction Central houses tons of local and online multiplayer modes, and there are several clever platforming ideas crammed into this party game wrapper. I was most impressed with the local co-op minigames, which take place in familiar levels but completely change your objective, most of which lead to great opportunities for communication and teamwork.

One highlight is Jump Count, where your group is given a total number of jumps to hit by the end of the level, but your count is hidden, meaning everyone has to keep track of their own while trying to jump as little as possible to make sure you don’t collectively overshoot. At the end, we all tallied up our score, jumped a few extra times to make up the difference, and anxiously watched the final results. I also love Donut Block Maker, where some teammates make temporary platforms for the rest of the team to move across, which led to lots of hilarious deaths and last-second saves. Each minigame has a surprising amount of compatible levels, too. Jump Count alone has 10 different stages to complete, divided across three difficulty levels. There are no new locations in Bellabel Park, but I love how much mileage Nintendo gets out of its preexisting toybox just by turning the rules upside down.

Without question, my favorite co-op game is Fly Free, Captain Toad, where two players work together as one unit to get Captain Toad and his bird pal, Plucky, to the goal. Captain Toad famously can’t jump, so he holds Plucky above his head to jump for him. In practice, this means one player moves left and right as Toad, while the other player controls the jumping and fluttering, turning simple levels into terrifying gauntlets that test your communication skills. It’s like an official version of IGN’s Linked Together series from back in the day.

The local competitive minigames don’t fare quite as well, sadly. They’re mostly pretty basic battle games you’d see in something like Mario Party, where you try to collect the most coins, feed your Baby Yoshi the most fruit, or outlast your opponents in a survival gauntlet. They aren’t bad, just not nearly as inspired as the cooperative games. The best one is Phanto Tag, a game of hide-and-seek where you can disguise yourself as everyday Mario objects like a coin or Talking Flower, while the seekers have to use clues to figure out where the fakers are. It led to fun strategizing about where to blend into the background, but besides that one, I could feel my group starting to get restless as we worked through all of the fairly shallow attractions.

The same can be said of the online multiplayer games, which are mostly made up of races on vehicles like propeller flowers or roller skates. Racing 11 ghosts you can’t interact with in what essentially ends up feeling like a time trial doesn’t stay fresh for very long. Online play is very limited – you can only try these attractions with friends, and only one person per console can join – and the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. As a whole, the competitive lineup doesn’t do much to stand out from the bevy of other multiplayer party games in Nintendo’s own catalog, let alone beyond it.

Wonderful Improvements

That’s it for the major content additions, but I have to tell you about some awesome changes to the main campaign that may seem minor at first, but actually make a huge difference. There are key upgrades that remove the local multiplayer friction that could previously keep a group of friends or parents and their young kids from enjoying Wonder’s great level design to the fullest.

First, you can now zoom the camera out in local multiplayer for a much wider shot in most levels (there are a few exceptions, like autoscrolling stages). At times, Wonder’s handcrafted challenges feel designed for solo play, and things could get overly chaotic with four elephants on screen jumping around. Zooming things out makes an instant difference, with the added breathing room giving beginners a better chance at keeping up and allowing everyone a cleaner look at deciphering what each intentionally-placed block, platform, and coin is communicating. Wonder’s levels are masterful at guiding you to their best-kept secrets, and some of that nuance is lost the more friends you add into the mix. Naturally, multiplayer will always be more chaotic and less precise than methodically unraveling a level’s intentions on your own, but the wide camera view closes that gap.

And that’s not all. In the original version, the camera would constantly center on different players depending on factors like who died last and who hit the highest point on the flagpole. This often led to scenarios where a less experienced person was in control of the pace for the entire party, which wasn’t ideal on more difficult levels. Now, you can set the camera to always focus on Player One when they’re alive, which is a far more natural choice, especially for parents playing with younger gamers. Previously, when someone got cut off the screen and fell behind, they’d turn into a ghost that someone else would have to go out of their way to revive. In this edition, you can choose to have off-screen characters instantly warp back to Player One and seamlessly keep playing. These options are completely absent from the Switch 1 version. On Switch 2, they feel essential.

Wonder also looks and runs even better on Nintendo’s more powerful hardware. It stays at a locked 60 fps, even in moments that used to cause framerate trouble, like an underwater boss fight against Bowser Jr., which is now flawless on Switch 2. The 4K resolution while docked is also a noticeable improvement. Wonder always looked awesome, but the Flower Kingdom’s vibrant areas and Mario’s delightful expressions draw me in even more than they used to.

Beyond these great enhancements, Rosalina as a new playable character, a few cute Pikmin easter eggs to seek out, and a new voice actor for the Talking Flower that matches its other appearances on Switch 2, this is the same campaign from 2023, and it’s been delightful to revisit. Thankfully, unlike Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Jamboree TV’s disastrous split between its new and old content on Switch 2, my old save data transferred instantly, and I could jump into the upgraded campaign without a second thought. And if you really miss the old Talking Flower voice for some reason, you can boot into the Switch 1 version from the main menu and connect online with friends who haven’t upgraded. From a preservation standpoint, it’s nice to see the original version still intact, but without it getting in the way of the new stuff.