Super Mario Bros. Wonder Meetup in Bellabel Park Hands-On Preview

Super Mario Bros. Wonder ranked among my favourite games of 2023, so I was delighted to hear that the Switch 2 edition would arrive with a sizeable update. On a recent visit to New York, I got to try the local and wireless multiplayer minigames in Meetup in Bellabel Park, offering an early look at what the full DLC release will bring. In the end, it delivered exactly what I had hoped for, which can only be positive.

Switch 2 visual update

I began with the Switch 2 update itself. It provides a modest visual improvement, although the technical changes are mostly insignificant. When docked, the game now runs at a noticeably sharper 4K resolution, but its art direction, built around vivid colours and bold forms, means the original Switch version still looks entirely satisfactory at 1080p. With consistently strong frame rates too, Mario Bros. Wonder was never especially constrained by the Switch hardware. The technical enhancement is welcome, but it is nowhere near the expansion's chief draw.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Meetup in Bellabel Park minigames

The real appeal-or, more accurately, appeals-lies in Bellabel Park, a new theme-park-inspired location packed with multiplayer minigames. Attraction Central, one area within the park, is divided into two separate spaces: Local Multiplayer Plaza, plus Game Room Plaza for online or wireless sessions. The local option is considerably more substantial, containing 17 attractions against the online and wireless area's 6, so that was where we spent the bulk of our time.

I joined three other people on a sofa and picked up a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers. First came the character-selection screen. Everybody there moved their cursor over Rosalina, the newly announced DLC-exclusive character, before courteously pausing when the Nintendo representative explained that only one player could choose the intergalactic princess. Nobody selected her after a brief wait, so I opted to give her a go. Both her character model and animations look excellent and, although she handles exactly like the core cast, playing as a fresh character is always welcome.

We sampled only one or two rounds of every minigame, with each one offering several stages at varying difficulty levels. The demo was designed to let us experience as many modes as possible during a limited time slot, so we generally tackled the first or second stage from a larger selection. Depending on the skill of the participants, I would guess that working through every stage in the modes we played could take around an hour, though that is only an approximate estimate.

We started with a game that makes use of the Switch 2's mouse controls. Two players slid a Joy-Con 2 across a table to create routes of vanishing platforms, called Donut Blocks, for the remaining two players to cross in the usual platforming fashion. It is a hectic mode that rewards clear communication. I was able to try both roles, and although the platforming itself went well, I initially struggled with the mouse input. Each disappearing-platform segment is just one block wide, yet the game restricts platform drawing to straight lines, meaning my diagonal staircases appeared as sharp right angles on screen. Once I understood that it wanted level routes rather than diagonals, our attempt resulted in a win.

Another mode turns all four players into participants in a game of hot potato involving a golden Bob-omb. While the group progresses through the level, one of Wonder's talking flowers announces a player's name, indicating that they must take possession of the Bob-omb. For every second that the bomb is not held by its designated player-whether it is sitting on the ground or carried by somebody else-the stopwatch at the top of the display loses time. Reaching zero means failure. In practice, however, we lost much more often by dropping or hurling the Bob-omb over a cliff while frantically trying to reach the end of the level. The mode proved far simpler with only two players, since you always know who should receive the explosive next.

Competitive attractions and wireless races

Once the park's co-operative activities had left us all harbouring growing resentment towards our teammates, we headed to the competitive side to settle our differences in a comparatively healthy manner. The first game gave every player a button for deploying a lightning rod. A few seconds after activation, it calls down a lightning strike that covers the screen's full vertical height, along with a narrow section of ground on either side. The stage also consisted of four pillars that moved up and down at apparently random moments, making the hazards particularly difficult to avoid. For some reason, I completely dominated this round: I was struck just once, while each of my opponents was hit 3-4 times. Consequently, I enjoyed the mode, although it seemed somewhat basic beside the others I tried, and I hope its tougher maps are more compelling.

Some of the other activities frame competition less directly. In one minigame, every player faces King Boo in a red-light, green-light-style contest. The aim is to collect as many coins as you can while the spectral king is asleep, but moving when he awakens leaves you stunned and costs you part of your haul. A comparable mode omitted King Boo, instead giving each of us a baby Yoshi as we competed to eat the greatest number of fruits before time expired.

We finished with local wireless play, moving over to another television running the game. This mode was a race in which each player carried a bouncing ball and had to navigate the stage as swiftly as they could. As in some of Super Mario Bros. Wonder's other multiplayer modes, rivals appear as ghosts and cannot collide with you, meaning they are on screen purely to show how far they have progressed. I held a sizeable lead through most of the race, but encountered a curved wall right at the finish, lost my momentum and eventually came third.

Meetup in Bellabel Park is broadly what I anticipated from the trailers, and that is a good thing. I had a brilliant time in Attraction Central, and the knowledge that every minigame includes so many additional stages has made me eager to play the full release with family members on my sofa.