Review: Super Mario Bros Wonder’s 4K Upgrade For Switch 2 Shines

2023’s Super Mario Bros Wonder took one of the top spots on my Game of the Year list that year and, for good reason, it’s arguably the best 2D Mario game created by Nintendo since Yoshi’s Island graced the Super NES decades ago. Bursting with creativity, beautiful visuals and tons of stages, it’s a masterpiece. It was also a visual and technical showcase for the original Switch – the vision was executed to perfection with great clarity and near flawless performance.

But now, with the Switch 2 Edition, Nintendo has revisited the game with a suite of upgrades that make an already stunning 2D platformer feel even more pristine. While it hasn’t rewritten the book on Mario Wonder, Nintendo has delivered a sharpened-up package with a mix of new content and improved visuals.

Super Mario Wonder pushed out the maximum supported resolution available on the original Switch and this allowed its gorgeous art to shine but with Switch 2, the ceiling has been raised and the game has been reworked to take advantage of it. Prior to release, I had two questions: how would the art scale up and would they allow frame-rates above 60 fps?

To answer the first question, it’s really quite simple. The game now supports a full native 4K resolution without any real anti-aliasing. As a 2D game, this is a good choice and it winds up becoming one of the sharpest games on the system. When you stop and look closely at Mario, you can see every tiny detail perfectly represented as a result of native 4K rendering.

Backgrounds benefit as well and the overall game looks great as a result. The only caveat is that certain user interface elements appear to still use the original 1080p assets but by and large, it’s a nice improvement. It’s the same deal in portable mode which now offers native 1080p rendering, something it likely would support anyway thanks to the new handheld boost mode. Aside from the usual blurry LCD screen, though, the presentation is pristine.

That brings us to our second question: performance. Despite holding out hope based on language used in the marketing materials, the fact is that 120fps support has not been added to the game. Now granted, the game otherwise offers a 100 percent locked 60fps experience without compromise where the original on Switch could drop frames on the world map. However, I really had hoped for 120fps as I feel it adds a lot to side-scrolling platform games and the hardware is clearly capable of it.

As a result, in terms of the pure technical makeup, it basically delivers an experience similar to the best Switch 2 patches released for Switch 1 games – on par with Splatoon 3, for example. So, if that was everything, I would argue it should have just been a patch, but there is a lot of content added here, but for those playing in single-player exclusively, it perhaps doesn’t offer a whole lot.

Basically, Bellabel Park is an entirely new map dedicated entirely to multiplayer games, both coop and versus. There is some single-player content factored in with new stages bleeding back out into the main game but most of the content requires at least two players.

But what I didn’t expect is that this feels a lot like a sequel to Nintendo Land on Wii U only themed around Mario play mechanics. There’s a lot of unique ideas stuffed in here that I really enjoyed. One mode, for instance, tasks one player with controlling a cursor, with both mouse or gamepad options, while placing tiles like Mario Maker, allowing the other players to proceed. It’s super engaging.

Or another one where you battle out over coins with a giant Boo hanging out in the background. When it opens its eye, you need to stop moving else you lose coins. There’s also a fun spin on hide and seek that really reminded me of Nintendo Land among many others. Alas, I wasn’t able to try the games which require multiple Switch 2 systems but there’s a lot there too.

Ultimately, I’m mixed on the new content. I really like what has been delivered and the multiplayer options are a nice addition, but I would have loved more single-player content as we saw with some other games released on Switch 2. It’s also nice to have everything on a single, complete game card with the latest updates and everything. So it is, by default, the definitive version.

Overall, though, this is still one of my favorite Super Mario games to date and one I enjoy revisiting regularly. This will become the new version I play when I’m hungry for some Mario Wonder but if you already own it on the original Switch and aren’t interested in the multiplayer features, it’s a less significant upgrade than usual and might be worth waiting on. I just hope that it was and is enough of a success for Nintendo to continue the side-scrolling Mario series as Wonder truly feels as if they finally figured it out after floundering previously with prior entries in the New Super Mario Bros series.