One of the best parts of playing New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on Switch is playing it alongside my 4 year old son. He gets so excited watching me play the levels and loves talking about Mario even when we aren't playing. Recently I beat the game and decided to take a bit of a break from it because he was talking about Mario a bit too much. As a kid who grew up obsessed with Nintendo, I understand how awesome video games can be to certain kids so taking a break was helpful to get him to focus back on other things for a while. Recently I decided to start playing it again as we took a path through the Cloud level and completed the game that way so now we are coming back to complete Rock Candy Mines.

How Does New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe Stack Up?

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is the best New Super Mario Bros. game I've played to date. Each game in the series keeps the same core mechanics, Mario 3 styled overworld and item system but U Deluxe kicks things up a notch to a place I appreciate. One difference I didn't like at first was that U Deluxe only allows you one board of items to store. In other games, Mario 3 included, you could bank up to three or more boards of items but U Deluxe only allows one. At first this was annoying because I love banking items that I, generally speaking, never use. One benefit of not allowing you to store unlimited items is you either use them or you lose them which forced me to use items. This has changed up how I play the game in that I actually use items now which makes the whole game feel a whole lot more fun.

Lots of Secrets To Unlock

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe contains a lot of hidden secrets and unlocking them allows you to skip over levels. Just like in Super World there is a Star Road series of levels however to play them you have to find all the big coins in each level. This gives the game a lot of replay ability but is a bit annoying if you just want to jam on to the Star Road levels, like I do.

What's Next?

After completing the main game I'm focusing on completing Rock Candy Mines and then will head back and complete the levels I didn't finish on my first play through. Occasionally there are two paths you can take and I just took the one so I want to head back and complete the other path levels. After that I'm not sure but I think I'll chip away at finding the hidden coins in each level. Some of these coins are hard to get and require some epic platforming but nothing seems impossible.

New Super Luigi U?

One awesome addition to New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on Switch is the inclusion of New Super Luigi U and I plan on starting it up sometime this year. The only thing I really know about the game is that it features Luigi as the main character as Mario seems... missing. It's also way harder, which sounds frustrating but hopefully on the fun side.

Azurephile   Super Member wrote on 01/22/2021 at 09:26am

Nice. Me and my son have the Wii U version of the game, including Luigi U, I think. We've played it together, but he's probably played it more than I have and it's been quite a while (he's 16 now). It's cool to see another parent's experience w/ their kids and video games. I grew up as a Nintendo fan boy, too.

I can see how forcing you to "use or lose" your items can be frustrating a first, but then also opening up other experiences we may have ignored. I think I was probably a hoarder, too.

jdodson   Admin   Post Author wrote on 01/23/2021 at 05:52pm

I hoard in games all the time. Most notably in Final Fantasy games. I’ll hoard a ton of healing and ethers and never use them in favor of magic and the refresh that at camp sites.

Azurephile   Super Member wrote on 01/23/2021 at 09:33pm

Same here, unless or until I have to rely on items sometimes. I can think of other games where this happens, too.

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