Review by: Brandon "Brogurt" Cackowski-Schnell

If you've ever played a Mario Bros game and thought, "screw those plumbers, that big lizard is where it's at" then this is the game for you. Fawful is back and wants the entirety of the Mushroom Kingdom as his prize. To do this he hatches a plan that results in Bowser and his minions dispersed across the Kingdom while Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and a whole lot of Toads end up in Bowsers guts.

I'm not sure what's in the water over at AlphaDream but whatever it is, it makes for some pretty strange and surreal gaming imagery. If the notion of Mario and Luigi traveling the highways and byways of Bowser's innards as they search for Princess Peach wasn't strange enough, the various conversations they have along the way as well as the beasties they face are all downright weird. This is to say nothing of the creatures and the strange French coin block vendor that Bowser comes across. And by that I don't mean that the vendor sells French coin blocks, I mean that he is one.

Strange vendors and odd locales can only take you so far though so it helps that the game's combat system is the right mix of reflexes, pattern recognition and using the right tools for the job. When playing as Mario and Luigi you can select from a range of actions for both brothers when attacking and rely on timely presses of the A and B button to protect each brother from injury. Battles can be long, sometimes too long, and quite involved, made all the more difficult if you're not paying attention to your enemy's telegraphing of which brother is about to get a fireball in the face. When playing as Bowser things aren't quite as complicated. After all, Bowser is a pretty simple guy. He punches, he breathes fire, he can use his shell for defense. The expert timing and quick thinking needed for the smaller yet more complicated Mario Brothers is offset nicely by the brute force approach employed by the Koopa King.

When playing as the Mario Brothers there are some light platforming to take part in with a fine selection of tools to help you in this regard. Luigi can flatten Mario with a hammer, no doubt taking a small bit of enjoyment out of each meaty thwack, so that Mario can traverse small tunnels. The two can also combine into a plumber helicopter of sorts to make long jumps or reach higher altitudes. The platforming is never difficult and there's rarely a penalty for missing a jump making the platforming a nice respite from the tougher battles. As the brothers make their way through Bowser they'll occasionally have to pull off some special actions to give Bowser a boost of strength or adrenaline. These range from timely whacks with a hammer to send an electrical impulse back and forth to engaging in a SHMUP style battle with colored balls of adrenaline. Like I said, it's all very odd.

As fun as the Mario Brothers sections are, the real joy of the game is playing as Bowser. He's just as much of an idiot as we've come to expect and his large scale battles where the DS is turned on its side like a book are an absolute blast to play and involve all aspects of the DS's bullet list of hardware features. You'll slide the stylus to direct Bowser's fists, tap the screen to aim his fireball breath and blow into the microphone for deplying an extended gout of flame. During all of this the graphics are slightly pixellated to emphasis the 16-bit writ large motif of the supersized Bowser. That's not to say that the Mario and Luigi sections aren't enjoyable, as they are, just that hammer hits and bouncy jumping are all well and good, but sometimes you just want to punch a dude in the face and then set him on fire.

The game is executed so well with plenty of references to past Mario games, as well as gaming culture as a whole that when your 20+ hour journey is over you'll no doubt be waiting until the next time Bowser eats a strange mushroom and inhales the entire kingdom into his belly. The game excels at so much and hits on so many gaming points that it's as close as being for everyone as you're likely to find. It's an RPG for western and JRPG junkies alike, a Mario game for people who don't like platformers as well as the for Mustached One's biggest fans. It's whacky, it's colorful, it's challenging and it's hilarious all at the same time. Simply put, it's a 2-d masterpiece.