Posts with tagged with "new super mario bros 2"

Oh man, I busted my own chops repeatedly and I finally got a sweet score in the new downloadable Coin Challenge Pack A for New Super Mario Bros. 2! And now to see how this score stacks up against the rest of the world by logging onto the online leaderboards that they said I can compete on! It's not a great score, only like 16,000 but... oh who cares I am so excited!

Maybe the most surprising thing about New Super Mario Bros. 2's coin rush mode, in which you can compete with StreetPassed strangers by trying to maximize your coin total through a single-life gauntlet of three randomly selected levels, is that it's actually, in some sort of disgusting, twisted way, beneficial to tag people who have a score that is massively, impossibly unbeatable. Why would that be? Well, it's because the first time that you challenge a coin rush tag and finish it, you automatically receive coins equivalent to your rival's record.

I downloaded New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the eShop last night, at 11:02pm. Crazy! Now, scant hours later, I am like two-thirds of the way through the whole thing. Whups. I was a little worried about it beforehand, you know. Lots of impressions of this game have not been kind, writing it off as just a soulless retread that accomplishes nothing and serves only to dilute the Mario brand.

With New Super Mario Bros. 2 around the corner, I find myself looking forwards to grabbing as many coins as I can. It will be an accomplishment, this coin-mongering! It is an exceedingly score-focused game, all about seeing how well you can do, how much scratch you can accrue. And yet, I can't help but feel isolated by it—by the knowledge that any of the scores I compete against will be my own.

As Japan wriggles in the grip of gold fever (both via the race for medals in the London Olympics and the race for coins in the just-released New Super Mario Bros. 2), I can't help but try and shake the onset of this very same disease in me, committed as I am to my American-version 3DS system. Like the common cold, I feel it creeping up on me, little by little.