Super Mario Bros. Wonder is right: Nintendo's series has always been about secrets

What’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder about? Reader, I could not be more excited. “In terms of the concept for creating a new Mario, we came up with the concept of mystery and secrets,” director Shiro Mouri told Tom Phillips recently.

Secrets! “The first Super Mario game was full of secrets and mystery,” Mouri added. “As we were developing more and more side-scrolling Mario games, the challenge became that these kinds of secrets and surprises were more and more normalised to players. So I thought it’d be important to create a side-scrolling Mario that really fit the day and age that we live in now.”

This is wonderful stuff, because it’s true that Mario has always been about secrets. And it’s true that as the games have progressed, players have come to expect those secrets. So how Super Mario Bros. Wonder can meet and defy those expectations is something I cannot wait to see. But for the time being, I’m happy to just remember, and think back to the time when those original secrets and surprises were new. Come join me.

We Played Super Mario Bros. Wonder – NEW GAMEPLAY AND IMPRESSIONS! Super Mario Bros Wonder Switch Watch on YouTube

I think 8-bit games are my favourite of all games, and this is because back then, when I was first watching games flicker on the TV screen as my brothers played on the Commodore 64, games were absolutely filled with mystery. I didn’t understand the form, so I didn’t understand the parameters. I had no way of guessing what was possible. At the same time, game designers were not yet working with too many established genres. Games back then could be wild, and were frequently . Jet Set Willy’s a platformer and a sequel, sure, but in its evocation of a singular place and the way its various spaces are connected, there was nothing else quite like it.