YMMV / New Super Mario Bros. Wii

• Accidental Innuendo: Just try playing 6-Tower (or indeed, any of the levels with the Skewers) without making a joke or two. The fact that the two skewers in 6-Tower jam against each other doesn't help.
• Awesome Music: Yes indeed.
• Best Level Ever: The Spine Coaster level (8-7) has become the favorite level of many fans. 9-8, the "cloudpoline", is also a lot of fun without being too easy and contains a nice holy crap moment near the end.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The final fight with Bowser. At first it looks like your average fight with Bowser, but once Kamek makes him huge, the real fight begins as you haul ass out of the castle with Bowser hot on your tail, roaring and spewing massive fireballs at you. It's actually rather challenging, which when combined with the godly choir makes the fight super memorable. At the same time, a lot of Nightmare Fuel was involved, during the true final boss fight.
  • All three of Bowser Jr.'s fights are pretty fun and varied. In the 4-Airship one, you have to grab a Propeller Block and fly up to hit him in the Clown Car. In 6-Airship, you get a Clown Car of your own and have to knock Jr into the electrified walls! And in 8-Airship, Jr rides in a giant Clown Car and you have to ground pound to deflect his spike balls back into it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: 5-5. You're standing in the middle of a forest world, and then you climb one hill and you're in the sky surrounded by green, flying manta rays wearing scuba glasses and clouds.
• Breather Boss: Bowser Jr. in World 4, which comes after an Underwater Boss Battle with Wendy.
• Breather Level: A few, including 7-5 and 8-2. There's even a shortcut in 8-2 that leads to 8-7, considered the awesomest level ever. If you want to complete the game quickly, the 8-7 shortcut leads to the final airship.
• Difficulty Spike: The first four worlds (grass, desert, snow, and beach) are, for the most part, perfectly manageable, with possible exception made for World 3 until you get the hang of sliding/keeping the Penguin suit. But the last four worlds (forest, mountains, sky, and volcano), not so much.
• Even Better Sequel: Compared to its DS predecessor, other than reusing several of its Video Game Settings and removing its unique bosses and obstacles, it expands on the formula to deliver a longer, more fleshed out with various further improvements and additions to the gameplay, and overall more challenging game featuring just as great level design.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Yvan and Wolley for the Blue and Yellow Toads, respectively. As an alternative, Jon and Josh for blue and yellow, respectively.
  • Mario, Luigi or Toads in Propeller Suit are called "Karlsson" by Russian players after the character from children's book by a female Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, who is popular in Russia.
  • "Twirl" for the Midair Spin introduced in this game, due to it making Mario and his friends do a twirl.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The comedic collapse of Bowser's castle during the ending sequence. Becoming fifty feet tall and going on a rampage turns out to be a bad idea when you're storming through the foundations of your own castle.
  • Notice how, after being beaten from their towers, most Koopalings make three hops to their castle. Now notice how Wendy makes two hops, Morton makes five hops, and Kamek makes no hops at all. This is all meant to foreshadow the fight with Bowser Jr. in those worlds.
  • Why do Cooligans wear sunglasses? Because it's actually advisable to wear sunglasses in the Arctic and Antarctic (indeed, the Inuit invented what were effectively the first sunglasses◊)
• Game-Breaker:
  • There are certain places in the game where it's possible to farm an infinite amount of 1-UPs. The game even kindly shows you how to get some of them.
  • The Propeller Suit continues the tradition of flying powers allowing you to breeze past levels. It isn't quite as broken as Cape Mario from World since you can't skip levels entirely once you master it, but many levels, as well as getting the star coins in them, becomes significantly easier.
  • You can also knock out Bowser Jr. in the second airship battle with a Propeller Mushroom instead of the Clown Car used to knock him into the wall, similar to the first battle with him.
  • The rescue bubble in multiplayer also qualifies. Normally, you respawn in a bubble when you lose a life, but pressing A does the same thing and lets you keep whatever powers you have. This makes falling into bottomless pits impossible and can make levels extremely easy if one player is blazing through and carries everyone else while they're in a bubble. Just try not to make it so everyone goes into one at the same time...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • World 9-7 takes place in a snowy forest. Then came Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Bowser has his castle fall on top of him. The same thing happens here in The Stinger, though this time Bowser doesn't get to fight back.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Accused of this in single-player, since most of the platforms in the game are rather large instead of the trickier small platforms in other Mario games. This is probably justified in that the game was designed towards a multiplayer focus. Don't get any ideas, though—see That One Level below.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Becomes this in multiplayer, as many feel that the level design isn't large enough and/or is too fast-paced to accommodate more than one player.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • As usual, the chime you get for getting a powerup. Also, the screeches from the Spine Coasters make the level even more awesome.
  • The clapping from the unseen audience.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • A platform in one of the ghost houses suddenly drops down, which can be very unnerving.
  • The final boss fight first starts off with a regular Bowser-on-the-bridge boss fight. Mario looks up to what appears to be Peach, a remix of SMB1's ending music playing... before it starts Letting the Air out of the Band, unveiling Kamek in a Peach disguise. He gets on his broomstick and gives Bowser some magic...the ground starts shaking. Kamek looks down, wondering what's happening... and then, Bowser springs up, inadvertently knocking out Kamek; the demonic creature now looking tremendously giant, as his eyes are slightly glowing a dark blood red, and he is truly LIVID. The demonic entity starts chasing the player down relentlessly in a mindless, supreme rage, with intense orchestral music playing and only becoming even more intense in the second phase... and it's his demonic, ungodly, extreme roar that really sells it.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • This game introduced four player simultaneous multiplayer to the Mario series, which was one of the longstanding dreams of Shigeru Miyamoto, who tried to introduce this feature ever since the NES days, and was touted as the biggest new feature and improvement of the game. This is hardly remembered anymore by anyone nowadays, with New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World, and later games cementing the mechanic while largely also having more unique elements.
  • The game was originally praised for being the first 2D Mario platformer on a home console since Super Mario World, but has since been criticized for leading to the stagnation of original ideas in the Mario series, with all subsequent games in the subseries being influenced and reusing content from it^note to the point that the more unique elements of the original DS game weren't seen anymore.
• Paranoia Fuel: In one of the Toad houses, there is a minigame where you must get doubles of powerups but you must not get a double of Bowser or Bowser Jr. If you do, the symbol will pop off the card and shake. You can also hear their laugh. It is like a Jump Scare.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The fans warmed up to Bowser Jr. once the Koopalings appeared alongside him.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • One of the most common criticisms of the game is that the only way to spin jump (and to get off Yoshi and pick up objects) is via shaking the Wii Remote despite them leaving out the B button free on the Wii Remote. This could cause lags in actions that lead to untimely deaths. Following console games would allow players to spin jump using buttons.
  • Dying eight times in a level and triggering the Super Guide block's appearance will lock you out of shining completion stars on your save file, even if you don't actually use the block. This would be addressed in New Super Mario Bros. U onwards, where you'll only lose the shining stars if you actually use the Super Guide and even then you can recover them if the same course is cleared without using the block.
  • Unlike in Super Mario World, Yoshi cannot be taken out of a level to the next one.
  • Whether in single player or multiplayer, the first player is forced to play as Mario despite the fact that players 2-4 can choose Luigi, Yellow Toad, or Blue Toad. New Super Mario Bros. U's original release is the same, but the Deluxe Updated Re-release allows the first player to choose anyone.
  • The paddle wheel in World 5-1 is very slow, doesn't feel great to spin, and is especially cumbersome to use in multiplayer.
  • The Limited Lift from World 5-4, because it stops moving when too many enemies or coins are on it.
  • World 5 has an entire gimmick on the world map where Iggy Koopa blocks certain paths with thorned vines. While it thankfully doesn't block important paths (i.e. the fortress and castle), this can get on anyone's nerves as it would block the potential path to advance and force the player to either finish another level or die. Iggy can also block Toad Houses as well especially when you desperately need them. It can also make enemy courses that much harder to dodge because chances are the Piranha Plants will run into you. Thankfully this gimmick is disabled after World 5 is finished.
  • The final airship has a Warp Pipe connected to a four-way rotating cannon. It starts upright when it spawns in, and it takes about 13 seconds^note 18 ticks of the in-game timer to make a full rotation before you have the chance to enter it, grinding the pace to a halt. Speedrunners only figured out how to skip the wait in 2023, and it requires bringing in a Penguin Suit and freezing enemies in midair to use precise momentum exploits, so it's not exactly practical.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The Underwater Theme sounds a little like Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker.
• That One Boss:
  • Both of Morton Koopa Jr.'s battles. The first time, you have a small amount of space to avoid his shell. It's big (so you have to jump high) and fast (so you have to jump often). This is made worse by the constantly dropping skewers on the edges of the arena, more or less forcing you onto the small arena for the most part. Then there's the second battle with him where he can do a One-Hit Kill based on where you're standing in relation to him. If you're on a section of the floor adjacent to one he's on, get away.
  • Wendy's second battle can be quite frustrating. Not only is she fought in a room that periodically fills with water (making her unable to be Goomba Stomped), she fires hard to avoid rings that bounce around the room and don't dissipate for a long time.
• That One Level:
  • 7-6. A scrolling level that involves you jumping from Para-Beetle to Para-Beetle to make it to the end without any checkpoints. Depending on who you are, this might not be too difficult. But if you're also trying to get the coins, it can be somewhat torturous and having Yoshi doesn't always help. There's a saving grace in that jumping from beetle to beetle yields extra lives, though this might end up being a curse if you keep dying and drain yourself of items.
  • 8-1, which can only be described as dodging an Advancing Wall of Doom while avoiding meteors, and in the latter half, jumping between lava plumes, sinking platforms, and one-block platforms. And this is why people stopped complaining about the Super Guide.
  • Have fun at 8-4. Yep, it's underwater. In the dark. With many unforgiving undersea baddies. And no checkpoint.
  • There's also 9-7, which is filled with Fire Piranha Plants, Munchers, and Prickly Goombas. On ice. Sure, those Munchers are trapped in said ice, but as the Fire Piranha Plants start spitting fireballs, they'll unthaw and you'll slowly have less and less space to stand on. Think you can bring in a Fire Flower and kill them before they free any Munchers? Your fireballs can unthaw the Munchers as well, so if you don't take care with your aim you might end up in an even worse situation. Oh, and there's no checkpoint, either.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Yoshis can't be taken onto the world map, which vastly limits the number of courses they can be used in, unlike in Super Mario World where they were a major part of the game.
  • The Spin Jump, also from Super Mario World, no longer protects against spiky and fiery enemies^note though that element has a Franchise Original Sin in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, nor penetrates breakable blocks. This makes it virtually just a lower jump that is most notable for activating the Waggle-based Midair Spin, Propeller Mushroom, and Screwtop course parts.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Kamek, bizarrely. His disguising himself as Peach at the end could not have helped. His witch laugh while flying sounds vaguely feminine too.

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