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When Super Mario Bros. Wonder hit the Switch, I was absolutely enamoured, for multiple reasons, obviously, but mainly because it felt like an incredibly fresh take on a formula that has been well and truly established for over three decades. I’d wondered (heh) where Nintendo might take things next. Enter Bellabel Park, an expansion of sorts for Wonder that adds a whole bunch more to an already robust package. While some aspects fall short, it’s a fun new addition to an already stellar adventure.
The first thing immediately noticeable upon booting the game is the stark improvement in the visuals. Wonder now runs at a higher resolution, with all the technical bells and whistles the Switch 2 offers. While the original game looked incredible thanks to its strong art direction, the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition loads faster and looks much sharper and more vibrant. This is, without a doubt, the best way to play Wonder – though, oddly, if you want to go back, the original Nintendo Switch version is also selectable from the title screen.
Bellabel Park begins with Mario and his crew heading to the titular park from a new tunnel created on the world map. On the way, the Koopalings reappear, and using the Wonder Power they’ve borrowed from their father, they steal seven Bellabel flowers from the park. In a bid to restore the parka, Mario and his gang hunt them down to return it to its former glory. It’s a simple story, much like any Mario game, but it’s appreciated that they’re giving you something to follow along with this expansion.
The story is an excuse to plop you into seven new levels scattered across the already existing map. Each course remixes one from the base game in a dramatic way, culminating in a boss battle with one of the Koopalings. I complained about the boss variety in the original Wonder, so it’s nice to see this remedied with seven distinct and unique boss battles, but a new world to explore might’ve been a bit more exciting. Still, more Wonder is never a bad thing, and the way these boss battles are designed feels like the distillation of everything that makes Wonder, well, wonderful.
That being said, while seven new boss battles within the context of Wonder’s already strong sense of design is worth celebrating, I can’t help but feel disappointed with how this all comes to an end. To put it simply, you play through the bosses, then get a “Congratulations” dialogue box afterwards. It feels anticlimactic, as if the game is missing one more showdown with Bowser, all the kids at once or something else entirely.
The other significant portion of content included is the Toad Brigade Training Camp. This is a set of challenges that remixes the levels from the base game, adding weird modifiers to make them more challenging. Think of a level where you can only bounce from point to point, or one where you have to defeat all enemies, or another where you have to avoid coins. They’re short, bite-sized challenges that start simple but quickly become more complex and overwhelming. It feels like Nintendo is leaning into the difficulty that fans would be tapping into with all those crazy courses from Super Mario Maker 2 here. While it never quite reaches those heights, it’s encouraging to see Nintendo not shy away from making Mario difficult.
Completing these challenges rewards you with Bellabel Water, which can be used to sprout a plant that randomly doles out an unlockable. It’s kind of like a loot box, though without paying real money. Unlockables include new flowers to plant around Bellabel Park (which honestly feels a bit like featuritis), as well as new emotes and hybrid badges that combine the effects of two existing badges. It’s a nice little progression system that exists solely within Bellabel Park – and if you’re not so good at the game, you can repeat Training Camp missions to earn water that way. However, you earn more for completing ones you haven’t completed previously.
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And what’s even cooler is that all of these challenges can be completed with up to four players. As with the base game, Wonder can get pretty hectic at times, and that’s especially true here when you’re playing any of this newer and more difficult content offered with this expansion. For those who might struggle, the usual safety nets apply here – including picking Nabbit or Yoshi – but the newly included Co-Star Luma, controlled by the Switch 2’s mouse, is an additional layer of accessibility added for those who might struggle with the difficulty presented here.
But beyond the Koopalings and the Toad Brigade Training, Bellabel Parks’ other significant offering is Attraction Central. This area is a collection of minigames that cleverly twist Wonders’ mechanics in unique ways. The park is split into online and offline multiplayer modes, and while I wasn’t able to test the online, the offline ones were incredibly fun, and my group and I played them for more than 3 hours without even getting bored. Everyone is bound to have some form of party game on their Switch 2 already, but the Bellabel Park additions are unique enough that they stand apart from the likes of Jamboree and Tennis Fever. They’ve definitely found a place in my rotation of the games I play with my mates.
The minigames themselves, again, take older courses from Wonder and twist them with new mechanics. One has a person wear a Phanto mask, trying to tag other players, who are hiding in the level as bricks or coins. Others have you all coordinating how many coins you collect on a course, but the counter is invisible. Others have you stopping in place when a giant King Boo in the background wakes up, while at the same time trying to collect as many coins as possible. Bellabel Park feels like it’s reheating Jamboree’s nachos, in a way, but it’s the way Wonder’s already stellar platforming mechanics and the chaotic nature of its design come together that really help sell the fun of Bellabel.
When all is said and done, there’s not a lot here that’s purely new in Meetup In Bellabel Park, but just like Wonder remixed elements of the previous Mario games to offer up something new, Bellabel Park’s new offerings do a great job of remixing elements of Wonder to offer up something that’s just as fun and compelling. While I’m still only slightly miffed that a few brand new worlds weren’t implemented here, for $30, especially if you’ve got some people to play with, this feels like a fun and substantial upgrade that overtakes Kirby’s Star-Crossed World as Nintendo’s best upgrade yet.
