There have been plenty of DS games that have taken Japan by storm, but there's only one that has the potential to set the world ablaze. New Super Mario Bros. is one of more highly anticipated games of the year. It's also taking its developer forever to release it, but that's probably due to their dedication to the project. Will it be the greatest Mario title of all time? It's still a bit too early for me to make such a bold claim, but after playing it for about twenty minutes at this year's GDC, I'm proud to say that at the very least, Nintendo's on the right track.

New Super Mario Bros. is a merging of two different styles. It plays exactly like its much older predecessors, with you, as Mario, running left to right across wondrous 2D backgrounds, but all of the characters are three dimensional, so the game is more 2.5D, and this allows Nintendo to do all sorts of neat effects such as Mario twirling in the air, doing somersaults, and growing several stories high after consuming a giant mushroom, whereupon which he can just smash through just about everything including warp pipes, bricks, and enemies.

The game's story is extremely predictable. People in the mushroom kingdom are going about their business when a mysterious and dark cloud appears over the famous castle and zaps it with lightning. This of course makes everyone go crazy, and in the confusion, Princess Peach is captured, again, this time by a koopa kid. Naturally, there's only one plumber (two if you count Luigi) who can save her, and Mario springs into action.

Supposedly, the game features eight worlds and about 80 levels. That's a lot of Mario, and I'm glad that it's a lengthy adventure, because after just a few minutes of play I was hungering for more. New Super Mario Bros. feels incredibly old school and that's what makes it so much fun. Instead of giving us a port or attempting to create an entirely 3D adventure for the DS, Nintendo went back to its roots and has seemingly delivered what I've wanted for years; an all new Mario title that feels more like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World and less like Super Mario Sunshine, though unlike most critics, I have lots of love for Mario's GameCube outing.

I was only able to play through the first three levels, and during that time, the game played as I expected it to. Mario runs back and forth, can squash enemies by jumping atop their heads, can bust through bricks, some of which reveal gold coins and powerups, and at the conclusion of the first world, he can hop onto a signature flag pole, though I was unable to trigger fire works, and at this point I'm not sure if they've been included. But the game feels tight and it's also a lot of fun, especially because of the new power ups, the most notable being that gigantic mushroom, but there's also the blue turtle shell (still not sure what that does), your standard issue mushrooms, and fire flowers. Mario can also perform a ground pound when you jump and press down on the d-pad, and you can pan the camera by pressing the left and right triggers, though they only reveal a tiny bit of the landscape.

The first couple of levels feel very similar to older Mario games, with warp pipes, goombas, and the usual shenanigans the series is famous for, but I also came across a particular board that's sort of like classic Metroid in the sense that it runs vertically. Mario begins all the way at the bottom and the goal is to reach the top, and to do this he must ascend platforms, dodge enemies, and avoid being crushed by moving walls, not that I remember any moving walls in NES Metroid, but it's more the style of the level that reminds of me of Samus Aran's adventure.

Regarding the touch screen, it doesn't appear that the developers are doing much with it other than to display the number of coins one has as well as power ups. However, you can actually touch the power ups to activate them on the fly, and that's an improvement over the system in Super Mario Bros. 3 where one must select a power up before entering a level.

In addition to the single player game, Nintendo's also tossed all of the mini games from Super Mario 64 DS as well as multiplayer, but unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to check out either.

New Super Mario Bros. appears to be an excellent game that may be the trump card that Nintendo needs in order to blow Sony away, but it's going to be interesting to see how well it's received. Mario is still popular, no question, but I'm not sure if he can bring in the dollars like he used to, especially since the adventure/platform genre is rich with quality titles. But regardless of whether or not you're planning to buy it, I'm definitely going to pick it up when it's released on May 15, if that is in fact the actual arrival date. The game's been pushed around for several months now, and at this point, I won't be surprised if Nintendo kicks it into June.