When I was about eight years old, someone in the playground at school told me that if you crouched down on top of one of the colourful platforms in a certain level of Super Mario Bros 3, Mario would fall through the scenery and you would be able to run through the background of the whole stage, emerging in a secret passage at the end. I assumed they must be lying. Playground information about video games was supremely unreliable in the 90s, before YouTube playthroughs could show you all a game’s secrets with a single search.
But when I got home, I tried the crouching-down-on-the-platform thing anyway – and it worked. Mario ran right past the end of the level and emerged in a hidden room, where he was given a whistle that warped him to a different world. I was awestruck. I felt as if I had just found Atlantis, as if I had been bequeathed some incredible secret and it was now my sacred duty to pass it on. It is impossible to recreate that pure wonder that video games made us feel as children, when they were new to us. But Nintendo always tries. In Super Mario Bros Wonder’s case, its emotive goal is right there in the title.
