Mario

New Super Mario Bros
$49.99
To be completely upfront about my experience with this game, we rented it from BlockBuster to try it before I sunk $40+ into a new game. We are over our 7 day rental and are still playing it if that tells you anything! My review will hopefully be beneficial for families with young children and those who are not big gamers.

I purchased our Wii last Christmas in hopes that we'd be able to play 'family games' together besides our two boys watching the clock for 'their' game time turn and my husband being holed up in his office playing his game. Other than some strategy type PC games for my husband, educational games for our 5 and 8 yr old and some (non gory) strategy war games for our 8yr old, we are non gamers. So after a year of Wii Play, Outdoor Challenge, Go Diego Go games, Zack & Wiki, Space Chimps, Lego Star Wars, we're ready for some new games for the family!

What I LOVE about this game is that it's CLEAN FUN!!! There is no gory violence, no borderline inappropriate language for the kids....it's colorful with cute animation and with exception of my husband who complained about it being stupid and boring - yet asks for his turn to play and will CONTINUE to play when he gets his turn :-), we all enjoy this game - especially our 5yr old and myself.

The game IS mostly easy enough for our 5yr old to play on his own although he DOES need help in some areas. It was however, very frustrating to him for about the first day or two since none of us have ever played Mario games so we weren't familiar with the good & bad guys and the functions of what we had to do until we figured out that their is a quick tutorial on the basics of the game.

Aside from it being a bit pricey - (keep in mind I think that ALL games over $30 is overpriced!! AND ALL new games are always in the $45+ - $50 range), I think it's a great game overall. MY ONLY HUGE complaint about this on a Wii Platform is that I personally don't think that it incorporates the Wii benefits & functions as much as it COULD. ie: my whole intent of buying the family a Wii console is so that we can play together (in which you CAN in this game - you have to have a controller for each person but you can play up to 4 players or simply play a 1 player game) is that we'd get off of the couch and be ACTIVE while playing. ie: Wii Play, Wii sports, Outdoor challenge, DDR etc. With all of the walking, jumping and flying in this game, I REALLY would have hoped that we could incorporate the Wii Mat or balance board AND / OR the remote to play. Besides shaking the Wii remote when we spin or fly, SO FAR, I haven't seen an area where it encourages the player to have to move.

YES, I acknowledge that if I really want my family moving, that I should get them outside...we DO but I was hoping that with the wonderful graphics and all, that my kids and I would be jumping right along with Mario & Luigi in order to move in the game. It would really be nice if we had the CHOICE to either use the Wii mat OR the hand remote!! If I am wrong about this assumption and we CAN use the Wii mat for this game as a controller, please leave me a comment and I'd be more than happy to change my review. :-)

So...
YES, this game is GREAT for the entire family! (Our 5yr old LOVES this game and I found myself stealing a few minutes on this game while hubby took the kids on an errand - so grownups like this too!) I would think if you are a Mario fan at all, that you'd LOVE this game!

YES, it's good, clean fun. You can let your kids play without worrying if there will be something questionable come up where you feel you have to monitor it.

YES, most parts are easy enough for a 5yr old to play HOWEVER, as you advance in levels, it's really challenging for me so it's not too easy where you'll be bored soon.

NO, (as far as I know) it's not an 'active' type of Wii game if that's what you are looking for for your family. You only have to shake the Wii remote on occasion otherwise, you are fairly stationary with exception of your fingers on the Wii remote. (GREAT, FUN game for those who are stationary but can utilize their hands and arms!)

YES, I do recommend this as a fun game for the entire family! Although I wish it were priced closer to $30 or so...with that said, I've been looking at purchasing Mario games for my family for an entire YEAR and their prices are RARELY discounted AND they keep their value so with that in mind, I do think it's a good buy!

Super Mario Galaxy
$49.99
In terms of gameplay, graphics, originality, etc, this beats out any of the past Mario games. The graphics blew me away. It really looks like a high-quality cartoon rather than a game. The movement with the Wii remote and nunchuk feels oddly natural even after decades of playing Mario games with the classic video game controller. I also think it's pretty cool how Mario can literally run around small planets in true 3-D mode. I haven't seen another game quite like it.

Unfortunately, the game is simply too long to really rank as fun. The game designers seem to have fallen into the classic trap of believing that gamers actually care about the story. We don't. We want action and to kill bad guys. However, in Mario Galaxy, it is impossible to skip the cutscenes (which are long and many). In terms of the dialogue and cutscenes, this almost feels like a Zelda-style RPG rather than a Mario game. I played for over an hour and only saw a few Goombas and one boss (a giant piranha plant). If I could at least have avoided the cutscenes, I probably could have gotten much further in the game for that time I played. I'm just too busy right now to beat a game that will probably take days, if not weeks, to beat. That's too bad, because Mario Galaxy had the potential to be the best mario game since Mario 64.

Super Mario Galaxy 2
$49.99

Mario Kart Wii with Wii Wheel
$49.99
I played this game at my friends house, and it was fun for a while. As you play you unlock carts and characters. This game is fun until you unlock everything. Then it just gets boring and loses its craze. Steering with the wii wheel is fairly fun, just not all that enthralling. To compare with all the other mario kart games, I'd say that this one is okay, but I still think it's the worst. Nintendo just keeps recreating its games on it's newer systems, but they just keep getting worse. The originals were the best.