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Full Let’s Play
The Wishing Stars: Winter Wishes is a short episode where the Mario Bros. and Peach visit Snowdia Island to chill for the holidays, but alas, someone has stolen the island’s symbolic
wishing stars! It’s up to Mario alone to recover them and save Christmas I guess.
Let’s Talk About Assets!
This episode sticks to an SMW aesthetic, including Mario’s sprites. There might be occasional exceptions, but the visual consistency helps it look cohesive. The music is a variety of thematically-appropriate tracks and remixes from various games, such as Freezeezy Peaks from Banjo-Kazooie and White Glacier from Bomberman 64, setting the snowy atmosphere. Not much is new in the sound department, but the whole thing is put together well enough to feel legit.
Let’s Talk About Writing!
There isn’t much, but it could’ve done with a proofread. Small errors here and there make it sound awkward, though it’s not too important since the story is simple. After a brief introductory paragraph and an initial hub with some NPCs, you’re off on your own with a clear mission. Some stages have NPCs with hints or gaffs, but outside of that and the ending, there’s little dialogue and it’s kept to what’s necessary. No serious concerns here.
Let’s Talk About Design!
The episode is nonlinear with all but one stage available to you from the start. This includes the final castle, but although I didn’t confirm this, I suspect you can’t access the final boss until you’ve gathered all the stars from everywhere else. Stages vary in difficulty but are generally on the harder side. Multiple checkpoints are common and some of the challenges become quite devious.
Offsetting the difficulty somewhat, you begin each stage as Super Mario, regardless of what your prior power-up state was. This means you can’t bring fire flowers or leaves into a level, but you’ll get a 2nd tier item from the first available block and can always take at least one hit. It’s a blessing if you find yourself dying a bunch, but a curse if there’s a particular item you want and can’t access.
Of more concern is getting a Game Over, as this resets your progress in the level. Lives are scarce outside of one stage where you can complete it for a bounty of 1-ups, so unless you visit that one first, you could be in peril of losing progress from repeated failure. The stages have 5 star coins to collect and they aren’t saved until you finish, so these are at risk as well. It might not seem to matter, but there are some tasks in this episode I’d be very irritated to repeat.
As was noted, this episode can be challenging. I’d say it’s mostly fair; some parts are dumber than others. It relies a lot on dashed line semi-solids (lazy blocks) to micromanage its difficulty and create problematic situations. They also detract from the setting since they’re everywhere, so it hurts what would otherwise be effective atmosphere. I often found them unnecessary, either by function or through workarounds, but one stage was actively broken by them. In it, there are Pokeys on springboards that you need to jump past. The springs are placed inside NPC lazy blocks, and if you fall in them, you get stuck until you do a frame-perfect jump or the Pokey kills you.
While I’m no fan of lazy blocks, I can put up with them, but what I really despised was the added anti-zip feature. This prevents you from standing up in a 1-tile gap to wall zip out. It would be fine if that’s all it did, but it also causes you to rocket upwards (including through solids) if you take damage while ducking. This can put you in impossible situations, like getting trapped above the ceiling, and is invariably annoying. You can avoid it by not ducking when near enemies, but those are times when it’s usually wise to duck since it minimizes your hitbox. You might also be able to abuse it to your advantage in certain places, but not much. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it just to prevent wall-zipping, which only affects a couple areas in the game anyway.
However, if you put those things aside, the episode has plenty of interesting ideas it fits into a tight package. There are only 8 stages (including the secret bonus level), but they all explore and thoroughly expand on their gimmicks. The design is noticeably deliberate and you can’t expect much mercy. You’ll have an easier time if you skip out on the star coins, but they encourage exploration and help you appreciate more of what each stage has to offer, or perhaps drive you mad.
Let’s Wrap This Up…
There are things I appreciate about this episode and others I really don’t. As a result, I have mixed feelings about it. I like the creativity, but not the execution as many things feel needlessly difficult. If some parts were toned down and it didn’t lean on lazy blocks so much, I’d have a much more positive impression. As it stands, it’s a short ‘n tough episode, but at times may feel like it’s tough for the wrong reasons.
3/5
You cannot play as Luigi.
