New Super Mario Bros. 2

By 2012 Nintendo had a problem of its own making. The Nintendo 3DS had stumbled at launch, Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 had rescued its first Christmas, and the Wii U was due at the end of the year. Satoru Iwata told investors in January that a brand-new 2D Mario was coming to the handheld, and on 21 April a Nintendo Direct gave it a name. New Super Mario Bros. 2 arrived in Japan on 28 July, the same day as the bigger 3DS LL, and reached Europe, Australia and North America within three weeks. Iwata was candid about why: Nintendo had let the 3DS drift between summer and autumn in 2011, and this time Mario would fill the gap.

The game itself is the third New Super Mario Bros. and a direct follow-up to the 2006 DS original. You will recognise almost everything: the world map, the Star Coins, the Mini and Mega Mushrooms, the Koopalings and the bubble-based two-player play lifted from New Super Mario Bros. Wii. What you will not recognise is the sheer quantity of money. Every level is stuffed with coins, enemies turn to gold, pipes spray coins when you fire into them, and a running total on the title screen counts towards a frankly ridiculous goal of one million. With SpotPass switched on, your haul joined a worldwide tally: players had passed 100 billion coins by October 2012 and 300 billion by the end of November.

It was made in an unusual way. The regular 2D Mario team was busy with the Wii U launch game, so producer Takashi Tezuka and SRD’s Toshihiko Nakago ran a “Mario Cram School” to teach staff from across Nintendo how Mario courses are built, then handed the finished courses to a new director, Yusuke Amano. Artists from the Tokyo studio that made 3D Land gave the flat backgrounds a camera-style blur tied to the 3D slider. It was, Iwata noted, the first time Nintendo had built two New Super Mario Bros. games at once.

Reviewers liked it and shrugged: Metacritic settled at 78, the lowest of any mainline Mario platformer on Nintendo hardware, with the words “safe” and “familiar” everywhere. Players disagreed with their wallets. Over a million copies sold in Japan within five weeks, and by March 2026 the total stood at 13.42 million, behind only Mario Kart 7 and three Pokémon pairs on the 3DS. Its Coin Rush packs also quietly set the template for Nintendo’s approach to downloadable content, a story that continues with New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U.

The things people ask most about New Super Mario Bros. 2, answered briefly here and in depth further down the page.

Nobody plays a New Super Mario Bros. game for its plot, and this one knows it: the story is told in a handful of wordless scenes. But those scenes are charming, they explain why Peach keeps vanishing, and the ending has one of the best sight gags in the series. Here is the whole thing, beat by beat.

A coin hunt in the clouds

The game opens on a perfect Mushroom Kingdom afternoon. Mario and Luigi, already wearing Super Leaves as Raccoon Mario and Fox Luigi, are out hunting coins, soaring over Princess Peach’s castle and scooping up glittering trails while the Princess waves from her balcony. A little bird flutters past. It is the most carefree Mario has ever looked at the start of an adventure, and the message is clear: in this game coins are the point, not the pocket money.

Enter the Koopalings

The brothers land to find the Koopalings, all seven of them, piling out of the Koopa Clown Car. A knock sends Mario and Luigi tumbling back to their ordinary Super forms, and when the dust settles Peach has gone. Roy, the biggest, has her slung over his shoulder. The Clown Car lifts off with the Princess aboard and Mario sets off after it across World 1’s grassy plains, which is where you take control.

It is a cheeky echo of the opening of Super Mario Advance 2, where the brothers were also distracted by a flying power-up while the Koopalings struck, and it sets up the structure: each Koopaling will hold a castle, and the Clown Car will keep Peach one world ahead of you.

Six worlds and a river of gold

From here the game settles into the familiar rhythm of grassland, desert, tropical islands, snow, sky and lava. Halfway through each world a Tower rises, and inside it the Reznors are waiting: rhinoceros-like beasts on rotating platforms, last seen in Super Mario World, who fling fireballs while the bridge beneath Mario crumbles. Knock the blocks out from under them and the Tower falls. At the end of each world stands a Castle, and in it a Koopaling with a magic wand and a gimmick: Roy charges into the closing walls of his shrinking room, Iggy rides a carriage pulled by a Big Chain Chomp, Wendy fights in a flooding chamber full of Cheep Cheeps, Morton conjures spiked balls, and Ludwig has to be knocked down with Pipe Cannons. Three stomps each and the Koopaling flees.

After every castle the same scene plays: Mario looks up to see Peach, caged in the Clown Car, carried off towards the next world, while the beaten Koopaling makes a dash for it. Meanwhile the coin counter keeps climbing, and by the time World 6’s volcanoes come into view most players have long since stopped worrying about the Princess and started worrying about the next hundred thousand.

Side roads: World Mushroom and World Flower

Two of the Koopalings are not on the main road at all. Fire yourself out of World 1’s Warp Cannon and you land in World Mushroom, a grab-bag of courses themed loosely after the Super Mushroom, where Larry Koopa bounces magic balls diagonally around a castle with shifting walls. Its cannon, or World 3’s, leads to World Flower, where Lemmy Koopa rides his circus ball along a conveyor belt and sends smaller balls rolling at you. World Flower’s own cannon drops you straight into World 6, which makes the Warp Cannon route the quickest way to Bowser, if not the richest.

Bowser’s Castle

World 6 ends at Bowser’s Castle, and the first round is pure Super Mario Bros.: Bowser stomps about on a bridge breathing fire while Mario waits for a gap, slips underneath and hits the ! Switch. Down goes the bridge, down goes Bowser, and for a moment it is over. Then the Koopalings swoop in. In New Super Mario Bros. Wii it was Kamek who revived the fallen king; here all seven Koopalings pool their magic, and Bowser bursts back out of the pit as a towering giant who fills the screen, knocking his children aside as he stands up.

The finale is a vertical scramble up the castle tower with Giant Bowser smashing through the platforms behind you and roaring fire across the screen. At the very top sits an enormous ! Switch. One ground pound and the floor gives way beneath Bowser, who plunges into the depths for good. Peach’s cage opens.

Happily ever after, with a coin count

Mario carries Peach home in his arms (on foot this time; in 3D Land he flew), while Luigi, true to the spirit of the game, trails behind picking up every coin he can find. The credits roll over the Koopalings carrying their shrunken, dazed father back to the Clown Car, which is now so overloaded that it sputters, drops and scatters the whole family across the sky. After the credits, your file earns a star and the Gold Flower is added to your Coin Rush item box, which tells you what Nintendo thinks you should do next.

World Star and Dry Bowser

The true ending is in World Star, which only appears once Bowser is beaten and you have 90 Star Coins to spend on its opening sign. Its courses swap Star Coins for Moon Coins and ramp up the difficulty, and its castle holds Dry Bowser, the skeletal king from the DS game, who is faster than his living self, hurls bones, breathes blue flame and is immune to fireballs. Beat him and the game is truly done, although the coin counter, of course, is not.

The worlds of New Super Mario Bros. 2

Six worlds on the main road, two reached only by Warp Cannon and one unlocked after the credits. Every numbered world has a Reznor Tower in the middle and a Koopaling Castle at the end; Rainbow courses and Warp Cannon runs are listed in the course counts.

1. 
   World 1Grassland · 10 courses · 24 Star Coins · Tower: Reznor · Castle: Roy KoopaRolling green plains that teach the Gold Ring and the Super Leaf. The Warp Cannon leads to World Mushroom.
2. 
   World 2Desert · 11 courses · 30 Star Coins · Castle: Iggy KoopaSand, cacti, Pokeys and the first Ghost House, where the enormous Boohemoth makes its debut. A coin-spewing volcano hides in 2-B.
3. 
   World MushroomSpecial · 9 courses · 21 Star Coins · Castle: Larry KoopaReached from World 1’s cannon. Mixed themes rather than a single setting, in the manner of 3D Land’s special worlds. Its cannon leads to World Flower.
4. 
   World 3Islands and jungle · 12 courses · 30 Star Coins · Castle: Wendy O. KoopaA tropical archipelago of Cheep Cheeps and Urchins that turns to poison-swamp jungle with cobwebs to climb. The cannon leads to World Flower.
5. 
   World 4Snow · 12 courses · 33 Star Coins · Castle: Morton Koopa Jr.Icy hills to slide down, frozen forests, Fuzzies on rails and a Tower full of Bone Piranha Plants. The biggest Star Coin haul in the game.
6. 
   World FlowerSpecial · 9 courses · 21 Star Coins · Castle: Lemmy KoopaThemed after the Fire Flower and reached from World Mushroom or World 3. Its Warp Cannon is a shortcut straight to World 6.
7. 
   World 5Sky · 11 courses · 30 Star Coins · Castle: Ludwig von KoopaMushroom platforms, cliffs, golden Lakitu clouds to ride and Bullet Bill barrages. Ludwig must be knocked out of the air with Pipe Cannons.
8. 
   World 6Lava · 11 courses · 30 Star Coins · Castle: BowserVolcanoes raining debris, withered trees, Fire Bros and segmented bone coasters over lava, ending at Bowser’s Castle and the two-stage finale.
9. 
   World StarPost-game · 9 courses · 24 Moon Coins · Castle: Dry BowserOpens after the credits with 90 Star Coins. The toughest courses in the game, Moon Coins in place of Star Coins and Dry Bowser at the end.

The ten Coin Rush packs sold in late 2012 add 30 more courses that never appear in the main adventure, from the beginner-friendly Gold Rush Pack to the aptly named Impossible Pack. They are covered under Legacy.

If you have played any New Super Mario Bros., your thumbs already know this one. Mario runs, jumps, wall-kicks, ground-pounds and triple-jumps through side-scrolling courses that end at a flagpole, with Star Coins hidden off the beaten track and a world map linking everything together. What changes is the economy. Where earlier Marios doled out coins carefully, this one empties the vault over your head, and every system in the game, from the power-ups to the two-player mode to the StreetPass features, is bent towards making the number go up.

Controls and moves

The Circle Pad or the Control Pad moves Mario; B or A jumps, and holding Y or X makes him dash and lets him pick up shells. Press down in mid-air for a ground pound, slide down a wall and jump to kick off it, and chain three jumps on the run for the triple jump. Your spare power-up sits in an item box on the touch screen: tap it to drop the item into play. Hold up and Mario looks skyward, a small Super Mario World touch. The Circle Pad also lets you crouch-slide down slopes, taking out whole rows of Goombas for a cascade of coins.

The 3D slider does more than add depth. Push it up and the flat painted backgrounds soften into a photographic blur so that the foreground action stands out, an effect the Tokyo artists borrowed from digital cameras. The lower screen carries the world map or a level progress bar, your score, lives, Star Coins and the all-important coin counter with its personal best.

A kingdom paved with gold

Coins are everywhere, and everything makes more of them. Jump through a Gold Ring and every enemy on screen turns gold for a short while: golden Koopa shells spray coins as they slide, golden Goombas pay extra when squashed, golden Lakitus rain coins instead of Spinies and even Bullet Bills leave glittering trails. Beat golden enemies in a row and the payouts rise through 5, 10, 15 and 20 coins to 50 for every enemy after the fourth. Knock ten or more coins out of a multi-coin Brick Block and it usually turns into a Gold Block that clamps over Mario’s head and showers coins as long as he keeps running. Fire a fireball into a ! Pipe and coins fountain out, with a prize after the twelfth shot.

Then there is the Gold Flower. Gold Mario’s fireballs explode on impact, turning bricks into coins and enemies into 5-coin bonuses, emptying item blocks in the blast and even felling most bosses in a hit (the Koopalings still need three). The form only lasts until the end of the course, where it drops back to Fire Mario, which is why Gold Flowers are rare and a stored one is precious. Roulette Coin Blocks pay out up to 50 or even 100 coins, giant 100-Coins hide in bonus skies, and because your collected coins survive a lost life, the total only ever goes one way.

Coin Rush

Unlocked by clearing World 1’s castle (or its Warp Cannon), Coin Rush is a single-player time attack. Pick the Mushroom, Flower or Star pack, which draw from easy, medium and hard worlds respectively, and the game deals you three courses in a row. You have one life and usually 100 seconds per course (1-1 gets 50), with +Clocks and checkpoint flags adding time. 1-Up Mushrooms become Gold Mushrooms worth 50 coins, five unused seconds convert to a coin, and grabbing the very top of the flagpole doubles your total for that course. The third course is always a tower or castle, and the counter stops at 30,000.

Beat the main game and a Gold Flower waits in your Coin Rush item box, usable in one of the three courses; alternatively you can start as White Raccoon Mario, invincible but with an empty box. Your best run becomes a record that travels over StreetPass. Take on another player’s record, which means playing their exact three courses in order with the target hidden until you finish, and beating it earns a Crown Coin worth 1,000. Up to 15 records can be stored, and between October and December 2012 Nintendo sold ten extra three-course packs through an in-game shop (see Legacy).

Two players, one small screen

Co-op Play lets a second player join as Luigi for the entire adventure, but each of you needs a 3DS and a copy of the game, connected over Local Play. The Wii game kept everyone on one wide television; the 3DS screen is too small for that, so the camera follows whichever brother is in the lead, marked by a red or green arrow, and the straggler pops into a bubble if they fall too far behind. Entering a pipe first or ground-pounding your partner steals the lead, so the mode works as a race as much as a team-up. Coins and lives are pooled, every coin counts double, and power-up blocks pay out two items so nobody goes short.

Difficulty, help and hoarding lives

This is a gentle Mario. Lose five lives in a course and an Assist Block appears holding an Invincibility Leaf, which turns Mario into White Raccoon Mario: he can fly, he cannot be hurt, and the effect lasts until the course is cleared. Reserve power-ups come from Red Toad Houses, Green Toad Houses play a punching-glove game for extra lives, Yellow Toad Houses hand over a Gold Flower, and one last Yellow Toad House in World Star, holding a Super Star for the reserve box, appears once every Star Coin has been found. Lives stack up fast: the counter runs to 1,110, shown as three crowns, and at that point Mario and Luigi start courses without their caps.

The map, the secrets and the Dash Mario runs

Each numbered world has a Tower guarded by Reznors in the middle and a Koopaling’s Castle at the end, with Ghost Houses, lettered side-courses and Toad Houses branching off. Star Coin Signs block some paths until you pay in Star Coins, and many courses hide a second exit behind a red flagpole. Warp Cannons fire Mario into Dash Mario courses: long, cannon-launched sprints where he never stops running and all you do is time the jumps, a nod to the mine carts of Donkey Kong Country, with a new world waiting at the end. Flying Gold Blocks hover over the map and, if you enter the course they are parked on, wait near the start to be worn.

Power-ups and golden goodies

Everything Mario can grab in New Super Mario Bros. 2, from old favourites to the new coin-makers.

• 
  Super MushroomGrows Small Mario into Super Mario, who can break bricks and survive a hit.
• 
  Fire FlowerBouncing fireballs for Fire Mario. Fire a dozen into a ! Pipe for a prize.
• 
  Super LeafRaccoon Mario (Fox Luigi): tail whip, slow descent and flight once the P-Meter is full. Back in a new 2D Mario for the first time since 1988.
• 
  Gold FlowerGold Mario and Silver Luigi. Exploding fireballs turn bricks and enemies into coins; lost at the end of the course.
• 
  Mega MushroomGiant Mario crushes pipes, bricks and enemies, and smashing the flagpole earns a hatful of 1-Ups.
• 
  Mini MushroomTiny, floaty Mario fits through small pipes and runs on water, but one hit ends it.
• 
  Super StarInvincibility, and every enemy you bump into drops coins.
• 
  Invincibility LeafFrom the Assist Block after five lost lives: White Raccoon Mario, invincible until the flagpole.
• 
  Gold MushroomCoin Rush only, replacing 1-Ups: 50 coins, or 100 for Gold Mario.
• 
  1-Up MushroomAn extra life. Hoard 1,110 of them for triple-crown status.
• 
  Gold RingTurns every enemy on screen gold for a few seconds, with bonus coins for each one beaten.
• 
  Gold BlockA coin block that sticks to Mario’s head and pays out while he runs; faster running means more coins.
• 
  Star CoinThree per course, 219 in all, spent on Star Coin Signs to open paths and Toad Houses.
• 
  Moon CoinWorld Star’s version of the Star Coin, 24 of them, stamped with a 3-Up Moon.
• 
  Crown CoinWorth 1,000 coins, awarded for beating a StreetPass Coin Rush record.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 arrived too late for the Mario cartoons and too early for the films, but it left golden fingerprints all over Nintendo’s later games, and it got the manga treatment in Japan.

A familiar cast with a golden tint: two plumbers in new fur, a princess with frequent-flyer miles, seven Koopalings back on castle duty and a king who gets bigger when he loses.

Character	Who they are	In this game	Abilities & notes
MarioThe hero	Nintendo’s plumber, here in his 3DS side-scrolling debut and at his most mercenary.	Chases the Koopa Clown Car across nine worlds, hoards coins by the hundred thousand and knocks Bowser into a pit twice. In the ending he carries Peach home while his brother picks up the change.	Forms: Small, Super, Fire, Raccoon, Gold, Mega, Mini, Invincible and White Raccoon Triple jump, wall jump, ground pound, crouch-slide Loses his cap at 1,110 lives
LuigiThe second player, and a secret first one	Mario’s taller brother. His Super Leaf form is Fox Luigi, with a bushier tail, and his Gold Flower form is Silver Luigi.	Player two in Co-op Play, racing Mario for the lead and the coins. Finish the game, hold L and R on the file select and he becomes the solo hero as well; the game never mentions it.	Identical moves and forms to Mario, with different colours Camera marker: green arrow
Princess PeachThe kidnapped	Ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, waving from her balcony as the game begins.	Snatched by the Koopalings in the opening scene and carried a world ahead of Mario in a cage on the Clown Car. Freed when Bowser falls through the roof of his own castle.	Not playable. Appears in the opening, after every castle and in the ending.
ToadKeeper of the Toad Houses	The kingdom’s mushroom-capped retainers.	Run the Red Toad Houses (a choice of power-ups), the Green Toad Houses (a punching-glove game for 1-Ups) and the Yellow Toad Houses, which give a Gold Flower (the one that appears in World Star once every Star Coin is found gives a Super Star instead).	Bop one with a tail whip and he spins happily, a reaction borrowed from Super Mario Galaxy.
BowserKing of the Koopas	The big one. Oddly for a Mario villain, he does none of the kidnapping himself this time.	Waits in his World 6 castle for a Super Mario Bros.-style bridge fight, then returns as a giant after the Koopalings revive him. A giant ! Switch on the roof finishes him.	Fire breath in round one Fills the screen in round two Falls to a single Gold Mario fireball in the first phase
Dry BowserWorld Star’s boss	Bowser’s skeletal self, first seen in the DS New Super Mario Bros.	Guards World Star-Castle in a faster, nastier rerun of the Bowser fight.	Throws bones, breathes blue fire Immune to fireballs
Roy KoopaWorld 1-Castle	The pink-shelled, sunglasses-wearing muscle of the Koopalings.	The one who actually carries Peach off in the intro, and the first boss. He charges into the walls of a room that keeps shrinking, dazing himself, then spins in his shell.	Three stomps.
Iggy KoopaWorld 2-Castle	The lanky, wild-haired Koopaling.	Rides a carriage hauled by a Big Chain Chomp around his arena, firing magic as he passes.	Three stomps; avoid the Chomp.
Larry KoopaWorld Mushroom-Castle	The youngest-looking Koopaling with the blue quiff.	Hides in the first secret world. Jumps about firing magic balls that ricochet diagonally while the walls of the room shift.	Three stomps.
Wendy O. KoopaWorld 3-Castle	The only female Koopaling, in her bow and bangles.	Fights in a chamber that floods with water and Cheep Cheeps; she fires magic rings and must be stomped when the level drops.	Three stomps.
Morton Koopa Jr.World 4-Castle	The heavyset Koopaling with the star on his face.	Conjures spiked balls with his wand and tucks into his shell to barrel across the snow castle floor.	Three stomps.
Lemmy KoopaWorld Flower-Castle	The little circus-loving Koopaling.	Balances on his big rubber ball on a conveyor belt and rolls smaller balls down the line at Mario.	Three stomps.
Ludwig von KoopaWorld 5-Castle	The eldest Koopaling, all blue hair and self-regard.	Floats above the arena firing magic. Mario has to launch himself out of the floor’s Pipe Cannons to knock him down before he can be stomped.	Three stomps.
ReznorGuardians of the Towers	Fire-spitting rhino beasts who had not appeared in a new game since Super Mario World in 1990.	Fought in every numbered world’s Tower, on rotating or lined-up platforms above a bridge that collapses beneath Mario. Hit the block under each one to send it packing.	Two or four at a time; the Super Mario World boss music plays.
BoohemothThe new face	A Boo the size of a house, invented for this game. Its Japanese name comes from tereru, to be bashful.	Haunts Ghost Houses, covering its face when Mario looks at it, then peeking out and creeping after him across the whole level. Fireballs and Gold Mario cannot touch it.	Cannot be defeated; outrun it.
Gold MarioThe new form	What a Gold Flower makes of Mario: a gleaming metallic plumber who looks a lot like Metal Mario.	Turns bricks into coins and enemies into bonuses with exploding fireballs; fells most bosses in one hit. Reverts to Fire Mario at the end of a course.	Went on to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Kart Tour, Super Mario Odyssey and an amiibo of his own.

Enemies and bosses

Almost every foe from the DS and Wii games returns, many in a golden variant that appears after a Gold Ring, plus a few new Bone and Big versions. Here is the full roster.

• 
  GoombaEverywherePlus Paragoombas, Mini Goombas that cling to Mario, and Goomba Towers stacked in wobbling columns.
• 
  Gold GoombaAfter a Gold RingPays bonus coins when stomped; gold Towers and Paragoombas too.
• 
  Bone GoombaCastles and TowersA Goomba in a skull helmet, new to this game.
• 
  Koopa TroopaEverywhereGreen ones walk off ledges, red ones turn back. Paratroopas hop or fly; Climbing Koopas patrol fences.
• 
  Gold KoopaAfter a Gold RingIts kicked shell leaves a trail of coins.
• 
  Buzzy BeetleUndergroundFireproof shell; some walk on ceilings. Spike Tops cannot be stomped.
• 
  Dry BonesTowers and castlesFalls apart when stomped and rebuilds itself. Big Dry Bones need a ground pound.
• 
  Hammer BroVariousWith Boomerang, Fire and Sledge cousins.
• 
  Gold BroAfter a Gold RingThrows coins instead of hammers. Yes, really.
• 
  LakituWorld 5 and World StarDrops Spiny Eggs; steal his cloud for a ride. Gold Lakitu rains coins.
• 
  SpinyUnder LakituCannot be stomped. Under a Gold Ring, Spinies simply become coins.
• 
  Piranha PlantPipesBig, Fire and Big Fire varieties; a golden one makes its pipe spit coins when beaten.
• 
  Bone Piranha PlantTowers and castlesNew: skeletal, fireproof and only vulnerable to a tail whip. There is a Big one too.
• 
  Cheep CheepWaterWith Big, Deep, Spiny and gold variants that leap from the water trailing coins.
• 
  Cheep ChompWaterA huge purple fish that swallows Mario whole.
• 
  PorcupufferSurface waterSpiked fish that follows you along the surface and leaps.
• 
  BlooperWaterErratic squid; Blooper Nannies trail a line of babies.
• 
  UrchinWaterFloating spiky balls, large and small.
• 
  Fish BoneCastle waterSkeletal fish that charge and crumble.
• 
  BooGhost HousesShy when watched; Big Boos and gold Boos that drop coins join in.
• 
  BoohemothGhost HousesThe giant bashful Boo that stalks you through whole levels.
• 
  PeepaGhost HousesLittle ghosts from 3D Land that circle in rings or carry platforms.
• 
  ThwompTowers and castlesDrops when you approach; Big Thwomps smash stone. Whomps fall flat on their faces.
• 
  Bob-ombVariousLights its fuse when stomped; Para-bombs float down on parachutes.
• 
  Bullet BillSky and castlesStraight-line missiles, with Banzai Bills and gold versions trailing coins.
• 
  FuzzyWorld 4 and othersRides rails; touching one hurts.
• 
  CrowberDesert and skyCircles, then swoops.
• 
  SwoopWorld 5-Ghost HouseCeiling bats that dive at you.
• 
  PokeyDesertSegmented cactus; knock out its body with fire or a ground pound.
• 
  Fire SnakeDesertA hopping chain of flame that grows.
• 
  WigglerJunglePlacid until stomped, then furious and fast.
• 
  Chain ChompWorld 2 and World MushroomTethered to a post; ground-pound the post to set it loose. A Big one pulls Iggy’s carriage.
• 
  ScuttlebugJungleDangles from webs and drops in.
• 
  Coin CofferWorld StarA hopping purse from 3D Land that spills coins when hit.
• 
  Flame ChompWorld 6-BSpits its fireballs one by one, then explodes.
• 
  AmpWorld 4 and World FlowerElectric orbs that shock on contact.
• 
  Lava BubbleCastlesLeaps out of the lava on a timer.
• 
  GrinderCastlesBuzzsaws running on rails.
• 
  Reznor (boss)Every TowerFire-spitting rhinos on moving platforms; hit the blocks beneath them.
• 
  The Koopalings (bosses)Every CastleRoy, Iggy, Larry, Wendy, Morton, Lemmy and Ludwig, three stomps apiece.
• 
  Bowser and Dry Bowser (bosses)World 6 and World StarBridge fight, giant chase, and a skeletal rematch.

The people who made it

Key staff, as credited in the game and interviewed in Iwata Asks.

Nintendo talked about this game more openly than most. A seven-part Iwata Asks interview with director Yusuke Amano, art director Masaaki Ishikawa and producer Takashi Tezuka, plus Iwata’s own investor briefings, tell the story.

From a hint to a Direct

Shigeru Miyamoto first floated the idea of both 2D and 3D Mario games for the 3DS at an earnings briefing in November 2010, when the console had not yet launched. Super Mario 3D Land took care of the 3D half in November 2011; two months later, on 27 January 2012, Iwata told investors that a “totally new side-scrolling action Super Mario in 2D” would be a key title for the coming financial year. The name came on 21 April 2012 in a Japanese Nintendo Direct, along with a worldwide August window; firm dates followed in June.

Iwata explained the timing bluntly at the April 2012 results briefing: in 2011 Nintendo had failed to carry the 3DS’s momentum from summer into autumn, which dented the Christmas season and the year’s forecasts. With the Wii U due at the end of 2012, a Mario game in August would keep the handheld alive in the meantime.

The Mario Cram School

The team that had made both earlier New Super Mario Bros. games, under Shigeyuki Asuke, was committed to the Wii U launch title. Rather than wait, Tezuka opened what the staff nicknamed the Mario Cram School: a course-design class that gathered people from EAD, the Software Planning & Development department and elsewhere to learn, from Tezuka and Nakago, how a 2D Mario stage is put together. Tezuka’s belief was that course design is the fundamentals of 2D Mario, and about twice the usual number of staff ended up working on the game’s courses.

Amano attended as a part-time student while finishing Star Fox 64 3D, then was asked to play the courses the class had produced. Shortly afterwards Tezuka asked him to direct the next 3DS Mario, which came as a surprise; he realised later why he had been given the courses to try. When he started there were no designers on the project at all, so the game was built back to front: the stages existed before the mechanics and the theme. Two designers from the Tokyo studio arrived first, followed by artists freed up by Mario Kart 7 and planners from SPD. Amano and Ishikawa were the only core members who had worked on a 2D Mario before.

Help from the 3D Land team

In the first prototype only the characters were 3D models; the scenery was flat and, in Ishikawa’s words, just slapped on. Staff from Nintendo’s Tokyo Software Development Department, fresh from Super Mario 3D Land, knew the stereoscopic hardware inside out and reworked the backgrounds so that they stayed as paintings but blurred progressively as the 3D slider rose, like a camera opening its aperture. Tezuka had asked for exactly that digital-camera look, and the team found it made the game easier to play because the eye settles on the foreground.

Other departures came from the same conversations. Previous entries in the series had always played under blue skies, so the designers added evening and night scenes. Boohemoth, the giant Boo that hides its face and then creeps after you, was built to surprise players who thought they knew how Boos behave. And the cannon-launched Dash Mario courses, in which Mario sprints without stopping while you only time the jumps, were designed so that players who struggle with running sections could still feel the rush; Iwata compared them to Donkey Kong Country’s mine carts.

“Shouldn’t this one be about coins?”

While the stage structure was being worked out, Tezuka and Nakago kept steering lunch-time conversations towards coins. 3D Land, then being finished, had a block Mario wears on his head that pops out coins as he moves; Amano was asked to adopt it, found a trickle of coins unsatisfying and changed it to a torrent that only flows while Mario dashes. Tezuka liked it. Then one day Tezuka came back from lunch and proposed a target of a million coins. He later admitted he could not remember the lunch, only the logic: if players were going to collect something, an astounding number would feel better than ten or a hundred thousand.

The Gold Ring began with a single enemy. A Koopa Troopa hopping through a ring and turning gold for a limited time tested well, so the designers asked for golden Goombas and Lakitus, and Bullet Bills followed. Ishikawa worried the effect would look gaudy; in the end he thought it looked luxurious. Gold Mario came from the programmers, who reasoned that the P-Switch had always turned blocks into coins and that a power-up could do the same job on the move. Amano singled out how many ideas flowed from the programming team on this project, which Iwata put down to everyone sharing one simple objective.

“I don’t like it”: Miyamoto and the Gold Block

Coin Rush predates the coin theme. Amano wanted a Mario you could replay in short bursts, and tried a format of three stages in a row where one mistake ends the run; early versions did not motivate anyone. Once the main game had become a coin hunt, the team found that ordinary play yielded tens of thousands of coins, not a million, so Coin Rush became the place to earn big, with the top of the flagpole doubling your haul. Iwata’s verdict on grinding a million coins the slow way: then it isn’t play, it’s work.

The Gold Block nearly died in a meeting. When Tezuka showed Miyamoto the head-worn coin block, Miyamoto objected that the mechanism made no sense, the same industrial-design instinct Iwata said had once been aimed at the Propeller Blocks of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The fix was to make the block the result of greed: hit a coin block over and over and it eventually falls onto Mario’s head, so the player’s own desire for coins puts it there. Miyamoto accepted that.

Two players on a small screen

Co-op was Tezuka’s demand, and Amano and Ishikawa resisted it. Doubling every transformation for Luigi and squeezing two players onto a 3DS screen looked impossible in the time left. Tezuka asked for a prototype anyway, pronounced it fun, and told the team to go all out or drop it. The Wii game had kept everyone on one wide screen; that could not work here, so the camera follows a leader, players can fight for the lead by diving into pipes first or ground-pounding each other, and a lagging partner is bubbled. Because so many coins appear, two players also collect things one could never reach, and they both bank the lot.

Gold, or 2?

For a while the game was going to be called New Super Mario Bros. Gold. The team decided a number fitted better: with more than 80 stages, Raccoon Mario reinstated and a stack of new elements, Amano felt it stood up as an orthodox Super Mario rather than a gimmick, and the rebuilt stages, which were reworked again after the coin elements arrived, bore that out. Raccoon Mario’s return had its own cost, since the form had to be remade and animated for stereoscopic 3D. White Raccoon Mario, the invincible helper that appears after five misses, was Tezuka’s answer to beginners. The team felt the pressure of following 3D Land and of a Wii U Mario coming the same year.

Going digital, going live

At the April 2012 briefing Iwata announced that, starting with this game, Nintendo would in principle sell its own titles both in boxes and as downloads, with shops able to sell 16-digit codes to redeem on the eShop. In North America Club Nintendo members who downloaded the game by 20 September earned double coins; Europe’s got 250 Stars and Australia’s 400. The American eShop even turned gold for a week.

The add-on courses came out of a philosophy as much as a plan. Amano had worked on Super Mario Advance 4, whose extra levels needed a separately sold e-Reader and reached far fewer people than he had hoped. Iwata and Miyamoto, meanwhile, insisted that any paid content for a packaged game must feel live, released in response to how people were playing. The main story did not suit extra chapters, so Coin Rush became the vehicle: the packs were announced before launch, before a single course had been built, and designed afterwards with player feedback in mind. Both Mario teams had raised the idea of DLC; this game shipped first, so it went first.

The sound of money

Kenta Nagata, better known for Mario Kart, directed the sound. Most of the score is the New Super Mario Bros. Wii soundtrack by Shiho Fujii, Ryo Nagamatsu and Nagata himself, lightly rearranged: the overworld and athletic themes gain vocals, the tower, castle and ghost-house tunes get a “paah” riff, and World Star’s map music quotes Wii’s World 9. New tracks are reserved for the special-world maps and Coin Rush menus. The Reznor fight uses a Super Mario World arrangement, Toad Houses play the 3D Land version of the P-Switch music, and Raccoon Mario adds a drumbeat to whatever is playing. Koji Kondo and Yoji Inagaki are credited as sound advisers.

What New Super Mario Bros. 2 did first. Only firsts we could confirm against the rest of the series are listed.

There are no cheat codes, but there are plenty of things the game never tells you. Our dedicated New Super Mario Bros. 2 cheats page has the full list of secret exits and Star Coin locations.

Play as Luigi alone

Clear World 6-Bowser’s Castle, then on the file select screen hold L and R and press A on your save. Luigi takes over the single-player adventure, complete with Fox and Silver forms. The DS game told you about this trick; this one keeps quiet.

Rainbow courses

Finish any course with the timer ending in a double digit that matches the world: 11 in World 1, 22 in World 2, up to 66 in World 6, with 77 for World Mushroom, 88 for World Flower and 99 for World Star. The Super Mario Bros. course-clear jingle plays, fireworks burst and a rainbow path appears on the map. The bonus course is a Pipe Cannon into a Coin Heaven full of coins, Roulette Coin Blocks (one tops out at 100) and a giant 100-Coin, sometimes with a Red Ring whose eight Red Coins put a Gold Flower in your item box. You get one go; the path vanishes afterwards until you earn it again. A SpotPass notification from the game also opens every Rainbow course at once.

World Star

Beat Bowser and the ninth world appears, but its first course sits behind a Star Coin Sign demanding 90 Star Coins. Inside, Moon Coins replace Star Coins and Dry Bowser waits at the end.

Collect every Star Coin

Find all 219 and a new Star Coin Sign opens a Yellow Toad House in World Star, where Toad hands over a Super Star for your reserve box. Finishing every course also makes the Toad Houses permanently reusable.

Title screens and statues

At 1,000,000 coins the title screen gains a golden Mario statue on a mountain of coins. Max the counter at 9,999,999 and the reward is a golden Raccoon Mario statue, along with a message of congratulation.

Triple crown

The lives counter runs to 1,110, displayed as three crowns. From then on Mario and Luigi begin every course without their caps.

Infinite lives in World Mushroom-1

Near the first Star Coin a Koopa Troopa walks down a staircase. Stand a step or two below it and stomp the shell as it bounces between the wall and the step; keep landing on it and the 1-Ups never stop. It does not work as Gold Mario, whose fireballs would simply turn the shell into coins.

Coin Rush bonuses

Beating the game puts a Gold Flower in your Coin Rush reserve. Grab the very tip of each flagpole to double that course’s coins, and remember that five spare seconds equal one coin. The third course of every run is a Tower or Castle, so practise those.

Warp route

World 1-Warp Cannon to World Mushroom, World Mushroom-Warp Cannon to World Flower, World Flower-Warp Cannon to World 6: three Dash Mario runs and you are at Bowser’s door.

Delete everything

Hold A, B, X and Y as the Nintendo 3DS logo fades at start-up to wipe all save data. Handle with care.

Compiled from the Super Mario Wiki, Nintendo’s manual and our own cheats page, and cross-checked against contemporary guides.

A tidy game with a modest glitch list. These are the documented oddities, none of which was ever patched (the game received no updates).

Koopas in the brickwork

In World Star-1, as Super Mario, ground-pound the bricks near a Brick Block with nothing underneath, hit it for a P Switch, press it and wait on the second platform past the ? Switch for the effect to end. A Koopa Troopa gets sealed inside the bricks, still bobbing to the music. Goombas can be trapped the same way.

The generous Red Ring

In World 4-A, activate the Red Ring but ignore the Red Coins, run on past the checkpoint to the mushroom trampoline between the two blue pipes, and the reward coins spout out before you have collected anything. Go back and the Red Coins are still there and still pay out a power-up.

Conveyor that will not turn

After beating Lemmy in World Flower-Castle, fly up with a Super Leaf and hit the conveyor switch: the switch changes colour and direction, the belt does not.

Faster flight

While airborne as Raccoon Mario, tapping jump and dash together repeatedly keeps your running speed in the air, a trick speedrunners use.

The level that stays red

Clear World 5-2 for the first time with its third Star Coin in hand and the level stays marked red on the map even though 5-3 has opened.

Walled in

In World 6-1, stand still as the stone blocks fill in around you while crouching and Mario is stuck until some volcanic debris frees him; standing up and jumping also works.

Floating spikes and ghost switches

Look closely at Giant Bowser’s wrist bands in the second phase and a spike floats free of each. In the third course of Coin Challenge Pack B, hit a brick holding a ? Switch at the exact moment falling debris smashes the brick and the switch hangs in mid-air.

Through the tilting block

In World 2-1 the tilting block platform can be passed through at the right angle, most easily in Co-op or as Mini Mario.

Nintendo UK’s first launch trailer, which pitched the game to Europe as the successor to Super Mario Bros. 3, and GameSpot’s video review, which summed up the critical mood of August 2012.

• The working title was New Super Mario Bros. Gold. The internal project name, found in the game’s code, was “BigRed”.
• It is the only original New Super Mario Bros. game released in Japan before the rest of the world; it also launched the same day as the 3DS LL in Japan and the 3DS XL in North America.
• Nintendo of America’s eShop was redecorated in gold for a week to mark the launch.

• 

  The “2” in the logo uses the Pump typeface, the same font as the international Yoshi’s Island logo.
• The loading chime that plays at start-up (and while searching for a co-op partner) quotes the first bars of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme.
• Spinies have unused golden models in the game data even though, in the finished game, a Gold Ring simply turns them into coins.
• An early Gold Koopa model had a darker shell and boots; the E3 2012 trailer awarded a flat five coins per enemy under a Gold Ring, where the finished game escalates to 50.
• Solo Play and Co-op Play were called One Player and Two Player until late in development.
• The first course of the Gold Classics Pack recreates World 1-1 and 1-2 of Super Mario Bros., the second recreates 1-1 and 1-5 of Super Mario Bros. 3, and the third spells out “Thank You!!” in coins, as The Lost Levels did in coral.
• The Platform Panic Pack was originally numbered as the seventh pack. The free Gold Classics Pack appears to have been a late addition that bumped it to eighth.

• 

  Nintendo announced the Gold Classics Pack on 27 November 2012 to celebrate players collecting more than 300 billion coins. Scott Moffitt of Nintendo of America said the figure showed fans had “once again demonstrated their passion” for the series.
• Moon Coins carry the imprint of a 3-Up Moon from Super Mario World, and Mario can look up, another World habit.
• The maximum of 1,110 lives, shown as three crowns, is shared with Super Mario 3D Land. Reach it and the brothers go capless.
• Fans in Japan who owned a 3DS LL could download the Gold Edition free between 1 July and 31 August 2014 as part of a monthly software campaign.
• The European text calls it “New SUPER MARIO BROS. 2” and tells you that at 200,000 coins “you’ll be dreaming of coins tonight”; the American text just says “Way to go!”
• The game contains a complete but switched-off replay recording system; it was never used.
• Boohemoth and the slow auto-scrolling chase it stars in were echoed by King Boo in Super Mario Bros. Wonder eleven years later.
• Bowser appears as a giant in the background during the fight, in the manner of Yoshi’s Island DS, and his bridge fight follows the Super Mario Bros. pattern of waiting for a jump, running under and grabbing the switch.
• Weekly Famitsu’s four reviewers each gave it 9/10, and the magazine put its mascot Necky on a golden cover in its honour.
• The download version weighs 349 MB (2,727 blocks). Club Nintendo rewarded downloaders in America with double coins, Europeans with 250 Stars and Australians with 400.
• Super Smash Bros. players can visit World 1 as the Golden Plains stage, where 100 coins turn any fighter gold.

Every region got the same golden Mario on the same yellow background; only the badges and the languages change. The 2014 Gold and Special Editions were never boxed on their own.

More scenes from the hunt for a million.

Official artwork, key art and promotional material from New Super Mario Bros. 2. Select any image to view it larger.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 never left the 3DS, but its ten add-on packs, its Gold Edition re-release and its golden hero have had a long afterlife.

Releases and add-ons

• Nintendo 3DS July–August 2012Japan 28 July, Europe 17 August, Australia 18 August, North America 19 August; on Game Card and as a same-day eShop download in every region. Italy followed on 24 August and Hong Kong and Taiwan in June 2013.
• Coin Rush packs 1–3 2 and 4 October 2012Gold Rush Pack (very easy), Coin Challenge Pack A (normal) and Nerve-Wrack Pack (very hard), 200 yen, €2.50, £2.00 or $2.50 each, in Japan and Europe on the 2nd and North America on the 4th. Announced in a dedicated Nintendo Direct Mini, with 100 billion coins already collected worldwide.
• Coin Rush packs 4–5 25 October 2012Gold Mushroom Pack (easy) and Coin Challenge Pack B (normal).
• Gold Classics Pack 27 November 2012Three courses remixing Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, released to celebrate 300 billion coins and free until 31 January 2013, then $2.50.
• Coin Rush packs 7–8 5 December 2012Coin Challenge Pack C (normal) and Platform Panic Pack (hard).
• Coin Rush packs 9–10 20–21 December 2012Mystery Adventures Pack (normal) and the Impossible Pack, rated “DANGER!” with a coin target of just 100. North America and Europe on the 20th, Japan and Australia on the 21st.
• Gold Edition (Japan) 1 July 2014All ten packs built in. Offered free to 3DS LL owners until 31 August 2014 as part of a monthly recommended-software campaign.
• Special Edition (Europe) 4 July 2014Pre-installed on a 2DS bundle in white and red (or blue and black) with every Coin Rush pack.
• Gold Edition (North America) Holiday 2014Pre-installed on a red, Mario-themed 3DS XL sold during the 2014 holiday season.
• 3DS eShop closes March 2023Purchases end; the Coin Rush packs can no longer be bought, though owners can redownload them.

The Gold Edition

The 2014 re-release, called Special Edition in Europe and Gold Edition elsewhere, is the complete game: all ten course packs are installed, so the in-game Shop disappears, and the title logo gains its subtitle. It also softens Coin Rush, where dying in a course now moves you on to the next with your coins intact instead of ending the run, and it redesigns the pack menus with blue speech bubbles, green icons and star ratings (the Impossible Pack gets five Bowser heads). Because it was only ever preloaded on hardware or handed out in Japan’s 3DS LL campaign, and never sold on a card or in the eShop, it has become one of the scarcer Mario games to own legitimately.

The template for Nintendo DLC

Thirty extra courses for a few pounds each does not sound revolutionary now, but in 2012 paid add-ons for a Super Mario game were a genuine novelty, and the team treated the packs as an experiment in “live” content: announced before they were built, released in waves, tuned to how people were playing, and capped with a free gift when the community hit a milestone. Only the Coin Challenge packs had online leaderboards on Nintendo’s website until the final wave. The approach fed straight into New Super Luigi U, whose Iwata Asks is titled “Overtaken by New Super Mario Bros. 2”, and into the content strategy of the Switch era.

Golden afterglow

Gold Mario proved the game’s most durable export, racing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Kart Tour, dressing up in Super Mario Odyssey and getting his own amiibo. Super Smash Bros. turned World 1 into the Golden Plains stage, Super Mario 3D World borrowed the names Mushroom, Flower and Star for its bonus worlds, and New Super Mario Bros. U reused several of its sound effects. For a game so often described as unambitious, it left a surprising amount behind.

Sales

Japan bought it by the shovelful. Media Create counted 407,503 copies in its first two days on sale, enough to top the chart in a week when the new 3DS LL sold 187,480 units, and the game passed a million physical copies after five weeks, on 5 September 2012. Nintendo’s own figures put lifetime sales at 13.42 million worldwide as of 31 March 2026, which makes it the fifth best-selling Nintendo 3DS game of all time, behind Mario Kart 7, Pokémon X and Y, Pokémon Sun and Moon and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, and ahead of Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Super Mario 3D Land. Worldwide, players had collected more than 100 billion coins by 2 October 2012 and more than 300 billion by 27 November.

• 13.42mworldwide, 31 Mar 2026
• 5thbest-selling 3DS game
• 407,503Japan, first two days
• 300bncoins collected by Nov 2012

Reception and review scores

Critics agreed it was polished, agreed it was fun and agreed it was not new. Scores below are from the original reviews or from Wikipedia’s reception table where the outlet is named.

Nintendo Life’s Damien McFerran was the game’s most enthusiastic champion, calling it “immense fun” with “brilliant level design” and arguing that familiarity was no sin when the craft was this good. Electronic Gaming Monthly praised its secrets and branching paths. IGN’s Keza MacDonald rated it the best 2D platformer on the system while admitting it offered little that was new, and Official Nintendo Magazine called it bitter-sweet: the best side-scroller on 3DS, but a series standing still.

The sceptics were sharper. GameSpot’s Mark Walton found it a retread with occasional sparkle. Destructoid’s Jim Sterling thought it good but “vacuous”, likening the coin gimmick to a Mushroom Kingdom coin: shiny and of no practical use. Eurogamer’s Oli Welsh confessed to being bored for long stretches of a game he recognised as high quality, and Game Informer’s Bryan Vore felt it played like an expansion pack. The Metascore of 78 remains the lowest of any mainline Super Mario platformer on Nintendo hardware (the mobile Super Mario Run scored 76), which says as much about the series’ standards as the game. Famitsu, as ever, was untroubled: four nines.

Honours

Super Luigi Bros readers have reviewed New Super Mario Bros. 2 over the years. Their write-ups are kept exactly as they were sent in:

• Review by SuperPhillip
• Review by DetroitDJ

Played it? If you’d like to add your own review, please get in touch.

Every fact on this page was checked against the 44 sources listed here.