Super Mario Bros. Wonder is perhaps the Mario franchise’s most colorful and unusual game to date, featuring all manner of dream-like themes and near-endless amounts of creativity. Like any new Mario game, though, it also comes packing some brand-new power-ups alongside a handful of returning classics that everyone knows and loves. All of the power-ups have their unique uses that can help you fend off baddies, reach new areas, or simply create hilarious hijinks, but some are notably more exciting than others.
Here are all of the Super Mario Bros. Wonder power-ups ranked. They’ll all come in handy when you’re tracking down all of the badges, medals, and Special World entrances.
There are few things in gaming as recognizable as the red and white Super Mushroom, which first made its appearance in the original Super Mario Bros. for NES. In Super Mario Bros. Wonder, this classic Mario power-up is once again the least exciting yet potentially most important, as it’s fairly plentiful and can grant you an extra hit that just might keep you from dying in tougher areas. However, due to the fact that it lacks any exciting powers and serves only as a bit of additional defense, this one brings up the bottom. But hey, the Super Mushroom still has a very special place in all of our hearts.
Like the Super Mushroom, the Super Star first debuted in the original Super Mario Bros. way back when, meaning it’s had a lot of years to secure itself as a worldwide icon. As always, this helpful power-up provides you with temporary immunity from damage, allowing you to push through tough parts of a level without much worry at all. Still, while everyone loves a bit of invincibility, we’ve all had decades to appreciate what it’s done for us. Sorry, Super Star, but we just need some new experiences in our lives right now. It’s not you, it’s us.
The Fire Flower is the third and final classic power-up that dates back to the original Super Mario Bros. from all those years ago. While you could argue that the ability to fling fireballs is old news – and it is – we’d argue that doing so is unwaveringly cool in perpetuity. It’s not exactly winning any awards for originality anymore, but if you don’t like eliminating foes off your screen with deadly balls of fire, we don’t really know what to tell ya. Stay cool, Fire Flower. Or hot. You know what we mean.
The Bubble Flower makes for a really great time for multiple reasons. For starters, jumping on your blown bubbles can bounce you up to new heights, making it an excellent choice for collectible hunting. But it’s also useful for eliminating your enemies by trapping them in the bubble and watching them disappear, leaving behind a single coin for you to claim as your prize. This mix of power and child-like playfulness makes the Bubble Flower a neat new addition to an already wildly creative game. But while we hate to, erm, burst your bubble, there are still two power-ups that are just a little more exciting.
Have you ever wanted to be able to make Mario and pals burrow underground? Well, now you can by using the immensely creative Drill Mushroom power-up. Grabbing one of these will add a drill to the top of your character’s head and let you slam into the ground to move below your foes and then blast back up to dish out the hurt. You can even jump and drill into the ceiling to pass over gaps or tough areas if you feel so inclined. No matter how you want to use your drill, there’s no denying that it’s among the most useful abilities in the game that can make getting to certain collectibles infinitely easier. But ouch, imagine the headache.
Look, if you’ve followed Super Mario Bros. Wonder at all, the Elephant Fruit making the top of this list shouldn’t be remotely surprising to you. Elephant Mario took the world by storm from the game’s very first announcement, and it’s not exactly hard to see why. Scoring this power-up grants you super strength for breaking blocks with ease and lets you attack your enemies with your trunk. This is all before mentioning that you can water flowers by storing water in your trunk and spraying it out. Visually and mechanically, there’s just no other power-up in Super Mario Bros. Wonder that hits this hard, both literally and figuratively.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.