New Super Mario Bros. Wii is, without a doubt, Nintendo's biggest offering this holiday season.  I'll leave it to the naysayers to pipe-up to themselves that it's Nintendo's only holiday offering.  Sure, you can think that, I'm just here to talk about the red-cased beauty in front of me.

Call it a sequel to New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, that's basically the closest you'll come to nailing it.  This is the first console-based, 2-d Mario game we've seen in 18 years.  The last to grace the world with its glory will have been Super Mario World, my favorite in the entire series.  Yes, you can consider Yoshi's Island to be a 2-d Mario title, but I don't.  It's a Yoshi title, a good one, but a Yoshi title nevertheless.

Clearly built with multiplayer action in mind, NSMBWii comes with three different game modes from to first boot-up.  Standard story is the only one that can be played solo (and that action's great, so don't fret if you're alone), but bringing friends will let you partake in Free-for-All and Coin Battle.  Coin Battle is what it sounds like, a match against friends to collect the most coins while racing to a course's goal.  Free-for-All mode lets you and your friends pick a course you've previously cleared.