It's not often you come away from a game grinning like a Cheshire cat, but you simply can't help it with Super Mario Bros Wii. It's certainly Mario as you've always known it, retaining its timeless side-scrolling gameplay and that charismatic and irresistible charm that we would expect from any of his adventures. At the same time though, it's Mario like you've never seen it before, with up to four players scarpering around the stage and battling for each prized power-up - and it's with others where the game shines.

Adopting the same template and visual style established by the DS version several years ago, the move to the console seems to have given it some maturity in the ideas department. It throws out the duff power-ups that were added to the handheld counterpart, such as the tiny and giant mushrooms, and retains the hidden Star Coins as well as the Super Mario Bros 3 map and world progression. Between levels you can pause to add or drop others at any time, with Luigi and two coloured Toads taking the role of additional players. It wisely adopts a friendly Wii remote control scheme that sees the pad flipped to the side to resemble the classic NES controller.

Once you're in the stage, all hell breaks loose. Characters will bounce off one another from mistimed leaps, accidently carry others and launch them off ledges, and each spilled power-up becomes a mad dash for the best spoils. Whether or not you're trying to play co-operatively it doesn't matter, as a madcap feverish nature takes hold as you charge through the stage, turtle shells flying. It's a complete blast, and thankfully a wealth of lives and a handy bubble-restart mechanic helps fallen players re-enter the stage as fast as possible. Of course, you can always choose to ignore your floating friends and continue without them.

It cherry picks a surprising amount of ideas from past games, and uses them in novel ways. Suits return like you've never seen them before, with a propeller outfit allowing you to scale the stage vertically before floating down below and a penguin get-up that makes slippery surfaces a breeze. The ice flower from Galaxy makes an appearance, letting you freeze foes and use them as stepping stones, or as an easy way to stop a threat in its tracks and smash them to pieces. It can also hinder your progress, since freezing a piranha plant makes pipes too high to scale for a good 30 seconds, which will generate some much-deserved grief from friends.

Spin jumps, wall slides and butt stomps also enter the two-dimensional realm, as does fan favourite Yoshi from Mario World, with his multi-coloured friends in tow. Of course, it doesn't just throw all these ideas in for good measure, as each one can be used to navigate areas easier or in puzzles, such as turning fish into frozen stepping stones to secure far-away Star Coins. The level design appears to be much more devious and calculated, and seemingly more difficult than the DS counterpart, causing us to continue before the first world was even over.

It's this difficulty and the whole madcap nature of the multiplayer that has us concerned for how playing with others will hold up as the challenge of the game will naturally continue to climb. We didn't get to test the 'walkthrough' function at the demo, which takes control to guide them past difficult spots, but it could end up becoming a saving grace for less skilled players. Motion control is also thankfully kept to a minimum, using it to waft your restart bubble towards the group or to tilt see-saw platforms, so at least steps have been made to make it as trouble-free as possible.

Though it still looks to be the same old Mario, even the tiny addition of more players makes it feel remarkably fresh and vibrant. The wealth of add-ons from games new and old pays homage to Mario's entire back catalogue of adventures, rather than the DS version's stubborn dependence of using tricks from the NES trilogy. While it will be entirely possible to play alone, you'll be missing out on what looks to be yet another essential multiplayer title for the system. November 20 can't come soon enough.

New Super Mario Bros Wii will be released exclusively for the Wii on November 20.