Ramblings: Mario Monday takes a sneak peak at upcoming New Super Mario Brothers Wii

Today Mario Monday takes a brief hiatus from walking down memory lane and instead looks forward. Don't worry, we'll go back in time next week.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii was released yesterday and it found a nice home at the top of my Christmas list for this year. The highly anticipated Wii release is more than a straight port of the hit DS title of a similar name. The Wii version has multiple playing modes to allow for four player co-op (or competitive) play, something never before seen in a Mario game.

Judging by what I have seen from some select videos and reviews the game play looks to be transported perfectly from the DS version and alot of the familiar game play features of the entire Mario franchise seem to have been included.

I tweeted earlier today that it is nice to see the Koopa Kids make a long awaited return. I had fears that Bowser had killed them off in order to give his entire attention to the younger version of Bowser in recent Mario games.

You can check out a number of reviews online already but I hope to be able to give my own assessment sometime after the holiday season, by which time it may be obsolete anyway.

If you have picked up the game already please let me know what you think of it!