Mini Mario and Friends First Impressions

Mini Mario and Friends is a new entry in the Mario & Donkey Kong puzzle franchise. It plays similar to previous entries in the series, but this time you’ll need an amiibo if you want to play the game. I got a copy of this game thanks to a friend! Here are my first impressions of Mini Mario and Friends.

If you buy an amiibo at certain retailers right now, you can get free codes for Mini Mario and Friends for the Wii U and 3DS. A good friend of mine bought an amiibo and got two codes, which she shared with me! I only played the Wii U version of this game, because I let my dad have the 3DS code. I was able to test out three amiibo with the game: 30th Anniversary Mario, a Pink Yarn Yoshi, and a Link amiibo. The Mario amiibo gave me Mario, the Yarn Yoshi gave me Yoshi and the Link amiibo gave me a little square box guy to play as. While the core gameplay of Mini Mario and Friends is similar to other Mario & Donkey Kong games, there is one major difference to Mini Mario and Friends.

Each of the Mario characters in Mini Mario and Friends have a special ability that gives them a unique play style. Previous entries in the series had all of the Mario characters playing the same! In this game, Mario can wall jump, which allows him to get to higher places easier, and Yoshi can eat enemies in his path. The square box guy is just someone you play with if you don’t have any Mario characters and didn’t seem to have any special abilities (though admittedly I didn’t play him much). You will definitely get the best Mini Mario experience playing with a Mario related amiibo character. My favorite, so far, is Yoshi. He is a lot of fun to play as! Another great thing about having the Mario amiibo is that you can unlock character specific levels for each character too. I definitely liked Yoshi’s levels better than Mario’s but both were fun! Mini Mario & Friends, on a whole, is a fun game, though its not as big a game as Tipping Stars (the previous Mario & Donkey Kong game).

If you like the Mario & Donkey Kong series, you’ll like Mini Mario and Friends. Is it worth picking up an amiibo for? Well, if you’re already planning to get an amiibo, it’s a great bonus. An amiibo AND a free game is an excellent deal. Though, I wouldn’t recommend just buying an amiibo to get this game. It is a fun game, but I can already see that its not going to last as long as Tipping Stars. Mini Mario doesn’t have a level builder nor as many levels as previous entries. Otherwise, I really like Mini Mario and I look forward to playing it more. Also, this game is making me wish I had more Mario amiibo! I hope that Nintendo does more deals like this in the future. I think getting an amiibo related game with an amiibo is a very good bonus!

Have you played Mini Mario & Friends? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments!