Every now and then I think, oh, I should track down Devil World, the classic Miyamoto maze game that never got a proper release in the West. This week I loaded up the Switch NES collection to see if it had somehow crept onto that, but of course it hadn’t.
What I found instead was Wrecking Crew, a game I knew almost nothing about. Actually, let’s do this. What I knew was: former arcade game? Mario’s in it? That’s it. And both those things I only thought I knew.
So I gave Wrecking Crew a toot, and I am here to tell you that you should also give Wrecking Crew a toot, if you haven’t already. It’s an absolute charmer. And it’s weird and clever and has a bunch of very interesting ideas in it. And it doesn’t entirely work – and I mean that, I think, as a good thing.
Wrecking Crew is a Mario game in which Mario can’t jump. Even occurring back then I sense the perverse, playful energy of that proposition. Mario! But he can’t jump! You don’t do something like that unless you really enjoy messing with people.