Meetup in Bellabel Park brings multiplayer mayhem to Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Switch 2, and I want more

With the launch of Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park just under two months away, I can barely contain my excitement for more glorious 2D platforming. The original was one of my favorite games of 2023, and I’ve happily replayed it each year since – except for the Fluff-Puff Peaks Special: Climb to the Beat level, which still tilts me every time. It’s for that reason that when Nintendo offered us the chance to check out some of the new content ahead of the launch, I gleefully offered my services, and before I knew it, I was back in the world of Wonder.

During our short play session, we were put in groups of four and taken on a quick tour of some of the attractions Bellabel Park has to offer. First off was Build Away: Donut Block Maker, one of the more creative and collaborative minigames. The idea is simple: you either play as a platforming character, such as Mario or Luigi, or a donut maker, tasked with creating platforms for the other players to traverse on their way to the end of the level.

Donut making is made easier by mouse controls, and I have to say, this minigame alone is a better proof-of-concept of the advantages of using the Joy-Con 2 as a mouse than anything I experienced during my Drag x Drive review last year. It’s almost got a feeling of Mario Maker on the fly, putting the level together as the other players explore it, and there’s replayability in that; if you’ve just played as a maker, you immediately want to try platforming, and vice versa.

Next up was Look Out! Bob-omb Relay, which takes the concept of the bomb timer game and literally runs with it. All four characters are platforming in this one, collectively racing from one end of the course to the other without allowing the explosive time to detonate. Throughout the course, the game indicates who should be carrying the Bob-omb to pause the timer, giving you a bit of leeway to make it to the end in time. It’s a pretty chaotic spectacle, as players frantically throw the bomb around to whoever needs to hold it next, and I can see it causing a few arguments in the near future. If that isn’t the sign of good multiplayer gameplay, I don’t know what is.

Third on the list was Baby Yoshi’s Feeding Time, which is exactly what it says on the tin. Every player controls a Yoshi with a character on their back, and your job is to collect as many falling apples as you can for points. There are your regular apples, plus golden ones, which are worth more points, and purple apples, which subtract from your score. The other difference between this attraction and the previous examples is that it’s competitive, rather than collaborative, so we split into two teams of two and battled it out.

It’s with this Yoshi-oriented minigame that things start to feel more like a Mario Party game than a multiplayer game mode in a 2D platformer. Apples are almost always falling from the sky, so you spend the whole level leaping across the screen, trying to outmaneuver the opposition while avoiding the dreaded purple apples. For the most part, it’s as much fun as it sounds, though I do wish there were a way to steal apples from the other team or put them off their game by a Mario-style shoulder barge, just to add another layer of competitive gameplay to the experience.

Finally, we tried Run, Hide! Phanto Tag, another team-based minigame offering a twist on the iconic playground game, hide and seek. Of our group of four, two played as seekers, marked by a Phanto mask over their character, and two had to hide. If a seeker catches a hider, they pass over the Phanto mask, and whoever has the mask at the end of the game timer loses. The Wonder-style twist here is that hiders can disguise themselves as talking flowers at the push of a button, and thanks to a level full of other talking flowers and occasional blackouts that conceal all but the seekers, there’s an opportunity to blend in.

I’ve used the word ‘chaotic’ a couple of times already in this preview, but there’s really no other way I can describe Run, Hide! Phanto Tag. At least, not in my experience. I started as a hider, bounding from platform to platform to try and simply outlast the seekers, rather than actually trying to remain undetected. Unsurprisingly, this technique didn’t work. However, the other hider played it to perfection by simply transforming into a talking flower during the first blackout and remaining undetected until the end. There’s a slight irony here in that, seemingly, the best way to play this level from a hiding perspective is to do as little as possible, but I already can’t wait to test out other approaches when I play this game at home.

All four of the minigames I played served as a reminder as to why the developers at Nintendo are regarded as masters of the craft when it comes to platforming gameplay. Just like with the original game, the content in Meetup in Bellabel Park pushes the limitations of two-dimensional play to the extreme, but somehow, never in a way that wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to explain to someone unfamiliar with the genre.

The scope is pretty impressive, too. As I’ve alluded to, it doesn’t just feel like an extension of Wonder’s gameplay. Instead, it imports ideas from Mario Party and Mario Maker to feel like something that feels simultaneously familiar and fresh, and in 2026, that’s a rare feeling.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a look at any of the other new content coming to Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park, but as I’ve made pretty clear, I had a blast with what we did get to play. Fortunately, there isn’t too long to go until the game’s March 26 release date, so I’m looking forward to meeting back up with my good friend Elephant Mario and taking on the Toad Brigade’s training camp, the return of the Koopalings, and whatever else Nintendo has up its sleeve.

For more from our recent trip to Nintendo of Europe, be sure to check out our Mario Tennis Fever preview, detailing the sporting spin-off’s great tennis gameplay, and our Resident Evil Requiem preview. Or, if you’re looking for something you can play right away, we’ve got a long list of the best Switch games.