Super Mario Bros. Wonder Will Introduce Ability Badges

You can unlock the ability to wall-jump, glide with your cap, and more.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is adding abilities through unlockable badges. When equipped, these add new ways to play, but you can only have one slotted per course. You can change them in the overworld, right before you play a level, or after you die.

In the badges menu, we saw a few different abilities. In total, there are 24 slots to fill, with what looks to be three different types - orange, blue, and yellow. We saw 11 of the badges through this menu and further clips that broke down how they work and what they look like in action.

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Parachute Cap lets you open your hat to glide, Wall-Climb Jump lets you "jump against a wall and then press B to jump straight up once", Dolphin Kick lets you speed up underwater and destroy blocks, Timed High Jump lets you "time consecutive jumps [...] to jump higher", Crouching High Jump lets you reach greater heights by crouching before you leap, Floating High Jump lets you float after you "jump higher than usual", Grappling Vine lets you fire vines mid-air that stick and pull you towards walls, Safety Bounce lets you recover from dangerous drops (such as into lava), Sensor helps you find important items, Coin Magnet attracts money, Invisibility turns you... invisible, and Jet Run gives you a permanent dash.

Badges can be earned by clearing challenges or you can buy them at Poplin Shops on the world map with flower coins you find in each level. While we know about nearly half of them, there are still 13 we've yet to hear about, but with the game just over a month away, it's not long yet before we can dig in and see what they're like for ourselves. No doubt speedrunners will find unique and bizarre ways to twist these abilities into game-breaking tools to shatter world records.

Wonder was revealed in June. Since then, we learned that a brand-new actor is playing Mario for the first time in 27 years. That's because Charles Martinet has retired from the role. We still don't know who exactly is playing the iconic Italian plumber this time around, but Wonder marks the start of a new era in more ways than one. It's ditching the now-infamous 'New' style that has dominated the series since the DS days. And of course, it's Daisy's debut as a playable character in the mainline series, a long time coming and something that fans have been celebrating since the first trailer dropped. We got to see more of her in today's Direct, even appearing in elephant form.

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