Super Mario Bros. Wonder Guide – All Characters & Recommendations

The latest Mario game, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, has twelve characters to choose between as you navigate the dozens of courses spread over eight distinctly themed worlds. While characters in previous Mario titles had distinct moves and abilities, there is very little difference between the vast majority of them this time around. This Super Mario Bros. Wonder guide lists all characters, and recommendations for novices to the genre and little kids, as well as some other notes to keep in mind.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Character Notes

All characters are unlocked and available at the start of the game, and there are no known secret characters currently.

Besides the four Yoshis and Nabbit, the remaining characters all play exactly the same, and the only variation is purely cosmetic. Power-up transformations are all unique across characters.

While the Yoshis and Nabbit are invincible to damage, they cannot pick up and use power-ups.

All the Yoshis can consume both enemies and power-ups whole using Y, and spit them back out using Y again. They can also flutter jump to achieve greater heights by holding B. In cooperative play, any and all characters can mount a Yoshi, including other Yoshis and characters in their Elephant form. You cannot triple stack Yoshis however. Yoshi’s invincibility does not prevent them from being knocked back by coming into contact with enemies or projectiles, sometimes straight into hazards like pits that will consume a life.

Nabbit will convert all power-ups into singular Flower Coins. All other controls are exactly the same as other characters, besides the Yoshis. In addition to the invincibility, Nabbit cannot be knocked backwards by enemies or projectiles, but they can still stumble into pits and lose a life that way.

One reason to use a particular character over another is that certain hidden blocks will only be revealed to that character, which will be visible with their unique logo. However other characters can still activate those hidden blocks by accident, or if you already know their location from previous playthroughs.

Even though there isn’t much difference between characters, players that are new to platformers and young children would do best to choose between Nabbit, or the various colors of Yoshis. This is because their inherent invincibility will make the game a lot easier. These five characters can still die to hazards like pits, lava, and poison. Players can mitigate that as well by getting the Safety Bounce Boost Badge as early as possible, which will give players one opportunity to recover from a misstep; players will have to set foot back on solid ground to reset the ability.

Those are all 12 characters in Super Mario Bros. Wonder for the Switch.