With less than two weeks to go until Nintendo unleashes New Super Mario Bros. Wii upon unsuspecting Americans, your excitement should be building to a fever pitch. After all, this is the old-school Mario game you always wanted to play in 1990: Classic Mario, but for four players. Rather than simply give you a blow-by-blow hands-on preview, though, we've decided to focus on a dozen little details that have caught our attention as we've played through the game.

No. 1 -- It's relentlessly cheerful.

Everything in New Super Mario Bros. Wii dances to the beat of the music. That relentlessly infectious, almost offensively happy music. This isn't a new idea -- New Super Mario Bros. for DS is where this particular embellishment first appeared -- but this time around, it's not just the bad guys that bop to the beat. When you find Yoshi and let him stand idle for a moment, he'll come down with a case of happy feet, too. Even the flowers in the background bounce in time to the music.