Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s talking flowers can be muted, but you can’t stop their hints

Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s talkative flowers can be silenced, but you won’t be able to entirely escape their hints and comments, Nintendo has confirmed. 

As has been shown in the game’s trailers, in the upcoming 2D Mario game, alongside the elephant power-up and zany moments of surprise triggered by the game’s mysterious ‘Wonder Flowers’, the colorful world is also populated by cheerful speaking flowers. It’s quite rare to see Mario characters speaking in full sentences (although it has happened on multiple occasions in the past), but these floral friends are fully fluent in their speech.

Based on the in-game footage that’s been revealed so far, the phrases the flowers say range from quick quips and funny comments to hints at how to proceed in levels. Now, Eurogamer reports that it’s been confirmed that players will be able to switch off either the text or audio dialogue for the flowers – but not both. So it’s not going to be possible to play without getting some help from them.

Typically, traditional 2D Mario games don’t tend to contain that many head-scratching situations, so it seems unlikely that the flowers’ presence will detract from players’ enjoyment that much (unless playing Undertale made them permanently distrustful of any flora or fauna that has a grasp of the human language). Hopefully, it could lead to some more meme-worthy moments when the game releases – the internet has already seen more than its fair share of one of the flowers saying “well then” in response to Elephant Mario sending a sleeping Goomba flying off the screen. 

There’s not too much longer to wait for Super Mario Bros. Wonder – it’s set to launch exclusively on Nintendo Switch on October 20.

For more upcoming games, be sure to check out our roundup of upcoming Nintendo Switch games for 2023 and beyond. But if you want something for the here and now, check out our picks of the best Nintendo Switch games out now.