The first time I encountered a Wonder Flower in Super Mario Bros. Wonder and the level began shifting and moving around me, I felt a sense of joy and surprise. It reminded me of the first time I discovered you could find secret warp pipes at the end of World 1-2 in the original Super Mario Bros.

As the eponymous plumber’s first 2D platformer in a decade, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a reminder of the joys that can come from running right to left across colorful screens. While 2D entries aren’t often as flashy as their 3D counterparts, Mario’s latest adventure is no less capable of surprising and delighting its audience. Through tried-and-true platforming mechanics mixed with a handful of new power-ups and the central Wonder Effect, Mario Wonder is a delightful platformer imbued with Nintendo’s signature charm.

The dazzling annular solar eclipse of 2023 appeared to eager spectators across the Americas on Saturday, and (luckily for us) professional photographers had fingers poised on the shutter-release, ready to snap fantastic photos of the incredible solar event.

This past weekend’s eclipse is what astrophysicists call “annular,” meaning the Moon doesn’t block out the sun completely because it’s a bit too far away from Earth (the Moon’s distance actually varies 31,200 miles from our planet over the course of a month). But that’s okay because the result of an annular solar eclipse is a stunning “ring of fire” that’d make even the dark lord Sauron envious.