Even though we’ve seen little of New Super Mario Bros. 2, Nintendo decided to make it playable on the showfloor for the final day of E3.

As you may have seen in last night’s 3DS Showcase, the game is built around the concept of collecting coins, and lots of them. In fact, no Mario game has featured anywhere near this amount of coins before, going so far as to include a brand new-powerup called Gold Mario that turns everything his gold fireballs touch into, well, gold. Yup, there’s a ton of bling bling in this game. 

Speaking of power-ups, the Raccoon suit is back as well, enabling Mario to take to the skies just like in Mario 3. It feels great, as should be expected, and the animations Mario has when flying are simply “awwwwww” worthy. This should add a ton more verticality to the levels, as compared to the previous NSMB games. 

Good thing too, as the game’s core mechanics feel almost identical to the original game on Nintendo DS, so anything new should offer some much-needed differentiation. And the emphases on coins does seem to offer just that. In fact, the game even offers a mode called “Coin Rush” in which you play through a set of three levels (that you’ve already played through in Story Mode) and attempt to collect as many coins as possible without dying. And you’ll want to move quick too, as any remaining time also gets converted into coins. So it becomes a race to beat the level as fast as possible, while grabbing as many coins as you can. It feels a little like Pac-Man Championship Edition in intensity.

There were three levels in the demo including a typical grassy plains level, a beach level with jumping Cheep Cheeps, and then a fortress level that culminates with a boss fight featuring the revolving Reznors from Mario World. It was a nice throwback, even if the battle was a cinch.

Nintendo has also confirmed the entire adventure will be playable in co-op, with the second player taking on the role as Luigi, though Nintendo did not say if it will be online as well.

We enjoyed what we played, but even with the additions, it seems to be sticking very close to the NSMB formula. Here’s hoping it has a little more to offer when it launches on August 19th.