Super Mario Bros. Wonder introduced the first genuinely new power-up lineup in years, moving beyond the familiar Fire Flower and Super Mushroom formula to give players tools that change movement, combat, and exploration in creative ways. Alongside a few returning classics, three new transformations headline the game’s toolkit: the Elephant Fruit, the Bubble Flower, and the Drill Mushroom. Understanding what each one does, and where it works best, makes a real difference in how efficiently you clear courses and hunt down secrets. Here is a complete breakdown of every power-up in the game and how to use them effectively.
Elephant Fruit: Strength and Utility Combined
The Elephant Fruit is the signature new power-up of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, transforming your character into an anthropomorphic elephant form. This transformation grants noticeably increased strength, letting you smash through certain blocks simply by walking into them rather than needing a jump or a spin. The elephant form also gains a trunk attack that can knock back or defeat nearby enemies, giving it solid offensive utility in crowded sections.
Beyond combat, the Elephant form has a practical secondary function: it can hold water in its trunk by dipping it into liquid, then spray that water to interact with the environment. This is used to solve small puzzles, put out fire hazards, or water specific plants that react to moisture, opening up paths or rewards that are inaccessible in other forms. Because the Elephant Fruit combines offense, defense, and light puzzle-solving, it is one of the most versatile power-ups in the game and a great pick for players who want to explore courses thoroughly rather than rush through them.
Bubble Flower: Turning Enemies Into Coins and Platforms
The Bubble Flower gives your character the ability to blow bubbles that serve two very different purposes. First, bubbles can trap enemies on contact, instantly converting them into coins. This makes the Bubble Flower a strong defensive option in stages with heavy enemy density, since it neutralizes threats from a distance rather than requiring precise jumps or fireballs.
Second, and just as importantly, bubbles can be used as temporary platforms. By blowing a bubble and jumping onto it before it pops, you can cross gaps that would otherwise be impossible to clear, or reach elevated areas holding hidden Flower Coins. This dual-purpose design, offense and traversal in one tool, makes the Bubble Flower especially useful in courses built around verticality or wide pits, and it rewards players who experiment with bubble placement rather than just spamming the button.
Drill Mushroom: Digging Through the Level
The Drill Mushroom equips your character with a drill that allows movement through terrain in ways no previous Mario power-up has offered. On the ground, it lets you burrow downward through soft dirt and soil, often revealing hidden passages, secret rooms, or shortcuts that are completely invisible from the surface. This makes it one of the best power-ups for players focused on finding every collectible in a course.
What sets the Drill Mushroom apart further is its ceiling functionality: it also lets you burrow upward into certain ceilings and move through them, effectively giving you access to two additional planes of movement, above and below the normal path. Courses designed around the Drill Mushroom often hide entire alternate routes accessible only through this burrowing mechanic, so if a level feels unusually sparse on visible secrets, it is worth checking whether a Drill Mushroom is available nearby.
Returning Power-Ups You Will Still Rely On
Alongside its new additions, Super Mario Bros. Wonder keeps several long-running Mario staples intact. The Super Mushroom remains the baseline upgrade, making your character larger and giving you a buffer hit before you shrink back down rather than losing a life outright. The Fire Flower returns as well, granting the ability to throw fireballs at enemies, though it can only be picked up while your character is already in a larger form after grabbing a Super Mushroom first.
The Super Star also makes its expected appearance, granting temporary invincibility that lets you plow through enemies and many hazards without taking damage. It remains best saved for enemy-heavy gauntlets or sections where precision platforming under pressure is less important than simply pushing forward quickly.
The Wonder Flower: A Power-Up in a Different Sense
While not a traditional power-up you carry between areas, the Wonder Flower deserves mention because it is central to how every course in the game unfolds. Interacting with a Wonder Flower activates that course’s unique Wonder Effect, a temporary but often dramatic transformation of the level itself. These effects range from turning pipes into living creatures to raining down collectible stars on a timer, and no two courses reuse the same effect in quite the same way. Collecting a Wonder Flower and completing its Wonder Effect also rewards you with a Wonder Seed, tying this mechanic directly into the game’s core collectible loop.
Choosing the Right Power-Up for a Course
Since power-ups in Super Mario Bros. Wonder are tied to specific item boxes and course design rather than a free-choice inventory, the real strategy is recognizing what a level is asking of you. Courses with visible cracks in the floor or ceiling are hinting at a Drill Mushroom. Stages with wide gaps and enemy clusters often favor the Bubble Flower. And any course emphasizing brute-force obstacles or environmental interactions, like fire hazards or dry plants, tends to build around the Elephant Fruit. Paying attention to these visual cues before grabbing a power-up will help you use it more effectively rather than discovering its best use by accident.
If you want a broader walkthrough covering every world, boss, and mechanic alongside these power-ups, check out our complete Super Mario Bros. Wonder guide for the full picture.
Why the New Power-Ups Matter
What makes the Elephant Fruit, Bubble Flower, and Drill Mushroom stand out is that each one changes not just combat but exploration and puzzle-solving too. That design philosophy, giving every power-up a secondary utility beyond simply defeating enemies, is a big part of why Super Mario Bros. Wonder feels distinct from previous side-scrolling Mario titles, and it rewards players who experiment with each transformation rather than sticking to whichever one they picked up first.