This game appears to have been designed with widescreen TVs in mind, which is crap for me seeing as I play on a 4:3 portable.
The result is the dreaded black borders
It ruined Mad World and now it's ruining Mario Bros.
Anyone else bothered by this?
That's funny - I played the game on a 4:3 TV screen, and didn't notice any black borders... Then again, I was more focused on trying not to die an awful bubble death with three other people than with looking at black borders...
Is there anything in the options that allow you to change the aspect ratio to fullscreen?
Yeah its "widescreen" even set to 4:3. I was annoyed at first too, but I think it ends up working great in multiplayer since the screen has to show more area. It's a bit of a bummer in single play though, kind of a strange design choice.
I've been noticing that with a number of games lately, mainly on 360 though. A lot of the arcade titles, and even a handful of normal releases I've played do that.
It's not strange at all. It greatly limits the amount of testing needed, which in turn means the game can get to market quicker, and hopefully with fewer bugs.
Consider the effort from the game developer's point of view, and it becomes clear why certain things are done the way they are.
Buy a portable 16:9 display. I found mine on ebay for like $60.00. Oddly, I use it for my PS2 which most games don't support widescreen. But it looks good and its great for what I use it for.