I’ve been thinking a lot about the New Super Mario Bros. franchise in the past couple of weeks. When the original came out on the Nintendo DS in 2006 it was highly anticipated. It had been ages since Nintendo had release a new 2D Mario game, and surely Nintendo would knock it out the park having been behind so many great 2D platform games throughout numerous different series across a variety of different systems.
New Super Mario Bros for DS met an outstanding success selling over 30 million copies, only the original NES Mario game beats it in terms of Nintendo’s Mario platformer defined games. Personally I loved it at the time, my only negative thought in 2006 was that it seemed short in length.
Over time though my issues with the series have come clearer. Whilst I’ve enjoyed each and every entry in the “New Super Mario Bros.” lineage. These “New” games seem to restrict Nintendo from creating something more memorable.
Now before I go off on the tangent I want to speak more about. Let me submit this one for Winter relevance with the charming snow world music from these games, and the easy for all experience levels means that the New Super Mario Bros games can be enjoyed in co-op over the holidays if you’re spending more time with family or friends.
Now to get something off my chest against the New Super Mario Bros series…
Looking back it’s easy to dig out so many unique memories from the original NES Mario Games, perhaps most notably Mario 3. Then turn your mind to Super Mario World or even Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island if we’re to forget that is now it’s own branched off Nintendo platformer. Heck even Super Mario Land 2 did a lot to be unique and brought in new enemies, ideas, and environments that I wish Nintendo had of re-used again.
Comparatively, the New Super Mario Bros games are playing it too safe. They don’t really have what I’d consider to be a unique enough art design and each game since has very much stuck to the same formula. In the past it was rare that 2 games would ever look alike.
Where is our next item concept that is as iconic as the first time we got a leaf that makes us a racoon? or the feather that gives us a cool cape that functions both for attacking and a whole new type of flying mechanic to master? The NSMB series seems to be creating far far fewer new enemies that I’d actually want merchandise of on my desk or around my house like I do for the ones of the pre-NSMB days. Sure I love re-seeing Goomba’s and Koopa Troopa’s pop up and such, but as we traverse new worlds we should see new faces or at least some neat variants on the classics that really cement each game apart from the others.
Did we somehow decide Yoshi was the last major sidekick we’d accept in Mario? I certainly have plenty of room to embrace new characters in the series assuming they function well and the design is nice, the only new character to come from a 2D Mario game over the past 2 decades or so that I can think of that I’m fond of is “Nabbit”.
Don’t take what I’m saying in here the wrong way, I still love the New Super Mario Bros. series of games and will continue to get them at launch and have a lot of fun playing them whether solo or with friends. I just wish we could get a more drastic change of style between them, and certainly some better titles for these games.
I fondly remember playing a bit of New Super Mario Bros Wii on Christmas Day in 2009 too, plus the newer ones make for great co-op games to try and entice non-gamer family members in over the holidays. The easy drop in drop out co-op along with the bubble feature which players can use if they’re struggling to keep up with others make them digestible for all. If Nintendo want to keep putting out one of these games per new system as a way to let players familiar with what to expect then fine, but perhaps could you afterwards get creative again and give us more than 1 2D Mario platformer offering each console life cycle? Thank you.