Topic: Super Mario 2025

@Bolt_Strike Potentially the ToeJam and Earl approach? In Toejam and Earl 1,3,4 you share the screen, but if players go off in different directions, then it goes to split screen. You can go to seperate levels and everything. I feel Nintendo would prefer to keep everyone on the same screen at the same time though really!

@Mana_Knight I was about to say the same, but for the Skylanders series lol!

IMHO I see 3D World satisfying a different group of players than Sunshine, Galaxy 1/2 or Odyssey.

For me personally, 3D World is the game I finished . . . with my kids, because that was the game we could play together and have fun at it.

Sunshine, Galaxy 1/2 and Odyssey are all pretty boring if you are the 2nd player. I started Galaxy with my youngest . . . but neither of us had much fun being the Star Pointer. So we just tossed that game back on the shelf and looked for a more co-op game.

That is why I'm glad 3D World came out.

I've got Sunshine, Galaxy 1 + 2, and Odyssey sitting with our consoles. I do plan to play them. But if my kids want to play a game . . . I'll do that instead. We've finished Disney Universe, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Yoshi's Woolly World, Kirby Star Allies, Kirby and the Forgotten Land (almost done) and Yoshi's Crafted World (almost done.), Overcooked! 2, Pico Park. My daughter finished Kirby Return to Dreamland with her friend on their Wii.

But having games targetted at different types of gamers is what makes the Switch platform great. It broadens who might find the Switch interesting and want it. And, I assume, is why so many Switches have sold and why it is a success. It also gives us a big selection of games to explore.

@NintendoDad hearing mention of Disney Universe brought back so many memories for me! My siblings and I loved that game as kids, and I totally agree with your points about 3D World vs other 3D Marios!

+1

Yeah. That Disney Universe was one of the 1st games that we completed together.

A lot of that time was spent jumping around the overworld and hitting each other. LOL. That was hilarious.

You mentioned Skylanders . . . and I forgot to add those games to our list. We finished off the first 2 games, and then after that moved on to a bunch of Lego games. We still have all our Skylanders.

Ok here’s a revolutionary idea for a new Mario game

What if we took the mushroom kingdom, and moved it somewhere else?

Super Mario Rehomed, arriving fall 2025

Honestly I'm not even sure what I want from the new game. I was a bit disappointed by Odyssey — it's certainly not bad but it feels a little slow and empty to me. 3D World and Galaxy are my favorite 3D Mario games; I like the tighter level design and fun platforming.

I don't necessarily hate open or open world games — I loved Zelda Echoes and for all its flaws, I enjoyed the open world aspect of Pokemon gen 9. I feel like it's just hard to keep tight platforming challenges in open world. I was kind of ambivalent about Bowser's Fury but I admit they did do the 'walk to a level' aspect quite well.

Honestly mostly I want something that is:
a) Not Odyssey 2.
b) Definitely not Sunshine 2.
c) Takes/improves some of the best aspects of both the 2D and 3D Mario games.
d) Surprises me.

Wonder did the surprise part well and improving on prior games, so I am somewhat optimistic for the new 3D Mario also.

Thinking about Zelda... I wouldn't say no to having to search in a more exploratory way in an open world to find level entrances which were then not in the open world anymore. That could be really fun. The extremely minor way 3D World did that where a few levels were semi-hidden were quite fun.

@FishyS The thing with the Galaxy games for me is that their movement is probably the most sluggish out of the 3D Mario games, or at least the most restricted. I think 64 feels worse to play, with some elements not having aged well (though it probably doesn't help that its controls don't translate over perfectly to a modern controller with how the N64 joystick felt), but I like movement in a game to feel inherently enjoyable, and I can't say I feel that way about how Galaxy 1 & 2 control. The original 3D World could also feel a bit slow .Odyssey wins in the control department for me, and that goes a long way, though its level design can feel more basic at times.
What I'd like to see is a Mario moveset with depth like Odyssey that's quick and snappy like 3D World + Bowser's Fury, with the level design also taking more after that game for platforming setpieces while feeling more natural and less geometric like much of Odyssey (and outside of Mario, Kirby and the Forgotten Land).

What exactly can the 3D games learn from the 2D games? If anything it feels like the opposite has been happening because the 2D games have been largely stagnant from Super Mario World to Super Mario Bros. Wonder (a whopping 33 YEARS!) and most of the changes to the 2D formula that have taken place in that time have mainly been adapting 3D elements to 2D. Even Wonder, as much of a sorely needed breath of fresh air for the 2D games as it is, feels less like it's doing its own thing and more like it's just lifting more elements from the 3D games and creeping even closer to the 3D formula. I'm not really sure what the 2D games could give back to 3D. It feels like 3D is simply doing the brunt of the innovation and experimentation and 2D is simply adapting the parts of it that are successful and well-received to a linear 2D style. What exactly do you see games like the NSMB games and Wonder doing well that the 3D games aren't?

I did say my favorite 3D Mario was 3D world; hard to claim that game doesn't take ideas from 2D Mario. More generally, I feel like level design in 2D Mario is often more polished and tight and just has fun speedy platforming in a way the 3D games sometimes miss.

In terms of new ideas, Wonder clearly took some of their ideas from mario maker and I'm hoping the new 3D game will also; the mario maker games have had infinite creativity and polishing and inserting some of those ideas into 3D could be very fun.

I guess, but I don't think what it took from the 2D games was necessarily positive as I was saying to N00BiSH. The simplicity of a 2D game doesn't really feel appropriate for a 3D game, the 3D games have always felt like grand adventures with a high level of depth and freedom, the simplicity of the 2D games feels at odds with that, especially the way 3D Land and 3D World went about it (heck even Galaxy 2 crept too far in that direction IMO). And the 3D games kind of need that high level of depth and freedom for a reason. The 3D sandbox games are trying to bring in more of a AAA console audience, gamers that are wowed by large scale worlds and realism and want to immerse themselves in said worlds for hours at a time, and 3D Mario is one of the core IPs for that demographic (I've heard some gamers even refer to Mario, Zelda, and Metroid as the "Big 3" because those are the IPs Nintendo fans usually look to for those types of experiences). And considering how well most of those games sell (Metroid and Xenoblade don't really do too hot, but the rest of the games that tend to focus on exploring vast, open-ended worlds tend to be among the highest sellers), it's kind of important that they have those types of experiences. In fact, the Wii U largely ignored them overall and I suspect that's part of the reason why it sold so poorly (think, if you grew up in the N64/GC era with games like 64/Sunshine, OoT/WW/TP, or Metroid Prime, or if you played similar experiences like Skyrim on other consoles, what were you buying on the Wii U? Pretty much just Xenoblade Chronicles X and a bunch of ports/remakes). But yeah, a sandbox style 3D Mario game is going to be key for bringing in console gamers and with this game likely being a launch/early window game for next gen, it's going to be especially important because they need to give people a reason to buy the console.

The tight design of the 2D games it great, but to some degree the philosophy of the 3D sandbox games is largely incompatible with that. But again, as I said earlier I think Bowser's Fury has struck a good balance. They can go for more tightly designed gameplay in the individual levels while keeping the game itself free and open ended, it makes a surprisingly good hybrid of the linear and sandbox style. Just as long as they keep the elements of the sandbox style. Those are pretty important for a 3D adventure game, they're more broadly appealing when you can show off vast 3D worlds stretching as far as the eye can see and go in any direction you want.

I don't see it, any inspiration from Mario Maker feels vague at best. Wonder doesn't have any kind of level design elements and its Wonder effects, while nice twists on the level, don't really feel like the same kind of creativity that players used on Mario Maker's assets. I feel like if they really wanted to learn from Mario Maker I feel like they would just create a level designer as a side mode for the 2D adventures. That would make for a good gameplay loop to keep people engaged, play the adventure to experience the new assets to get a feel for how they work similar to the missions in Mario Maker (possibly they might even lock assets in the level designer behind the adventure), then when you've finished the adventure stick around and see what you can do in your own levels.