Topic: Thinking about it, New Super Mario Bros. wasn't that great...

[Ceric]

I also add the world themes lacked being truly different.  If this is how Nintendo "reimagines" great games.  Then do me a favor and don't.

[KDR_11k]

I'd like them to "reimagine" Adventure of Link.

[NWR_pap64]

On the subject of MK Double dash while I agree that it could've been better, I enjoyed it, mainly because it tried to do something different with the karts and the characters. It was an unique attempt at re-inventing the formula, that's why I enjoyed it.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: KDR_11k
I disagree on the item variety, I like how they didn't add a flight item this time. I also disagree on the bosses, NSMB's bosses are much harder than the koopa kids. The final boss was weak, yes (just get hit and run through) but the rest was much more interesting and often harder than previous SMB bosses (with the exception of YI).

Harder? I probaly died less on the NSMB bosses than SMB3. Personally I think the reason why they didn't add flight items was to limit exploration and to get the level design as simple as possible, it was a way to cover up the limitations of the game.

[Aussie Ben PGC]

NSMB was fun, but it certainly did seem to be riding on the coattails of its predecessors.  "Hey!  Remember the flags from SMB!  They're back!"  "Oh hey!  Remember Goombas again?  And Koopa Troopas?  Don't you?  Hey!  Hey!  Whoa!  Look at that!  Ghost houses!  Look!  Oh, and remember how you couldn't save until you beat a castle?  It's like that here too!  Even though it's a portable game!  It's just like the old ones!  Honest!"

Nice game though, but it seems that the game was more of a fanservice than a new game with Mario where they could do whatever they wanted.

[NWR_pap64]

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Originally posted by: Aussie Ben PGC
NSMB was fun, but it certainly did seem to be riding on the coattails of its predecessors.  "Hey!  Remember the flags from SMB!  They're back!"  "Oh hey!  Remember Goombas again?  And Koopa Troopas?  Don't you?  Hey!  Hey!  Whoa!  Look at that!  Ghost houses!  Look!  Oh, and remember how you couldn't save until you beat a castle?  It's like that here too!  Even though it's a portable game!  It's just like the old ones!  Honest!"

Nice game though, but it seems that the game was more of a fanservice than a new game with Mario where they could do whatever they wanted.

Glad to know I'm not the only one that feels this way.

I think the reason many of us were so excited for NSMB back when it was released and thought it was a fantastic game was because it was the first 2D Mario game in years so even if the game could've been better people ate it up for that reason alone.

Like I said, the game isn't bad. It IS one of the best handheld games released this year. I just think that the extreme praise it got was a bit too much since Nintendo CAN do better.

I know people loved this game, and I hold nothing against them. If people loved it, people loved it. Cap for example loved it because he simply wanted a 2D Mario game and he didn't enjoy the 3D games that much. And that's fine. I already told you that the multiplayer is extremely fun and one of the best things about the game. Again, I simply wish it would've been better.

I played SB's copy last summer, I enjoyed it enough to buy myself a copy. Kept playing it, then found myself not playing it for weeks, then going back to it, stop playing it, then finally went back and finished it.

The older 2D games have me hooked the minute they load up. I couldn't wait till I reached the next level. NSMB simply didn't do it for me.

[MarioAllStar]

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Originally posted by: pap64
The older 2D games have me hooked the minute they load up. I couldn't wait till I reached the next level. NSMB simply didn't do it for me.

When I first got the game, it definitely got me excited. After I finished it completely, I have not touched it since. On the other hand, tonight I just spent over an hour beating the Super Mario Bros. (the All-Stars version) from start to finish. I have been playing SMB since I was four or five years old, but I still come back to the classics for a quality gaming fix.

New Super Mario Bros. will never reach that classic status with me. That being said, I really hope they revisit the concept of a Mario sidescroller but leave development open to new ideas that drive the series forward.

[NWR_pap64]

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Originally posted by: MarioAllStar

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Originally posted by: pap64
The older 2D games have me hooked the minute they load up. I couldn't wait till I reached the next level. NSMB simply didn't do it for me.

When I first got the game, it definitely got me excited. After I finished it completely, I have not touched it since. On the other hand, tonight I just spent over an hour beating the Super Mario Bros. (the All-Stars version) from start to finish. I have been playing SMB since I was four or five years old, but I still come back to the classics for a quality gaming fix.

New Super Mario Bros. will never reach that classic status with me. That being said, I really hope they revisit the concept of a Mario sidescroller but leave development open to new ideas that drive the series forward.

That happened to me too. I tried getting all of the gold coins, but in the end it simply wasn't worth it.

I remember that as a kid I was dead SET on uncovering all of the secret stages in Super Mario World. And back then, I didn't have a guide or magazine to give me hints and the internet was still a few years off so I had to sit down with all the patience in the world and figure out where were the hidden shortcuts. I kept doing that till I found the secret star stages and truly completed the game. And they weren't easy either. They were a test of skill, patience and endurance. You even had to figure out how to use all of your power ups (such as the feather and helium balloon).

In comparison, collecting all the gold coins in NSMB is a JOKE.

[KDR_11k]

Personally I think the reason why they didn't add flight items was to limit exploration and to get the level design as simple as possible, it was a way to cover up the limitations of the game.

Having seen people break SMW to tiny little pieces with different cape abuses (flying through walls, completely avoiding large parts of a level, etc, see here) I think it was more because flight items add just so many potential bugs to the game and break a lot of possible puzzle ideas or threats because you can just fly over them. Allowing two different modes of movement where one can reach significantly more than the other makes it hard to introduce proper puzzles.

I remember that as a kid I was dead SET on uncovering all of the secret stages in Super Mario World.

Me too but what do you do when you can only afford two games a year? Though I did have the guide and made heavy use of it.  

[NWR_pap64]

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Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Personally I think the reason why they didn't add flight items was to limit exploration and to get the level design as simple as possible, it was a way to cover up the limitations of the game.

Having seen people break SMW to tiny little pieces with different cape abuses (flying through walls, completely avoiding large parts of a level, etc, see here) I think it was more because flight items add just so many potential bugs to the game and break a lot of possible puzzle ideas or threats because you can just fly over them. Allowing two different modes of movement where one can reach significantly more than the other makes it hard to introduce proper puzzles.

I remember that as a kid I was dead SET on uncovering all of the secret stages in Super Mario World.

Me too but what do you do when you can only afford two games a year? Though I did have the guide and made heavy use of it.

Well, back when me and my sister first beat it, we thought the game was done and it was time to move onto the next. But then I noticed some baddies in the credits that we didn't see in the actual game, leading me to believe that there were places in the game we didn't visit. So I started searching for secret levels, passageways and keyholes in all of the stages. I used the feather to reach places that I missed on my first run and checked every nook and cranny. The more I uncovered the larger the challenge became. It was then that I found out about the secret star stages. So what started as a hunt for a baddie that I never saw ended with me discovered an amazing chunk of the game.

It was simply magical, especially as a kid.  

[Nick DiMola]

"That happened to me too. I tried getting all of the gold coins, but in the end it simply wasn't worth it." ~Pap

I see this as a problem. The game was tailored around grabbing those gold coins. Practically all of the fun I had with that game was finding all of the gold coins and the secret exits. Just playing the game to reach the end of the level is pretty boring and I can understand negative bias if that is as far as you went with it.

"Nice game though, but it seems that the game was more of a fanservice than a new game with Mario where they could do whatever they wanted. " ~Aussie Ben

I don't think fanservice is the fitting term. I would say it was a blue ocean title. The game wasn't made for all of us diehards. It was made for the people who loved the NES and haven't played games since then. It was made for kids, so that they develop a love for Mario at a young age, just as many of us did. It was also made for the non-gamer. There was not a significant challenege to complete a level, making it more accessible. Nintendo definitely restricted themselves with the game to tailor it to their target audience. Regardless, they tossed in the big coin challenges and the secret levels and exits to augment the challenge for the lifetime Nintendo fans.  

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Mr. Jack

I don't think fanservice is the fitting term. I would say it was a blue ocean title. The game wasn't made for all of us diehards. It was made for the people who loved the NES and haven't played games since then.

Too bad it was a step back from Super Mario Bros 3.

[vudu]

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Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix
I probaly died less on the NSMB bosses than SMB3.

You don't think that maybe it's because you're fifteen years older than you were when you first played SMB3?  

[GoldenPhoenix]

Actually no, because I've recently played SMB3 and still have died at some of the harder koopa kids.  in NSMB I never died once in a boss fight.

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix
in NSMB I never died once in a boss fight.

Not even while beating some of the bosses as Tiny Mario to unlock things?

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Arbok

Quote
Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix
in NSMB I never died once in a boss fight.

Not even while beating some of the bosses as Tiny Mario to unlock things?

Well maybe a couple of times then! I think I died because I didn't know that I had to hit them with a butt stomp.

[Ian Sane]

"It was made for kids, so that they develop a love for Mario at a young age, just as many of us did."

That probably was part of the design but it makes no sense.  I was a kid when the classic Super Mario Bros games came out.  Most of us were.  And so we developed a love for Mario at a young age.  Therefore simplifying level designs or lowering the difficultly is unnecessary.  A Mario game for kids should also be a Mario game for videogame diehards because the series has been able to appeal to both audiences since the beginning.  Hell it doesn't even make sense to consciously accomodate non-gamers because the 2D Marios were always popular with people that don't play games that regularly.  To specifically cater to kids or non-gamers is overkill and is just going to result in a lesser product.

[couchmonkey]

2D Mario games: my parents lost interest after Super Mario Bros. because the games got too complicated.

Kids: I saw an interesting episode of Game Jew where he took a job teaching kids at schools about cooperation and getting along by having them play multiplayer video games.  An interesting thing he found is that kids LOVE to succeed and prefer easy games to hard ones.  We put up with Super Mario Bros. because all games had such a high difficulty level.

To be fair, I was disappointed when I found a lot of Super Nintendo games to be easier than NES games, but I got over it pretty quickly, and by the end of the generation I considered Super NES games to be vastly superior to NES overall.

[KDR_11k]

I don't think NSMB is significantly easier than any other Mario game. Sure, I found SML pretty hard back then but nowadays I can beat it in half an hour with little trouble so NSMB doesn't hve to keep me from progressing past the second world to be as hard.

I think all humans prefer easy games but at some point it just gets disappointing. The accomplishment that a hard game gives you doesn't come with an easy one so the occassional hard title is a good thing.

[Ian Sane]

"To be fair, I was disappointed when I found a lot of Super Nintendo games to be easier than NES games, but I got over it pretty quickly, and by the end of the generation I considered Super NES games to be vastly superior to NES overall."

I noticed a change too.  I liked it because I find a lot of NES games have cheap difficulty.  The best ones have legitimate challenges but a lot of NES games more or less "cheat" to make the game more difficult.  On the SNES I found that developers had more or loss stopped screwing us around and were giving us challenges that were fair.  It was like we now got to use a hockey stick to play against Wayne Gretzky instead of a straw.  Still challenging but not in a way where they're giving the player an unfair disadvantage.

Gaming isn't black and white.  A game can't only be hard or easy.  It can be in between where the game is still a challenge but done in a way that one can beat it without practicing 8 hours a day.  Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World are not hard games.  They're also not easy games.  They're easy enough that anyone can play around and beat a few levels but still challenge the player and get hard in later levels.  Anyone can beat Super Mario World but can anyone beat every level?  No.  That's a good difficulty.  And because kids can beat the first few levels they get the sense of accomplishment without being spoonfed.

Plus, f*ck it, we shouldn't be teaching kids that completing something that is of no challenge is any sort of accomplishment anyway.  That's just going to raise a generation of losers.

I don't even find NSMB too easy anyway but I suck at a lot of games.  In NSMB I find that I make the game harder for myself because I can't hold a controller still during an action game.  Thus my screen is bouncing all over the place which compromises my vision, thus making the game harder.  I do much better at portable games when I play them on a TV (Super Gameboy, Gameboy Player).

[JonLeung]

(Stop misspacing "Game Boy", Ian!  Two words!  Didn't we go over this?  I swear I'm one of the last visually-oriented people.  Earlier today I was kind of chewing on Spak-Spang when he said "Contra 3" when anybody (or rather, anybody more visually-oriented like me) can clearly see a Roman numeral "III" there.  Every time I look at "Game Boy" spelled officially I look at the space and think "it's kind of hard to miss!")

Ian, didn't you find NSMB easy considering there were so many opportunities for 1-Ups?  And as a VG Cats comic once pointed out, "fireballs are so cheap!"  Bring a Fire Flower into a Bowser Jr. or Bowser fight and it's already over.  They should've made them take like a hundred hits with fireballs so that you'd have to at least avoid a couple attacks instead of totally blasting them before they can even run over to you.

At least the bosses that required Tiny Mario (to take an alternate path) were a little better, challenge-wise.

[Ian Sane]

"Ian, didn't you find NSMB easy considering there were so many opportunities for 1-Ups?"

Yes.  That I did notice.  I just mean I haven't breezed through the whole game without dying.  But yeah the 1UPs are far too plentiful.  I can get an insane amount of lives in Super Mario World too but that's from experience.  I know the little tricks in that game to racking up lives.  No such knowledge is needed in NSMB.

Oh and....

Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy Gameboy

[KDR_11k]

And as a VG Cats comic once pointed out, "fireballs are so cheap!" Bring a Fire Flower into a Bowser Jr. or Bowser fight and it's already over. They should've made them take like a hundred hits with fireballs so that you'd have to at least avoid a couple attacks instead of totally blasting them before they can even run over to you.

And? It was the same in all previous Mario games with the exception of Super Mario Land.

[Luigi Dude]

Ok, the thing I dont get is how people complain about New Super Mario Bros being too easy when Super Mario World was even EASIER.  I've always found Super Mario World to be the easiest Mario game and even after finishing New Super Mario Bros, it's still the easiest.  I still remember my first time playing through Super Mario World, I had over 50 lives by the time I got past the 4th castle.  It only took me about 3 days to find and complete all the levels my first time to.

Of course there's a simple reason for this, I grew up playing Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3 as a kid, and that was it.  Those two games were quite hard when I first played them but over the years as I grew the games got much easier to me.  When I got older and was able to find and buy the other Mario games I missed out on as a kid, I was able to easily beat them because playing the original and 3 for so many years had made me a master of Mario Platformers.  And because of that I have no nostalgia for most of the Mario games except 1 and 3.  All of the other Mario games I easily ripped through them on my first time of play and after playing through all of them including New Super Mario Bros, I find World to be the easiest.

Yet ever since New Super Mario Bros was released all I see is people attacking it for being too easy when World is by far much easier.  This proves nostalgia blinds many gamers and because of warm feelings for things they remember, they'll unfairly attack games for a problem that was in one of the so called "Classic" games as well.  It's just how people attacked Wind Waker for being too easy even though Ocarina of Time was just as easy.

And dont attack me for hating Mario World because I dont, it's actually one of my favorite Mario titles.

My top 5 Mario list

1. Super Mario Bros 3
2. Super Mario World
3. Super Mario 64
4. New Super Mario Bros
5. Super Mario Land 2

But I have no problem admiting that it was an easy game because I can't stand it when new games get attacked for being too easy when some of the older games in several videogame series where just as easy if not easier.  Gamers have to realise that they have gotten better over the years which is why games feel easier now then they did back then.

[ryancoke]

I just finished NSMB and I thought it was quite good. I loved the new gameplay with hints of old school. I would have liked to see 1 gigantic world seperated into sections similar to super mario world. I don't like how you have to beat certain bosses as mini-mario to get to some of the worlds.  Overall I thought the big coin collecting was good and the level design was almost as good as it gets with Nintendo. I would still say that super mario world is still my fave 2d mario game though. NSMB definately wasn't the hardest mario game. For the hardest check out Super Mario Bros: The lost levels in the Mario All Stars compilation.

1. super mario world
2. super mario 3
3. super mario 2
4. new super mario bros
5. super mario land 2