"Rusty Pipes" Mario's Stagnation

So a while back the Game Overthinker did this episode. http://www.screwattack.com/video/The-Game-OverThinker--Episode-74-RUSTY-PIPES-2614481

And I think this is something worth talking about.

See for a long time, Mario only saw one new true platforming game, once per console life with the rest of the life cycle being filled with spinoffs, party and sports games.

Sure the NES had 3 Marios but one was another game reskinned with Mario. But on the SNES, we had Super Mario World, but after that we started seeing Mario spinoffs emerge like Yoshi's Island, Super Mario Kart and Super Mario RPG. Then on the N64 afte SM64, the rest of that console's life was mostly the begining of the info dump of Mario Party/Sports games with a little gem titled Paper Mario thrown in. Even with the GC, after Sunshine and a 2nd PM, the rest of the console life was Mario Sports and Party games as well.

But then with the Wii after the stellar Super Mario Galaxy a lot of us assumed we wouldn't see another true Mario adventure until the next console but then at E3 2009 we got both Super Mario Galaxy 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii which everyone started throwing a fit over despite the same folks complaining about only getting "one true Mario game per console life." And now as of recently, it seems like Mario games are constantly coming out of the pipline. It's kind of ironic of how for years people complained that Sonic was focusing on "quantity over quality" where when it came to actual adventure platforming games, Mario stood back and now it's almost switched around. The stream of Sonic games has backed off and it seems like Mario's constantly coming out with stuff.

Now in fairness the Mario games are not "awful" even with NSMB2, the game controls well and plays well, it's just a lot of the same. Many have said NSMBU is doing enough new to keep it from being too stale and as I haven't played that I'll reserve judgement. Now the reason we're seeing so many 2D sidescrollers is that they sell better. NSMBWii sold more than either Galaxy game. Why? Because the masses show time and time again they want the same thing over and over again. Look at Madden and Call of Duty. Sunshine made some radical changes to the Mario formula and everyone complained about how they hated FLUDD and liked the parts where FLUDD was gone and you were just platforming in space.

But I agree wtih the video that it is about time to shake things up a bit again. And like many of you I'm hoping that the new 3D Mario shown off at E3 will shake things up a bit.

I understand that a sequel should play rather similar to the predecessor, but little changes (added power up) are not enough for a whole game, costing the consumer $50. The "New" series has gone too far in my opinion, releasing four titles with hardly any changes in each.