New Super Mario Bros. U is an enigma of a game, perhaps one of the biggest I have ever experienced in my years of playing. This game is fun, its entertaining, its clever, its creative, it cements Mario as one of the most dependable franchises for gamers worldwide----but something is missing. Something is lacking. Something is off. Something isn’t clicking. And all this can be blamed solely, mainly in the presentation.
The New Mario Bros. series has been a proven success time and time again, with the DS installment selling 29 million copies and the Wii version selling 26 million copies. And no doubt this version will sell to those numbers when and if the WiiU takes off to the gaming public. But throughout this franchise, the look, style, and tone have remained eerily consistent. The only new feature brought to the table is a couple new power-ups and the ability to play with others. While this was a great new addition to the Wii version---which ultimately saved the game, it gives us a major sense of déjà vu in the WiiU iteration.
The graphics look the same, the soundtrack is practically the same, the plot doesn’t change, the layout of the levels are pretty much cookie-cutter copies, and there just isn’t a drastic change unlike what we experienced in the Mario Bros. trilogy in the NES and the Mario World duo in the SNES days. Even the 3-D platforming path from Mario 64 to Galaxy 2 involved a cluster of obvious transitions—with Yoshi’s Island and Mario Sunshine being the most deviant-from-the-formula. But the WiiU version looks almost exactly like the Wii version except for the HD and a few nice-looking levels.
Now, this game is fun, entertaining, and life in gaming should not be about the pretty colors and ascetics. But this isn’t the 90s, in which gamers were down to a few options. Nowadays, we have awesomely cheap games that can provide valuable levels of entertainment in the forms of phones, tablets, and even in the online shops attached to the Big 3 systems. For the price of one WiiU game, you can get 6 good games, 12 random assorted ones, or dozens of entertaining apps to occupy the time.
You need to entice the consumers and convince them that the $60 will be worth it. New Super Mario Bros. U fails to do so in every aspect of the word, as it looks like a polished Wii game and plays almost toe-to-toe like a Wii game released several years ago. There is no drastic obvious change in the game, so why fork over the money when you still have the Wii version and the cheaper 3DS version to refer to?
Nintendo dropped the ball extensively here because underneath the extremely shoddy presentation is a very good game with plenty of challenge, and great level design. If Nintendo ever plans on winning the eighth generation, they need to step up on their presentation of games. Relying on reputation can get you only so far.
The 2-D Mario franchise is stuck on neutral, and its up to the staff at Nintendo to switch the gears.
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