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Gamers across the globe always gain a certain level of excitement every time a new Mario game comes out. This year we've all been anticipating the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, hoping it would be a return to form and embrace the 2-D side-scrolling Mario gameplay that we all grew up on. But does the update hold a candle to it's predecessors? In this week's Soapbox, Adam tries to explain why he wasn't as compelled to play this new Mario game as he has been with previous installments. How do you feel about New Super Mario Bros. Wii?
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ShaStOne
Super Mario Bros. 1 - 3 are timeless classics, they perfected themselves with what they had. Even though NSMB may have new worlds, items, etc., many people would rather play the originals. I think The Sess is right, this is because of our expectations. Right when we start the game up, we set our expectations in stone, and just like everything else, we expect games to evolve. Look at Pokemon: Yes, it's still selling great, but most of us who played the original games are bored with the sequels. We didn't just get too mature for it, it's because over 10 years later, Pokemon has hardly evolved (no pun intended). Back then, did anyone think it would have made such little progress by now? It's because these games are REFINING themselves when we want them to EVOLVE themselves that we are becoming bored with them. We want them to change, while keeping their identity. It's a natural expectation; everything is supposed to change and progress, and when it doesn't, it seems unnatural. It's like Mario not going Super when eating a mushroom, a Charmander not evolving when at Lv. 16.
There's a menace claiming credit for this phenomenon of becoming unimpressed with series you once loved: nostalgia. It says that this happens not because the games have changed, but because you have. That's entirely true, but the problem is that dismissing it as nostalgia is always a negative, glass half-empty connotation. Look at it on its light side: you were around when the series was new, when it did things never done before. It's BECAUSE you were around back then that you know where the games should have progressed by now. No, it's not memories that blind, it's the LACK of them.
Yes, you've changed... and you expect games to change with you. You can always appreciate retro games for how impressive they were for their time, setting expectations for them accordingly, but you've set new, bigger goals, and you expect games to do the same.
ShaStOne
Super Mario B
QuickKick89
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Adam.
But it's interesting you mention this with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. In truth, this has been going on with Nintendo for years. They've never cared about games with strong stories, enriched presentations, or gameplay that goes beyond simplification. They could care less about games as an art form, they just want to make simple stuff that anyone can play. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm a gamer. I play games to have an experience. Not just have fun. That's why I own a PS3 and a 360, and sold my Wii after Super Smash Bros. Brawl failed to keep me entertained for more than 2 weeks. I haven't seen a single reason to re-purchase one since, and that includes what's coming in 2010. The same goes for the DS - the PSP is my handheld of choice because the games are actually enriching me as a gamer...not just being "fun".
And is it just me, or does anyone else wish that Nintendo would just go third party like Sega did, or better yet, just get out of the industry entirely? I think the industry would be a lot better off with them gone: we'd finally be able to see tons of awesome hardcore content come out, plus developers would actually need to TRY to put out great games, or die out, without a place to toss all of their shovelware like with the Wii and DS.
FOOL-IV
I may be horribly late to the party here as it's taken until now for myself to get some free time to do something like watch these Soapboxes, but man, had to comment and just say that was absolutely bang on on my feelings at the moment in games. I too have this constant need for structure and reward in my games these days as apposed to just saying "oh lets blow off some steam in Super Smash Brothers". I think for me, as I grow older and look into the endless abyss that is the life of a working class citizen, I keep trying to validate my time spent with games, and I truly cannot validate the time I spend with some of my games anymore during which I don't progress or have something to show for it. Today I jumped three levels in Fallout 3, now only two away from that final 30; progress!
EccentricSage
This was a great soapbox, Adam, the Psychologist. :D
It's funny timing because I've been thinking about how I'm just not a good gamer for not finishing the oldschool games.
I was just a young kid when I got Nintendo, and then eventually Sega Genesis. (I don't remember the duration between the two) I got bored with games before I completed them, and then my brother and sister would always fight over the Play Station, so it just became a headache because I'm the oldest and the younger siblings always get their way. I gave up on gaming.
But the game that got me back into gaming was Morrowind. It's actually the first game I ever finished, and just couldn't get enough of. A game that ate a good day and a half up once. lol I think what you say is exactly right. The experience with new games seems much more personal. That's what had always been missing. First time I played Morrowind it was like my dreams had just been realized, and it could only get better from there.
I'm really excited about DA:O, needless to say, but can't afford it yet. But man, does the future look bright! I almost gave up on games again because of cost but I just can't. You really explain it more eloquently than I could, but I know that feeling so well. Since I've set my mind on getting a new game, work really doesn't feel quite so hopeless all of a sudden. lol
thehammer44
When you said \"Yes, my constitution is 17! I can go to bed now.\" I laughed so hard because I knew 100% what you meant. I Agree the sense of reward like that just doesn't exist in the simplicity of Mario. However, isn't that the point of Mario: easy for everyone to pick up, play, and have some fun?
taco_waffles
ya i get it mario was note i say was good but then the added all this stuff tried to make it more diffrent more easy and i like what they did in super mario bros. ds but i mean if something aint broke then dont fix it and mess it up. nintendo u made something good a really big fail u made there be no accomplish ment for people nintendo u fail.
xlxMAVERICxlx
I think that if some older gamers want to return to the way it was while still seeing some of the innovations that the Wii has, then this game is actually worth picking up. If some gamers want to just have good old fun playing as someone with whom they grew up with for years, then this game is for them. I, for one, have always held a spot when playing some of the old Mario games that getting the New Super Mario. Bros for the DS was always one of my best decisions because the game never did me wrong. As far as this game goes, I agree. Motion controls may not be the best decision to use when you do a side scroller but at least it's a minimalistic change of pace in a classic genre. I'm actually looking forward to attach myself to beating the game. I just wonder if it supports a profile system.
gateman21
The one thing I have to say on the matter is it's boring to play by your self you need at least one other person to make it a fun game, example: trying to work together and not fall behind and die. I do agree that things are becoming to simple now, and I think to my self will we ever get a Mario game as difficult but fun as super Mario brothers 3 again?
ValentineHeart82
Nintendo's been so out of touch with gamers that it's pathetic. I mean the SNES was like their golden age, and even then they were stupid enough to give us the Virtual Boy. Since then they were way behind the technology curb with the N64 (Still had great games btw) then they blew it with the lack of online capability for the Gamecube, they went all gimmicky with the DS, and then the Wii, the ultimate Gimmick.
They should have made the Gamecube an Online Machine and done a remake of Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 for it. Double Dash was fun but the multiplayer arenas in MK64 were sorely missed from what I could tell on the forums and a lack of Online mode really hurt it.
And they really never recaptured the magic of Golden Eye 007' but I guess they lost Rare so what can they do? I know, they can make more gimmicky crap!
ValentineHeart82
You know I used to get exactly what Adam described from Baldur's Gate 2, Fallout 2, and Arcanum. There was a sense of story and depth and complexity there that's missing from a lot of games, and there was also the open endedness. There as this sense that I was choosing my party and increasing their power and growing my character and I had choices that really mattered in the game world and I could go back at any time and do X Y and Z
Onikinou
\"Meh\" to the things said in this video. mario is a great playing.
on an unrelated note. i ___kin' hate the use of pointless motion controls and it should die!
Elliott_Ness
Mario is nearing his thirties and needs to get a life.
WHERE IS WARIO?
I want to play a new WARIO game not Mario and his dim wit brother Luigi
EliteBAMF
Platformers are not fun. End Discussion
swordgoatz
Adam, I love you, but I now feel like your shrink.
YoungMitchell23
i complety agree
aceedkins
This is why MMO's are so fiendishly addictive. Not only are you setting personal goals and achieving, but you're doing it with other players who recognize your accomplishments.
jhnnybgood_2001
I wish they'd make another Super Mario RPG. I think it would be interesting to see how it would work on the Wii. There was a lot of potential in that franchise, but Nintendo never really revisited that property after the death of the SNES.
RabidKanid
I'm just going to be honest and upfront in saying that......I NEVER liked Super Mario Bros. 1.
It was one of my first games for my first console, the NES, as a compilation cartridge with Duck Hunt. (Meaning both games on the same cartridge). I remember playing it when I was like 7 and again later on in my life, finding the early stages very hard for me at the time (I haven't seriously played the game since then so it still might be, I don't know, I'm 24 now), the music getting very repetitive, the lack of creativity with the levels being how the ice world is the same as the previous world just with colors switched around to white and how bored/annoyed I was with the prospect of playing the game for a few hours just to get to world 8 and instead opting to use the warp zones to skip all of that and just skill my way to koopa to beat the game. I also mention those horrible \"pick the correct path\" castles in the game where you have to jump on one of 3 levels in the correct order or you'll never see the end and die from a time out. Yes that did happen to me already, it was infuriating.
Anyway, it was for that and other reasons that I never liked the game and the series only got attention from me because I played Super Mario Bros. 3. Of course I didn't beat the game on the first go, but this game had something that the first game never had, creativity in the level design that lead to more interesting places to go and enemies to encounter. I remember feeling awestruck when I got to the Giant World and it became my favorite world to go to. Worried about what was coming next when I made it to the Pirhanna World. Scared when I did get to the 8th world (warp zone or no) and seeing everything dark and gloomy and filled with lava pits. Mario 1 never did that with me and I to this day consider Mario Bros. 3 to be one of the best, if not THE best games to play on the NES and it doesn't matter if you beat it or not, just the experience and the chance to try to get as far as you could was enough.
I know Mario 1 is supposed to be, based on what I hear from nearly everyone in the world, one of the greatest games ever created and it saved video games with the amount of people that bought it and the games magical ability to have the screen keep going to the right once you started walking mario to the right.......I just never understood what was the big deal when I was a kid, and I still really don't. I only played the game because that's what I had. I had Mario 1, Duck Hunt, and Track and Field and I honestly think that even though I found Duck Hunt kind of boring and Track and Field exhausting, yet fun, I found those 2 games more compelling than Mario 1.
Sidewinder69
Adam your self-depreciation gives you no small amount of credit. High five.
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