It was a major event when a Super Mario Brothers game was released. Super Mario Brothers is not some dry, statistical sequence of jumps and pits, of placed koopa troopas and goombas. Super Mario Brothers is an adventure. And adventure through where? Why, through the Mushroom Kingdom.
The magic of Mario is not about Mario but about the Mushroom Kingdom. Super Mario Brothers, despite its small levels, immersed the player in a fantastical universe. The blue sky was very paramount to this occurring.
America got the better deal than Japan with Super Mario Brothers 2 using Doki Doki Panic. Sub-Con was, itself, a wonderful universe and a delight to explore.
And then there was Super Mario Brothers 3 which, in Miyamoto’s words, was a ‘further exploration of the Mushroom Kingdom’. Instead of having a few levels, we saw a map of the entire world. There were Toad houses where the Toads would help you on your journey. There were unique castles in each land each with a unique ruler. Peach wasn’t the only ruler. And every world felt very different from Giant World to Pipe Plaza to Water World to Sky World. One of the reasons why Super Mario Brothers 3 is so loved is because of how well immersed we become in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Super Mario Brothers 4 left Mushroom Kingdom for Dinosaur Land. We found this disappointing since we wanted more of what we got in Super Mario Brothers 3. Regardless, Dinosaur Land was a treat. Even the Ghost ship hinted at one of the past airships crashing and sinking after the events of Super Mario Brothers 3.
And then we have Super Mario Brothers 5 released 18 years later. It takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom but goes backward from Super Mario Brothers 3. There are no unique castles and rulers for each world. The worlds are also very unimaginative. Mountain World? Where was Giant World? Oh, that’s right, it was placed in Mario Galaxy 2 while 2d Mario got the short stick because Miyamoto is a jerk. As disappointing as this lack of new content was, Mario 5 got a pass because it was 18 years since Super Mario Brothers 4.
With other Mario games, the Mario universe was further developed. In Super Mario Land, Mario went to another kingdom called Tartanula (or something like that) which had Egyptian themes and space ships. In Mario 64, we explored Peach’s castle.
The job people hire Mario games to do is not just jump mechanics but an adventure. Nintendo no longer appears to have the talent in order to do this anymore. One of the reasons why is that the ‘adventure’ is delivered through a ‘narrative’ (i.e. someone ‘telling’ what is going on instead of ‘showing’). Imagine how lame Super Metroid would be if Samus kept talking throughout the game about ‘oh, we are in Brinstar again. I remember this place. Let me vomit my emotions.’ The reason why narratives are so hotly hated in video games is because they remove the power of interpretation away from the player. Like novels, the audience must be allowed to be in charge of the interpretation. Saying ‘Koopa is bad guy’ is nothing compared to the audience coming to that conclusion on their own. The adventure is something the audience arrives to at their own. Then, the audience talks to each other and share their encounters about how they all came to see the game as an adventure.
Nintendo’s software developers have so deformed into a statistical think tank that they have lost the power of immersion. Look at Super Mario 3dLand. What a bland name.
Imagine a dish filled with delicious lamb and slowly cooked rice sprinkled with the most wonderful of spices. Any restaurant would give the dish a spectacular name and display it with beautiful colored photos.
But at the Nintendo Cafe, the dish would be called ‘Lamb and Rice Formula’.
Super Mario 3dland is the most unappetizing name I’ve ever heard. Why not give 3d Land some soul? Make it a country in itself. ‘Lost Continent’ or ‘Land of the Super Koopas’ or anything but ‘3d Land’. Even in Super Mario Land, the world had a name, its own bad guy, and its own princess. It was a self-contained world. Super Mario 3dLand sounds like some science experiment.
Imagine if we renamed Zelda: Ocarina of Time to ‘Zelda: 3d Land’. How unappetizing is ‘3d Land’, how bland.
Nintendo is no longer a content company. Meaning, they cannot produce new content. These new games, which they mislabel as ‘new content’, is nothing more than re-configurations of the old content. Nothing new is presented in these games except, maybe, some new mechanics. There is no reason to buy these games. The customer is missing nothing.