Here’s another thing that got messed up when Mario changed from adventures to random, jumbled up “Mario elements.”
In Mario 3, the Princess sends you letters between each world, but then before the final world is when she is kidnapped and is unable to send you a letter. In Mario 64, she sends you one letter before she is kidnapped.
But in the Mario Galaxy games, you get letters from Peach despite the fact that she was kidnapped at the start of the game. And despite the fact that she was taken across the galaxy. People say “it does not have to make sense, it’s Mario!” But in the old Mario games, it DID made sense. The Princess sent you on a quest to rescue the seven kings, and sent you supplies to help. When she got kidnapped, she couldn’t send you anything.
Mario games used to be an immersive experience. Now, they are mechanical experiences. When you played a Mario game, you entered a fantasy world. Now when you play a Mario game, you are playing a machine of mechanics.