I actually managed to sit through that Super Mario 3D Bland trailer, and I noticed something that kind of pissed me off.
This game has a freaking BOOMERANG BROS. Suit! Mind you, for some reason, suits are now given by flowers and mushrooms (propeller suit) instead of being actual suits. Anyway, my point is, how awesome would this suit have been for 2D Mario? Everyone loved the Hammer Bros. Suit! Partially because there were like, two, in the whole game. And Partially because it was awesome! The hammers could kill things that were otherwise invincible, and if you ducked you were protected from hazards by your shell. I imagine this would simply be a variation of that, and there would be NOTHING wrong with that.
Instead the first actually interesting power up idea to come to Mario in a long long time gets shoved into this slow, meandering, wide-open, no challenge, wannabe, Mario gumbo. Super 3D Mario Gumbo.
I noticed this occurs a few times in the trailer. Quite a few ideas and enemies that would otherwise be interesting and fun in an actual Mario game are put into this hollow game. It feels very much like a glorified tech-demo to be honest. A purposeful mocking of old school Mario, maybe. At least some element of it. Everything has the Raccoon tail. Excuse me, the Tanooki tail. Seeing as apparently the two are one and the same.
Did you notice the P-wing? They brought back the P-wing! But you know what it does? Simply warps you to the flag pole. Again completely missing the point of the P-wing. We had the cloud for skipping levels. The P-wing allowed us to fly anytime without worry of finding enough room. Sure we could skip the level if we wanted, but we just as often, if not more often, used it to explore and find the myriad of secrets in the levels.
It’s really irking me how Mario is beginning to be treated. Especially imagining what fun it could have been using the Boomerang Bros. power against them in a fast paced 2D Mario. I don’t see why more enemies couldn’t be used as power-up ideas. It’s always fun to turn the tables. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Especially when they allow unique ways through the game.
It most certainly is not an accident you see 3d Mario treated with all these things while 2d Mario gets something like Miis. It is done deliberately.
Computers and gaming did not go 3d (even the TV and movies cannot go TV). What is happening instead is that everything is going Internet.
The so-called ‘legendary game designer’ cannot see the forest for the trees. He bet his career on the wrong horse, 3d, instead of the right horse, Internet. What has Shigeru Miyamoto done in gaming in relation to the Internet? Absolutely nothing. Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were not highmarks of Miyamoto’s career but a steep decline. The N64 was a bust. So was the Gamecube. And the 3DS, despite it being practically a monopoly, is revealing the market’s resistance to 3d.
Someone needs to tell Nintendo that 3d is not the future of gaming. And someone needs to tell Miyamoto that 3d is not the future of Mario. Miyamoto fighting the market on this is turning him into a huge joke.
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