Master Malstrom,
I’ve been waiting for you to do something like this! I should hope the unfortunate Nintendo employee assigned to your site is paying attention.
Now, my idea is not so much for a “new” world, but for a way to introduce the use of new worlds after the stagnation of the NSMB series. Essentially, World 1 would be a distilled version of the previous NSMB games. You’d start with a typical introductory “Grass Land” stage. Level 2 would be Desert Land, Level 3 would be Water Land, then Ice Land, Jungle Land, Mountain Land, Sky Land…with Level 8 being a lava stage transitioning into a fortress level and battle with Bowser. After that, the map of the Mushroom Kingdom would expand to show a huge game world filled with all sorts of new and interesting areas like the ones you and your glorious readers are suggesting. By dwarfing the scale of the previous games, this opening world would show just how much grander the content of such a new game would be. Just as Super Mario Bros. 3 started with simple levels reminiscent of the original Super Mario Bros., so too would this game take the now classic Mario tropes and explore the worlds beyond. And frankly, the NSMB games are so devoid of original content that they could easily be summarized in a single world.
Another non-original world that could work would be Super Mario Sunshine’s Isle Delfino. I’m no fan of Sunshine, but there’s plenty going on in its setting that could be redeemed in a 2D Mario (the theme park, the harbor, the various resort towns, etc). Actually, there a number of games you could apply this concept to. Hell, they could probably just design the next game as “Mario Generations” and call it a day (as long as there’s none of the silly story crap like in Sonic Generations).
Finally, I’ll suggest an actual new world; Underground Land! The Mario series has always had underground stages, so it’s surprising that they’ve never taken the concept to the next level by making a world around it. Mario could venture deeper and deeper into the Earth, going from an excavation site an area filled with drilling and mining machinery, to an underground lake, to caverns filled with bizarre new lifeforms. And of course, there would be pipes. Eventually, Mario would hit some lava, and accidentally trigger an eruption, forcing him to rush to the surface as fast as possible while a Koopa Kid (or some other enemy in a flying machine) tries to knock him in!
I think everyone has a new Mario world in them, even the designers forced to reinvent the wheel at Nintendo. So good luck dealing with the flood of emails you’ve triggered!
This person knows how to write an email! He addresses it to ‘Master Malstrom’ (why? because I am the master) and refers to the readers of this site as ‘glorious readers’ (because the readers are glorious as well as amazing, intelligent, incredible, and all-around awesome).
You make a truly ingenious point.
When Super Mario Brothers was in development, Miyamoto originally pitched the game to have five worlds. Once the others agreed to it, he turned the page and said, “It’s actually eight! Ah hahahah!”
Those of us who remember when Link to the Past came out, how the game was presented was as if getting the Master Sword and killing the wizard was the ‘end of the game’. But the game plot twists you and says, “You thought you were at the end, but you’re only just beginning!”
Above: A little hard to hear, but at the end it says when Link touches the Master Sword: “Right when you think your search is over, it is really just beginning…” This was the big ‘thing’ Nintendo did with Link to the Past. They tried to fool the gamer into thinking they were done with the game after killing the wizard but to blow the gamer away with all the content that was yet to come.
Dragon Quest 2 did this as well. It showed you Dragon Quest 1’s map and then showed you Dragon Quest 2’s map. That was all that needed to be said for the content value of Dragon Quest 2.
Above: Dragon Quest 1 map
Above: Dragon Quest 2 map (Note that Dragon Quest 1 map is INSIDE Dragon Quest 2. Dragon Quest 1 is 1/4th the entire world of Dragon Quest 2.) All of Japan rushed to get their hands on Dragon Quest 2 of course.
The most famous example of tricking the player that the game was finished when it was really just beginning was with the original Final Fantasy. How does that game start? You level up, get gear, and then eventually go to the evil temple, slay the bad guy, and save the princess. This normally would be a full game in the pre-NES days and the Final Fantasy developers knew it. What would have been the ‘end credits’ are actually the ‘beginning credits’ as you realize you’ve barely begun your lengthy adventure.
What I think the emailer is suggesting is for Nintendo to play a trick on all of us. Let us call this Mario something like Super Mario Brothers M (M for Malstrom!). In Super Mario Brothers M, the game’s worlds are exactly the same eight as we know them (I think Giant World turned into a jungle or something. And Pipe World fell apart and turned into Mountain World?). The level length is around the same as Super Mario Brothers 3. World One had, what, six stages in them with a fortress and air ship? And two of those stages were optional.
When you get to World 8 and defeat Bowser, something happens. Maybe an eruption in the Space Time Continuum. Maybe Bowser flees. But NEW WORLDS are opened then. And I don’t mean a Star World (or Special World or Mushroom or Flower bonus worlds). We mean NEW WORLDS like Haunted World or Space World or Barren World. Some new power-ups would be in those worlds, of course. And brand new enemies we have NEVER seen before. How many new worlds? I don’t know. Enough to overwhelm the reader with all this amazing new content.
So when Super Mario Brothers M comes out, all the reviewers, forum dwellers, and Malstrom scream and complain about how it seems like Nintendo did no work on the game, that it seems like another recycling. Nintendo stays quiet, silently laughing at us. And then when we beat Bowser, we go “OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!” and start freaking out. People would set down their controllers, fling open their doors, and start running into the streets. Chaos would ensue.
I love this suggestion because it ensures a sense of continuity. We have the eight normal worlds PLUS MORE.
“But this would be too much content for poor Nintendo to handle.” Only if 2d Mario isn’t rushed or is a launch game. 2d Mario games are MUCH easier to make today due to modern tools. They can just cut and paste to make new levels very easily with their editor. When NSMB Wii came out, people had not only downloaded it but were hacking it to make their own new levels as if their own new 2d Mario game. Obviously, new worlds involves more than just ‘cutting and pasting’, but if given proper development time (i.e. the same time that a 3d Mario gets or what a Classic 2d Mario game got), this should be no problem at all.
“But what if someone wants to start off playing the New Worlds?” That is what Warp Zones are for, silly. I’m a big fan of the Warp Zones, and they should stay in their place.
As for the other suggestions, Underground World has the same problems as a Ghost Mansion World or a Castle World. You’re taking something that appears in every world and turning it into a full sized world. That risks making the underground stages in other worlds stale. But I can see where you’re going with it as classic fantasy has a rich world underground.
I definitely think Delfino should become a World. It would be like a Vacation World full of beaches, resorts, and so on. It would bring the Delfino content more into the Mario canon. A 2d version of Delfino could be interesting.
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