People are sending you in a lot of ‘great ideas’ for worlds. This is like a secretary going into their boss’s office and saying: ‘Got some great new business strategies. 1. Make more money. I know it’s been done before, but… 2. Try to hire good people.’
What we need is an exploration of the fundamental -mythos- of Mario. What is the single idea that made Mario a character and the game seem to happen in a world rather than just being a ‘Jumpman’ type avatar? In the original Mario Bros arcade game (which people don’t seem to mention that much on here besides you), the whole idea was that Mario and Luigi were plumbers who got sucked into a weirder sewer than they expected. Via the conduit of a sewer pipe, they were taken somewhere slightly different from their own world.
In Super Mario Bros, they left the sewers completely and emerged in an entirely different land. Like kids saying ‘dig a hole deep enough and you’ll come out in China,’ except the Mario Bros actually came out on a different plane of the world from what we think of as normal, or something along those lines.
In Mario Land 1 and 2, he explores different kingdoms. In Mario World, we enter Dinosaur Land.
Instead of thinking of all these different ‘worlds’ for a Mario game, the new game needs to be ‘Super Mario Nexus.’
World 1 will be retro NES Super Mario modernized. Not just the first world, but the first game. World 2 would be Sub-Con, World 3 Sarasaland from Super Mario Land, and so on.
It would connect all the levels. Instead of beating a castle and just magically starting at the beginning of the next world, you’d have to battle through ‘MARIO BROS’ like transition sewers. These would be like little smash bros levels almost, where you fight a handful of enemies to cross the screen or row of screens, but nothing like a ‘level’ of Mario Bros.
Chasing some kind of menace through the worlds. They used to say ‘Princess is in another castle,’ then they would show her in NSMB being dragged from the castle you were in to the next. Gave you a more visceral sense you were pursuing something through all these worlds. Mario should just airlift in a helicopter to 8-8 if he just needs to walk PAST all the stuff in between.
Anyway, here I’ve added to the pile of world crap you’ve had to deal with.
There are so many possibilities with 2d Mario. It’s a shame Nintendo doesn’t care.