Super Bro. Bros.

The New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS has been out for little over a week now. My son received a copy for his birthday yesterday, but I haven’t had the chance to play it yet.

Why is Mario the only franchise that doesn’t get flak for copying the same game over and over again. To the best of my memory, there was only one game in the franchise that seriously deviated from the standard hop’n’bop formula, and that was Super Mario Bros. 2.. That game wasn’t even intended as a Mario sequel to begin with, if legend holds true. The sprites were traded out at the last second to cash in on the success of the first. After that, the true-to-the-original antics of Super Mario Bros. 3 seemed like a quasi-religious experience.

Ever since then, the main cannon for Mario games has been the same. Of course there’s been spin-offs and guest appearances in nearly hundreds of other games. The thing is, no one ever complains when their Mario game feels like a re-hash of the old one. It seems like a joke to be calling it the, “New Super Mario Bros.,” when we’ve been playing the same game for over 25 years.

The “New” Super Mario Bros. for the 3DS added at least one new element: 3D. It wasn’t simply a side-scroller. Mario had to move forward and backwards into the scenery as well. The sequel on the 3DS doesn’t bother with the 3D aspect of the 3DS, and instead is merely a side-scroller with its first level virtually copying the first world in the first Super Mario Bros. game on the NES, but more in the style of Super Mario Bros. 3.

Isn’t it strange how Nintendo can put out the same game every year, but when other franchises, like Madden, CoD, Halo, etc. try to everyone calls foul?

The game focuses on collecting gold coins, which has always been an odd thing about the franchise. Every 100 gold coins earns Mario a new life, but they have no other value. You can’t buy things with them, like it other games. They’re like a second scoring system within the confines of the high score. No one really questions why the coins exist at all, or why as players we spend inordinate amounts of time on our timed courses bopping our heads against blocks to get more coins.