The original Super Mario Brothers was the first NES game I played when I got the NES as birthday present back in 1988 (my older brother had an Atari, so I had a bit of an experience with games, even though I was only four..Pitfall being the very first game I played), fell in love with it immediately, and its sequels were among my favorite NES games, also loved Super Mario World, though not to the extent of Super Mario Bros 3, which is my favorite 2D Mario game.
When NSMB for the DS was announced I was pretty excited, and despite not enjoying handheld gaming I had to make an exception..after all, it was the first new 2D Mario in 15 years! (I never considered Yoshi´s Island a 'true' 2D Mario game)...though, after finishing it, it was just 'ok'.
When NSMB Wii was released 3 years ago, I got pretty darn excited (again), despite not having really enjoyed NSMB like I expected to, but I thought to myself "hey, maybe the reason I didn´t really enjoy NSMB was because it´s a handheld game, and I don´t like handheld gaming, and this is the first 2D Mario on a home console in 18 years!"...as predicted, I enjoyed it far more than the DS version, but still something was missing.
And more recently, i borrowed my brother´s 3DS and Wii U to play NSMB 2 and NSMBU...didn´t enjoy NSMB 2 and was somewhat looking forward to NSMBU after hearing about the game being a successor to Mario World, but honestly, I got to world 4 and have no desire to keep playing.
Thing is, it´s not because I´m tired of 2D platformer games...I´m not, I love some of them on XboxLive Arcade, really enjoy DKC Returns, and even today, i can go back and play Mario 3/Mario World from start to finish and love every second of it, but i can´t say the same about the NSMB games.
My opinion is..Retro did a better job of capturing the "essence" of the DKC games than Nintendo has done of capturing that "magic" of the old 2D Mario games.
One of the things that I think it´s pretty lame is the recycled music, especially that 'wah wah' music...listen to this superb Mario Galaxy OST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ_mM06vkdE
Why can´t they put that effort in the new 2D Mario games?
