The transition from Super Mario Bros 3 to Super Mario World was the pinnacle of 2D mario. The 2D mario games from the past 6 years have been stale. I mean the DS version was alright since it was a long while since there was a 2D mario but the last 3 in the series have been nothing short of milking.

The NSMB games lack soul. They have boring music the level design is to simple the whole stages  are just the ground. SMB3 for example had different "levels" in each stage ( as in stuff to do on the ground fly to the sky there is also stuff up there you can find etc. the 3ds version seems to have that because you can fly and do stuff on top of trees etc.  WiiU seems to lack it again)

They removed the upwards kick for items /turtle shells etc. which makes the gameplay feel less fresh compared to SMW


The games feel like SMB1 with 2.5D graphics strange music and Yoshi thrown in for fanservice...   it all looks like made within an hour in a  simple level editor...

Also i think many of the games in the NES early snes era benefited from their adjacent Saturday morning cartoons. The cartoons gave an aspect to each game that was not present in the game itself and it make them more appealing to me.

Mario cartoons (both Brothers and World), Captain N (introduced me to megaman, castlevania, metroid, zelda and kid Icarus), ducktales, chip and dale rescue rangers (got the nes games because of these), teenage mutant ninja turtles (same as the disney cartoons), the one two punch was pretty effective for its time.

I have played every Super Mario Brothers game for every console, including handhelds.

I have to say, I really enjoyed NSMB:U. It is by far the best entry in the NSMB series and was actually a challenge at some spots, which was nice. Add challenge mode and boost mode on top of that and I think its really a spectacular game.

I actually would put it in the #3 spot for 2D mario games after SMB3 and SMW.

I do enjoy a good round of Super Friendship Breaker at parties but as a solo experience I still much prefer SMW.

I'm sure most people would agree that they wouldn't go back to playing the New smb games as they would the old skool mario games because of the nostalgia they get when they play the old ones.

Nostalgia + A great game > No nostalgia + a good game

However, which games are better is just a matter of opinion and personal preference. It always is. It's always been this way.

I too still play the classic Mario games but found NSMB to be extremely uninspired and flat out boring. It's one of the big reasons I really don't bother with the new Nintendo systems. If the third party support is non-existent and the first party games are this mediocre why bother?

The first three NSMB games were definitely missing something that stopped them from matching SMB3 or SMW, but I think NSMB U is definitely the one that is the closest to replicating that level of quality.

I played all the NES/SNES Mario games and I think NSMBWii is excellent,really, really fun but I only play it with friends, I never play it alone.

The addition of multiplayer in Wii was something I had always dreamed about, and it didn't dissapoint.