I love Super Mario Bros. The original Super Mario Bros. was one of the first games I'd ever played and later with Super Mario Bros. 3, I completely fell in love with the franchise. With each new release I played, I loved it all over again, but I just could never get into New Super Mario Bros.

Now, I don't doubt that they're good games. Maybe they're great games. Heck, it wouldn't even suprise me if they played better than the originals. My issue isn't that they aren't fun, my problem is that they have no identity. When New Super Mario Bros. released for the DS, I didn't see it as the start of a new rebooted series of 2D Mario games; I saw it as a celebration of 1,3, and World. And anniversery game with no anniversery. There's no problem with that until you do it three more times the exact same way.

It then stops being a celebration, and becomes an exploitation. Now I can't look at New Super Mario Bros. game the same way I look at a game like Sonic Generations or something, because this is 2D Mario now. Each 2D Mario game used to have a destinct visual and audio identity. Now, they all look like level packs. I have the same problem with games like Galaxy 2 and Super Mario 3D World and Land. Instead of forging their own identities, they choose to exploit the identities of other games, diluting the originals as a result. Allow me to give an example of what I mean.

Heres the typical ending of a stage in the first 4 2D Mario games.

Super Mario Bros.:

Super Mario Bros. 2:

Super Mario Bros. 3:

Super Mario World:

Now let's do the same thing for the four New Super Mario Bros. games.

New Super Mario Bros.:

New Super Mario Bros. Wii:

New Super Mario Bros. 2:

New Super Mario Bros. U:

And to drive the point home, here's the same thing in 3D Land and World:

I struggle to defend how Nintendo doesn't "rehash Mario," when shit like this goes on. Let me be clear, there's nothing wrong with having a flagpole. In throwback games like the original NSMB it made sence, because it was a celebration of classic games. Now, it's not. Now this is a rechurned feature in Mario games for no other reason than pandering. A staple that was never staple to begin with. Mario was never identified with flagpoles until they took a throwback from one game and ran it through the ground. Whenever people walk about how 3D World and 3D Land are a mixture of 2D and 3D Mario games, they always bring flagpoles up as an example of how it's an example of 2D Mario, as if they were ever a 2D Mario "thing." They weren't. They're now a "NSMB/isoMario thing" as far as im concerned, and take away everything that was unique about their apperance in the original game.

These games are filled with that sort of unoriginality. They take things that were unique about the classics, and mass produce them until they stop feeling special. In 20 years, games like NSMB won't feel classic; they'll feel phoned in and act as an example of the most unoriginal Mario had been. Nintendo had an awesome idea with Super Mario 3D Land. Making an isometric platformer was a great idea, and debuting it on a system with stereoscopic 3D adds to its possibilities. No mater how much I love that game from a gameplay perspective though, it has absolutely no individual identity as a Mario game. It's just an isometric NSMB.

The same problem arises with Super Mario 3D World, and it's arguably more painful here. 3D World holds a very destinct jazzy audio identity, one that is unique from any Mario game before it, but it is absolutely anchored to this visually unremarkable game. And by visually unremarkable, I of course mean visually indestinct. Where the difference between the way SMB looked compared to SMB2, 3, and World were monumental, the difference between the way 3D Land and 3D World look are incremental. Anyone with a brain can tell you that 3D World looks heads and shoulders better, than 3D Land. That's not the point. The point is that they don't look different.

There was no such thing as a "typical Mario game" before NSMB. Now we have six of them. That doesn't mean they're bad. All the ones I've played that I complain about are phenominal. But they aren't special. That's why the situation with 3D World is so painful. Because it came the closest to breaking that. It came the closest to not being just an HD level pack of another generic, but great, game. But it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't forge enough of it's own identity. Instead of building a Mario game from scratch, they built one from off the shelf peaces of every other, only adding a little originality once the damage was already done. For every level that looked like this:

And this:

There were many more moments of this:

And this:

It's mind numbing how simple it would have been to have given this game its own identity. Make the hub world an isometric carnival, where every world is accessed through a different attraction. Make the end of the stage a hot air balloon that takes you away. Make the check points big, self playing saxaphones or something. Do something to give yourself a unique identity that's more than a few unique stages. In Galaxy, it's not like every stage was space themed, but the game did little things that kept the motif going, like the launch stars in every level. 3D World, Land, and the NSMB games don't have that individuality. They don't take those little steps to become independant, especially the NSMB games. That doesn't make them bad games, but I just can't get into it.

Yeah the NSMB series is painfully lacking in effort and identity.
The levels are well crafted, but they've taken "generic" to the level of an art form.

I agree about the NSMB series (even though I enjoyed U) but not really the 3D series. They feel much more distinct, in my opinion. Especially 3D World.

I do think that Nintendo needs to start differentiating their titles more, though. We need to see bizarre games like Sunshine, imo.

So what you really hate are sequels?

I will never understand how people always love the 2nd and 3rd expansions of a franchise(sequels) but hate the 15th and 20th even though they're all just "exploitations" of the very first game.

Bravo. You just put into words what I've never been able to. I've played all six of the games you've mentioned, but never really enjoyed them to the extent that I did SMB 1-3 and World and could never figure out quite why. Just chalked it up to getting older (which may be part of it).

SMB 1-3 and World all had distinct art styles and level design to call their own. Basically, it comes down to what you said: identity. NSMB is no longer an homage. The series needs a break until it can reinvent itself again.

Between NSMB there's a point of distinction among Mario games. The older ones had varied levels which had different concepts in them, the newer ones are minimalistic and consist just on basic platforming. So that's why Super Mario Bros. 3 can't compare to Super Mario 3D World, honestly. And that's why I prefer the modern games (I don't like the handheld and Wii NSMB entries though, they are very boring), they just go the point and look beautiful to me with that minimalistic approach. 

It doesn't sound like that's what he's saying, though. Just the NSMB and Super Mario 3D Land/World games because they lack an identity of their own, contrary to the original SMB series which, even though they were sequels, all played and looked different from each other. 

The only thing that makes them destinct is their gameplay. When there are two more entries in the 3D series following the trend 3D World already chose to follow, that lack of individuality will become all the clearer. For me, 3D World is merely a half step in the right direction.

I don't see a problem here. People hate change. Why do the NSMB games need each their own identity? Just because the first games were different, doesn't mean we need a completely new world with every new game. NSMB games have their own identity that they share between all of the games under the "New" banner. And it's not like you can expand a simple concept with a confined world and lore indefinitely. There was a reason why they had to take Mario to the Galaxy.

This is nothing more than nostalgia and Franchise fatigue, which certainly is not a fault of the games. OP is also not at fault here, since it's only natural to grow out of things. Hell even I am growing a bit tired of AC games even though I still love them and Unity is as much as a valid entry to the Franchise as AC2 was. If you are tiored of something it's very easy to find faults, even though the same faults might be present in previous games.

Whoa you think the 3D series are too similar? Are you not taking account to the musical difference in 3D land and World? And even the most basic level of 3D world looked fantastic. Even that basic grass level. And that overworld was awesome because you weren't restricted to follow the paths. Hell in Galaxy 2 (a fantastic game) you had to follow linear path ways when selecting levels. I'll give Galaxy 2 credit for having small hub world but that was basically a tiny planet you can explore in under a minute. Koji Kondo's music for it made it up though.

If only I didn't store my Wii U away I could show you all the great graphical variety in 3D world through miiverse posts alone.