People who have never played LittleBigPlanet will often say that the level editor is the most important part of the game. If you've taken the time to build a complete level yourself, you probably also played other levels enough to realize that the best feature by far in LBP is the ability to play a platformer multiplayer; the ability the slap and grab your friends, or actually help them right when they least expect it. I can't imagine playing LBP for hours on end in singleplayer. I've probably put in around 10-20 hours in singleplayer, and upwards of 100 hours in online and local multiplayer (you can do both at the same time).
So, if the gameplay of LBP has one defining characteristic, I would say it's the multiplayer modes the game offers, which are really unique amongst platformers.
But did Miyamoto see LBP, get a kick out of it, and decide he wanted to make a game that had similar multiplayer modes? I don't think anyone can claim to actually know the thought process that goes into Miyamoto's game design. That's like saying you know what God is thinking, isn't it?
But the original poster was asking whether we think the one game will remind us of the other.
I'll probably be playing it with the same friends who come over to play LBP. So they'll have that in common. Aside from that, there are a few features the games share (based on what we know about NSMB Wii so far):
1.) They're the only four player platformers ever created (other examples?)
2.) you can grab other players and mess them up
3.) You try to get through the level together, but you compete for points in a free-for-all with a winner at the end of each level
4.) the screen zooms out when players move to the far edges of the screen (the way fighting games have always done, but platformers never had a reason to until they tried to add multiplayer on one screen... did they?)
So in the end, NSMB Wii probably remind me just enough of LBP to make me really want to play it, with the added promise of classic mario level designs, power ups, art style, and the inimitable gameplay polish that Nintendo brings to their games.
