Will there ever be a 3d mario game that isn't star finder mario?

[The Ghost of RubangB]

Khuutra said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:

Khuutra said:

Very interesting, then. Nintendo can fit a lot of content out of relatively few assets

Oh you have no idea.  Brain Age is something crazy like 10 or 20 MB and will probably outsell any game that is ever put on a Blu-Ray disc.  Aside from a few crazy-giant games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime Trilogy, Nintendo makes the smallest games by a large margin.  A bigger game is more often a sign of sloppy programming than more content.  Only Nintendo and some wackos like Will Wright who understand the power of procedural generation really know how to minimize game size while maximizing options and fun.  Have you ever seen some of the stuff that the procedural indie guys can do in the demo scene?

Nintendo hides resources everywhere like crazy.  Even in the first Super Mario Bros., they used the same graphic for the cloud and the bush.  They just changed the color.  They're the kings of crazy shortcuts like that.  If you look at the list of the best selling games of all time, not only are the top 10 Nintendo games, but they're probably some of the smallest games made for their respective consoles.

Your whole post is very interesting as a read and makes me want to look up some figures, but:

Brain Age is something crazy like 10 or 20 MB

What.

Yeah I got worried that I might've been exaggerating so I looked up some game sizes.  Here are the sizes of some of the most successful games of all time:

Mario Kart DS: 24 MB (18.01 million sales, 16th best-selling game of all time)

New Super Mario Bros.: 20 MB (21.93 million sales, 11th best-selling game of all time)

Brain Age: 8 MB (19.10 million sales, 13th best-selling game of all time)

Super Mario Bros. 3 is like 230 KB or something.  That's an okay .jpg or .gif these days, but its VC sales alone are greater than most new games.  And other devs complain if XBLA/PSN/WW have size restrictions? (17.28 million sales, 18th best-selling game of all time)

The original Game Boy Tetris is about 20 KB.  That's basically a text file.  It was probably even smaller before they added the graphics.  In the beginning the blocks were made out of |_| type characters. (30.26 million sales, 4th best-selling game of all time, and that's ONLY on the Game Boy, not including the more than 100 million sales on mobile phones)

Perfect gameplay needs nothing else!  This is why I'm so into indie gaming these days.  2 people can make World of Goo, 2 people can make Braid, and 3 people can make BIT.TRIP BEAT.  It took hundreds of people 5 years straight to make Red Dead Redemption, while BIT.TRIP BEAT already has 3 sequels from the same 3 guys.