Analyst: "Consumers are showing Nintendo the middle finger."

[Erik Aston]

I would sum up 2D Mario this way: The NSMB games recreated the FUN, but they did not recreate the AWESOME. They need to treat SMB like the premier series in the history of gaming, and make games that focus on just being bloody spectacular. New environments. Jumble up the order of the game instead of just 8 straight worlds. Introduce some new enemies and new boss enemies. Make badass music instead of "fun" music. Blow us away with the number of levels. More levels, shorter levels, harder levels. More open ended map. Different playable characters with different abilities. Over-powered power-ups, like the Hammer Bros. suit. Etc. The NSMB games were too cookie cutter, not enough production values, and got away with it by being really, really fun.

3D Mario needs to stop pretending to be something it's not, and just make Super Mario 128. We never got a real sequel to Mario 64; instead they went off the deep end with Mario Sunshine, went on an acid trip with Mario Galaxy, and now are regressing to patheticness with Mario 3D Land. Mario 64 had small, arena-like worlds, with stars hidden around in places that did not necessarily represent the "end" of the level. The problem with Mario 64 is that it threw you out of the level after collecting a star, and made you select the star you wanted to find from a menu. That is dumb, and the subsequent games strengthened this moronic design decision instead of fixing it. A good 3D Mario game would be about 25 little self-contained worlds to run around in, similar to the worlds from Mario 64, where you get rewarded with stars just for exploring and playing with things.

Basically 2D Mario is treated like a chore, and 3D Mario is treated like a science experiment. Just get your heads out of your asses and make the games people want. Yes, I'm giving Nintendo the middle finger.