JazzB1987 on 02 October 2013
Its a "placeholder" game. Well its not the real deal at least. Real marios since Mario64 have larger scale with exploration aspects and also lack the stupid TIMER mechanic (which would just annoy people when they should explore etc).
Nintendo made NSMBU because it was the easiest to make and 3DWorld was the next step. Its simple yet more complex than NSMB and the new "real" Mario game will follow. Nintendo just played it save on a console with small userbase.
I am also pretty sure Nintendo pushed DonkeyKong to 2014 because the small userbase would have to choose between mario and DK. And releasing both platfromers for xmas 2013 would well hurt DK sales alot I guess.
