So there are rumors going around that Nintendo is porting New Super Mario Bros. U to the Switch with New Super Luigi U included and some kind of bonus content. Personally, I'm fine with this, as I understand that the games didn't reach a very wide audience on the Wii U and Nintendo wants to give it another chance to sell as many copies as it can. Bundling the two together with extra content is a bare minimum though for me to even consider getting it, as I'm really starting to burn out on the NSMB style. Something tells me just about everyone would rather have a completely new 2D Mario rather than a bundled collection of ported content. I'd be willing to wager further that I'm not alone in thinking it's time for an altogether new style for 2D Mario, that a lot of us are feeling NSMB burnout.
It was unique and exciting on the DS, and adding multiplayer on the Wii felt overdue. But by the time the 3DS game came around, it felt stale and had to be promoted with gimmicks like coins being everywhere, it really felt like it had jumped the shark. Then the Wii U game came out and it just kind of felt soulless, even though the gamepad added a more interesting gimmick than coins. NSLU just felt like an excuse to milk the Year of Luigi without having to create an actually new Luigi game. I think even people who would still enjoy another NSMB style game, if they're honest, would still be excited by another 2D Mario restyling.
So what would people want to see from a complete restyling of 2D Mario? We're talking something that refreshes the series the way New Super Mario Bros. did when it came out for DS (which btw came out 16 YEARS after the last 2D Mario, Super Mario World, 14 if you count Super Mario Land 2 on Game Boy). Just a fresh art style change and some new powerups? A shakeup of the formula like Odyssey was for 3D Mario? Something in between? Whatever they do, "New" had better not be in the title.
