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javi741 on 21 June 2023
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To be honest, it's so surprising that it took Nintendo this long to release a new 2D Mario took them 11 years. It's clear that this franchise is easily one of Nintendo's biggest selling franchises ever, you had NSMB DS & Wii both sell 30M+ which was super rare to do during that era, only the MK & Wii Series sold numbers that high. Although it didn't sell as well on Wii U, what could you expect from a 13M install base. It's weird that Nintendo didn't capitalize on this juggernaut that is 2D Mario earlier.

And while they did two Mario Makers in that 11 year gap, Mario Maker clearly isn't the same as a story mode 2D Mario, it's a hassle to find well-designed levels in that game with the simplicity & accessibility of the NSMB games. The sales numbers proved that people clearly didn't see MM as being anywhere close as being a good replacement for the story mode 2D Mario games, where we saw a completely unambitous port of NSMBU on Switch outsell the ambitous Mario Maker 2 game by twice as much, despite Mario Maker being marketed more heavily.

But finally after 11 years we're seeing a new 2D Mario, and it looks amazing. It seems like Nintendo looked at every complaint the NSMB series been getting all these years and fixed it. Finally a whole new artstyle thats interesting with facial expressions,better movement animations, 3D moving backgrounds, overall far more textures, new power-ups, new enemies, and totally new ways to interact with levels. Even the music is totally different. I'm excited, while I enjoyed the NSMB series, I agree that those games were becoming far too safe and unambitous, SMBW is looking far better.

I could also see this as being a much bigger holiday title than people think, like I said earlier 2D Mario is a huge seller, having 2 games selling over 30M and even NSMBU port as lazy as it was, still sold an amazing 15M even with little marketing. Imagine a 2D Mario that finally looks new and interesting for the first time in nearly 2 decades with far more marketing and on an install base that's gonna be at around 130M by the time it releases, it could sell 30M+.
I also could see this being a system seller for many casuals who played the 30M selling 2D Marios on Wii & DS returning toNintendo by buying a Switch just to play that game, while the port of NSMBU is on Switch, I felt like the game didn't get that much marketing or really felt different enough for some of those original Wii & DS NSMB players to go out the way to get a Switch, I feel like SMB Wonder with better marketing and with it being more interesting could be a bigger system seller than even other big Nintendo franchises like TOTK & Pokemon cause we've never seena 2D Mario like this on any other platform before. The increased engagement of Mario from the movie should also help.