Tropical Freeze or Mario Bros Wonder?

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JackHandy said:

Jumpin said:

I’m just going off on a tangent of personal opinion here, but:

Speak of the devil! DKC trilogy, Super Mario Bros 3, Kirby Superstar, and the first two Sonic games remain my favourites of all time. I’m not saying they’re the best, only that they’re the ones I like the best.

I haven’t had much experience with the later games in the franchises. I will occasionally buy them, but rarely play for more than 2-3 hours total, despite playing the classics still for many hours. The strength of nostalgia… but I also weigh games as more an art form than objective checklists of quality. That’s why even decades later, Super Mario Bros 3 still reigns (in my opinion) despite modern Mario games having more detail in a shoe than entire levels of SMB3.

I think it's just that back then, they were hitting the peak of what 2D platforming could be. Everything else after the 16-bit era is just trying to find ways to resell perfection, and as a consequence, it's mostly a change in style and throwing gimmicks at a player. But under the hood, it didn't get better than SMB3. From a sheer purity level, that is when 2D put it all together. Imo, there is nothing that can be done to improve gameplay. It's just dressing up the same thing... and not for the better. 

I would have to disagree with this.

While games like Mario Bros 3, Mario World and the SNES DKC games remain some of the greatest 2D platformers to this day, I'd still say modern stuff like DKCR/Tropical Freeze, Wonder, the Ori games, etc have managed to push the genre forward in their own ways, such as more dynamic environments than was possible on NES/SNES/etc.

Stuff like how the levels collapse and transform as you move through them in Retro's DKC games, or some of Wonder's more elaborate setpieces go way beyond just repackaging 3rd/4th gen platforming,