I know there's a story and plenty of lore, but it's never a tight story. I play them for the gameplay and not the story/lore.

It's Nintendo, they can imagine anything they want to. Even within desert and snow there are variants. Must the music sound like some cheesy Ancient Egyptian rip-off? What about sand dunes, sand storms? The sun in SMB3 was more inventive than anything I've seen this far.

If change wasn't a good thing, why is Wind Waker considered one of the best Zelda games of all time, why was Super Mario Bros. 3 one of the biggest games of its era.

Change for the sake of change is not good, but change for the sake of captivating, yes that's good.

If you don't care about being a true fan, then at least let's not make threads and posts pretending to be.

I think Rol was just pointing out the absurdity of expecting a substantial, surprising story from a series that never promised one, and never needed one.

Your arguments do not apply to 2D Mario games.

I'll tell you what's absurd, a game by a brand new company winning an emmy, and a 20m+ sales series that is the poster boy of one of the oldest companies in the industry barely getting the respect of gaming enthusiasts because the effort isn't there.

If all it can do is sales, it isn't the Mario I once knew, a legend that was a cultural phenomenon and even led to its own hollywood movie (The Wizard). You're supposed to be old enough to remember.

Actually, I'll tell you what it is like. It's like a snake shedding its skin. NSMB is the shed skin of what Mario once was.

Everyone played the original because everyone had it. That's the true root of Mario popularity. Back then, you played what you had, and if you beat it, you played it again. Non-awful games were kind of a rarity.

But the world itself being particularly special? No, I'm afraid not. I mean, it's not bad or anything, but other games have built more immersive and imaginative worlds, never mind novels. Mario is what it is, which is other elements added to an original game-play idea to flesh it out a bit.

In Mario's time, back in the NES days, give me examples of games that had built more immersive and imaginative worlds, other than Zelda.

Preposterous.

Are you actually suggesting that people who love 2D Mario, who enjoy the game and are passionate about it, are not true fans?

Meanwhile, people who decide to rant all day about it with nonsensical arguments and won't listen to a word they are told and live in the past are true fans? Don't make me laugh.

I do admit NSMB2 was a little too stale for my taste, but the console versions are amazing.

They introduced a pretty fun co-op, and Mario Bros. U gave us that heavily desired world map we all have been waiting for.

Hell, I dare you to tell me something in the old Mario games that make then stand out AND is not a nostalgia basic nitpick.

So you're only saying that Mario only had an interesting feel in relation to other NES titles?  That doesn't really feel like what you were saying in the OP.  Regardless, Faxanadu comes to mind, where the idea of working your way up a gigantic World Tree honestly captured my imagination.  Final Fantasy, though without a named main character, had a really interesting world and magic structure.  Kid Icarus, though not the best game ever, was very imaginative.  Kirby is definitely a more interesting character, with more interesting powers, and so is Megaman.  StarTropics is one that I look back on that captured my imagination in a way Mario never did, with real depth and human emotion behind it.  Even Castlevania, though based on a pre-existing concept, had a more cohesive world.

I don't know about this whole gameplay thing but I have said this before, NSMB is complete crap. At least the first one on Wii was.The entire game made me utterly frustrated at how dumbed down it was. The originals were a fine fit for a 5 year old when I was fine and the games are still great but what they've been transforming Mario into just makes me sick and I question what their target audience has become. My guess? Parents who don't play games who will buy it for their kid.