And thats the irony of the whole thing, and i think thats what spurgeoryan was trying to get at, for once i agree with him. Its not that is another 2d Mario its the demo itself thats the problem. I played the demo he is talking about and i assure you playing with the pad is NO different from just playing with a NES, SNES, wiimote titled to the side. It is just a controller with a screen and in the demo, you would play it like was any other Mario game from days old, and no there is nothing enticing about looking down at a smaller screen and seeing the same thing, no one is going to get blown away from that.

What Ninty needs to do is show of the UNIQUE features of this particular Mario game, something they are not doing. Unfortunately that probably wont happen seeing as the store would need to devote a lot of space to allow up to five people to play. 

I have to disagree.  All the underlined are just as likely to buy Mario for themselves.  I bought NSMBW for myself when I was 30, my brother bought it for himself & his girlfriend when he was 28.  Co-op mario is also a great "dorm room experience" for the college guys & girls.  The only advantage it has with moms & dads buying it for their kids is that it's not hyper violent like COD, & some parents care about that stuff.  The fact NSMBW sold more then any one COD on a single platform (ie MW3 360) indicates Mario is getting all the demographics, including the parents buying it for their children, but they are hardly dependent on them.

bah humbug!  Well then port over SS and get rid of those annoying motion+ controls basically the opposite of TP.  That would be amazing!

maybe "Super Wii" would have been better. like they did with NES and SNES.

I finally got to experience a good chunk of the game at my buddy's house the other night. All I can say is that this game should not have been a Wii U launch title... hell, it shouldn't have even been released on the Wii U, but the only reason it was is because Nintendo effectively killed the Wii off by starving it of software and announcing the Wii U nearly 2 years before it was actually released.

thats a bit harsh, dont you think?

Not at all.  Other than the slightly higher res visuals, it essentially looks and plays the same as NSMB Wii, which isn't necessarrily a bad thing, but when you're launching a new console, and the premiere launch title is a game that could have easily been done on the Wii, it just makes for a very underwhelming experience, even a bit disappointing.

But my main gripe with NSMBU after playing it for a few hours the other day is less about the visuals (again, it's a 2D Mario game, so we can't expect anything revolutionary here), and more about the actual gameplay.  The platforming and jumping of the NSMB games has always been a bit "off" IMO compared to the classic 8/16-bit Marios... it feels like you're playing a 3D Mario game from a 2D perspective the way Mario handles.

With the latest iteration, the controls felt even more "off" to me... I found myself having trouble making the most basic of jumps in the game, whereas I can breeze through the classic Marios with my eyes closed because the controls and jumping are pixel perfect.  And I found myself staring at the touch screen rather than the TV, playing the game as if it were a handheld because I actually found it easier to navigate the levels and make jumps more precisely that way instead of the TV

I've played NSMB U, and the game looks a lot more crisp and vibrant thanks to the HD. The graphics themselves don't look much different though, besides maybe some of the backgrounds.

I personally think NSMBU is the best game in the series, i also think it looks very crisp, and the main hub is superb. Off tv play is the icing on the cake as far as im concerned.

It's funny that 2D Mario sells twice as much as 3D Mario, yet gets about 1/5 the amount of effort put into it. I mean, production value wise, Mario Galaxy runs laps around NSMBU despite being on a less powerful console.