I thought Super Mario 3D World was a great 3D platformer. I know NSMBU felt too much like the one on the Wii and may have been released too close to the Wii version so that's why it didn't sell as well as expected.

Yeah you're right. I'm sure we'll get one though.

Super Mario Sunshine is only a must have in certain people's opinion. Just like 3d World.

With content I'm talking more about the "stuff in it". And also I finished 64 at 100% in more than 150 hours, Galaxy in 60 and 3D World about the same quantity of time; and of course, I was a kid when I played 64 and I have got a lot of experience with platformers since then, but the N64 game was packed with a lot of puzzles, which increases it's lenght considerably. 

I'm not saying 3D World it's bad though, for me it's the most suitable 3D Mario experience to date, the most similar to the first Super Mario games. 

I never played Super Mario Sunshine !  I heard it was really fun though.  Maybe Nintendo will do a HD version of it so people like me can play it.  Most likely that won't happen but here's to having dreams.  Lol

It already has one - Super Mario 3D World. The game is fantastic, particularly with 4 players picking up the Cherry power-up.

I agree that 3D Land and 3D World are their own category of 3D Mario (2.5D if you prefer). However, I would make the argument that the two Galaxy games are also their own category compared to 64/Sunshine. 64 and Sunshine were open-world sandbox platformers with an emphasis on exploration. The two Galaxy games are much more linear. They're fantastic, but they're linear and more action-gameplay focused. 3D Land and 3D World merely take that more linear focus (which is closer to 2D Mario anyway) and narrow down the exploration even more, making 3D Mario even more like 2D Mario than Galaxy was. I'm personally a fan of all 3 types of 3D Mario games, but I would LOVE a return to the true open exploration of 64 and Sunshine. 

I want to play it too, it just didn't look like a must have to me. At least, if 3d World isn't a must have.

I don't understand the hate you have over Mario 3D World. The gameplay is great and everytime I've played it I've had a huge smile on my face from beginning to end. I don't own it because Mario games don't really do it for me no more (and also I don't have many friends who game to play it with), but then again I never played Galaxy either.

I haven't read all the posts to this thread, maybe you address this or not, but Super Mario Sunshine for the NGC was a late comer for that console as well. I've never played that one either, but it's either a love it or hate it game for Mario fans. That being said Luigi Mansion came out as a console release game for the GC and people back then were saying the same thing about 10-12 years ago when they went a different route then...

Nintendo likes to shake up things, they have always been this way and it's a huge reason why I love them. SM3DW was made to try to bank off the success the 3DS version had, and it did alright (about 33% percent of Wii U users own this game), and also to take the series into a new direction. Shigeru Miyamoto himself has been trying to make Mario games more multiplayer like since the days of Super MARIO 64 (Originally it could have been played with 2 players simultaneously), but the N64 wasn't simply powerful enough to play it like that.

If anything, you should be happy of many of the innovations Nintendo is and continue to be doing. And no one said SM3DW is the successor of Galaxy, Sunshine, or even Super Mario 64. You are comparing a game made for casuals to a soon to be made game made for Hardcores, and that makes no sense whatsoever.

I think Mario 3D World is a great game, and definitely a must-have for Wii U owners and buyers.

Though, I can understand what you're saying. I do agree that Mario 3D World doesn't quite scale the likes of Mario Galaxy,
but it doesn't mean that it's not a great game or a must-have title. To be honest, I actually think it's better than Mario Sunshine, and on par with 64!