I'd like to believe that somewhere in the world there is always a marching band playing various music from classic Nintendo games.
Mark usually helps me develop half-baked ideas about whatever video game I'm currently playing and we've been talking about Super Mario Galaxy recently. Mostly about how it borrows thematically from Super Mario Bros. 3 but sticks with the dynamics of Super Mario 64. Partially spurred on by the survey from Nintendo I got the other day which asks "How likely are you to buy a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy?", I've gathered some of my thoughts together.
You'll notice that SMG has the second-highest spot on Game Rankings (and previously the top spot) which is misleading, to say the least. There was a rash of perfect ratings right before and right after it came out that are to blame for that and if you've played the game for more than 10 minutes, you'd realize it's imperfections as well. Equally unfortunately, there were a couple ultra-negative reviews as well but that's at least predictable with a well-liked release.
There are some flaws with the game which immediately drive the rating down from a perfect score but I also have a habit of comparing Mario games to their predecessors which isn't unfair, I think - the goal being to have as much fun with a new version of Mario as you had with the old version while allowing for improvements from system-to-system. So, maintaining the concepts that are fun while allowing for a reasonable amount of change. I'm not really concerned with the flaws as much as I am with existing elements of Mario games that could have made the game more fun, ultimately by giving it a much needed bump in replay value.
There are two different types of persistence in Mario games. The first is world persistence, which Mario has only ever used in binary form. That is; in a series of levels this particular one is either complete or incomplete. This stems to create the dynamics of "which path do I take?" and "gather this many stars to move to the next world" but nothing you do in a level (short of getting a star or reaching a flagpole) effects your experience if you go back to that level. The only feature that I can recall that violates that rule is Super Mario World's yellow/green/red/purple blocks which you had to "enable" and take effect in previous levels and that's more action-to-the-past then real level persistence. I wonder if the idea of level persistence is written off when designing Mario games simply based on the argument that "levels aren't fun once you break all the blocks" which really only addresses full-persistence when you can very successfully implement partial persistence (the blocks come back!).
The second type is character persistence which Mario has classically been well aware of and only dropped with M64 and newer games (with the exception being New Super Mario Bros. for the DS). This is a tragedy of gaming! A long, long time ago, Mario used to be able to take his fire-power from one level to another. Combined with limited or progressing power-availability this feature single-handedly brings replayability to traditionally single-play levels by hinting at secret locations the first time around and revealing when the player eventually attains the relevant powerup. I'm sure this requires some deep level design thought about how to hint at secret locations but not confuse the player into thinking they should be able to get there without a powerup.
SMG has a modified world persistence which isn't constrained by path but by how many stars you have. Eh. It's different and achieves the same effect so my gut feeling that says that paths are better than stars is simply a nostalgic response. The partial level persistence could be improved, I think the fact that certain stars are only available when comets are in orbit was supposed to achieve the same replayability but complicated itself when the levels started branching into separate maps with timers and whatnot. More secret stars! Extra content based on skill, not luck! SMG manages to just piss me off with this next one though: the only powerup that doesn't go away until you screw up is the bee suit. Even firepower has a timer on it - how is that fun? Not only should they persist until you get hit, they should persist from one level to another. As I mentioned before, it does take a little more effort to design the levels appropriately but there are always creative ways to constrain! For example, if you didn't have enough room to build up some speed in SMW, there was no way you were going to fly anywhere.
Okay, I've gone on enough. SMG is a really fantastic game and I'm having a lot of fun playing it but I probably won't touch it again once I get all the stars. There are ways to fix that problem and make a great game really timeless.
I'd like to believe that somewhere in the world there is always a marching band playing various music from classic Nintendo games.
I have some serious nostalgia problems with 8-bit music. Anything that sounds like it was picked straight from a NES evokes a visceral reaction completely independent of my knowledge of the music or even the genre. These kinds of things show up in more and more public settings and somewhat obviously, video games have a certain sense of nostalgia for the under-35 crowd. It's a popular nostalgia - if you play the super mario bros. theme in the crowded theater you'll hear cheers, not boos. And it's not just the geeks cheering. But before you celebrate the national acceptance of video games as a pastime, it doesn't extend very far past basic recognition. Most people that realize what they're listening to haven't touched a console in years and probably stick to the games-are-for-losers mentality.
Before I go further I should get clear something up: I was raised a 16-bit gamer. Let's not get things mixed up, I have a NES on my desk at work and I can run through SMB in under 15 minutes but my childhood experiences were mainly with the first console I owned - a SNES. The primary NES generation is close to 30, if not older, and only in the last couple years have we started to see both music and art which is highly derivative of older video games. Those people driving creativity related to older video games are not the original generation of gamers but the second major generation of gamers, those who have a familiarity with the NES but truly hold their roots with it's 16-bit successor. This is pretty clear if you look through the mis-titled I AM 8-Bit exhibit where most of the art relating to Mario (those images from Ann on We ♥ Wii) has some clear connection to Super Mario World rather than the previous 3 NES games.
Discussing the reasoning behind this shift and the differences between the two game generations is more difficult. The change from SMB to SMW is a great one and Mario's world was given a lot more depth and clarity which surely went a long way in keeping kids glued to the screen for hours on end (myself included). Also, I don't really have a good way to end this short essay and concluding paragraphs take too long.
Okay, I've had it for a couple days, now it's time for the review.
Good. Very good, in fact. It's been years since we had a really fine mario platformer and this is what we've been waiting for. That said, it could be better and more importantly, I think, it could be less forgiving.
The very first thing that struck me about NSMB was the nostalgia trip that seemed to draw from every other major mario title produced. World-themes were stolen from SMB, Mario's 'character' (the way he moves and acts) is very Mario64-esque, a number of characters picked from SMW, even the shifting sands from SMB2! Like other more recent mario titles, character control has a lot more momentum attached to it which is jarring at first (especially so since Super Mario World has taken up residence in the GBA slot for my DS) but makes some of the flat, open levels much more fun to run and jump through at high speed. When it all boils down though, this is a sequel to the original SMB (NES, 1985) and it has some great improvements in game dynamics and graphics while still maintaining the same classic platformer feel. The game is very forgiving. That's not to say it's not difficult at times - I had to set it down a number of times trying to get through the last couple levels - but we all remember those moments in SMB when we were so sure we made that jump but fell in to the abyss anyway and that rarely happens in NSMB, in fact, I've found myself giving up on a number of occasions when I thought I'd surely misjumped right into a pit or in front of an enemy only to realize a moment later that I'd actually survived.
The game has enough extra items to complete to keep a hardcore mario platformer fan interested (that would be... me) and enough simplicity to draw a couple new fans that had only played the original SMB. It's a very solid release and I recommend it highly for anyone with access to a DS and a love for italian plumbers-turned-princess savers.