Today I'd like to talk about something that's making me very sad. Some of you may remember my talk about Call of Duty, in which I mentioned that the series completely lacks any innovation from title to title, instead being content to rehash the same experience with some added features and gameplay hooks. Sadly, the same seems to be becoming more and more true of the New Super Mario Bros. series. Now, I've always held the Mario franchise in high regards, as all of its core games did a good job of innovating (with the exception of the real Super Mario Bros. 2) And the original New Super Mario Bros. continued this tradition. I enjoyed that game quite a lot, and I felt that it was a wonderful transition back toward the series' side scrolling roots. Upon completion, I recall thinking, "That was really great. I can't wait to find out what the next New Super Mario Bros. has in store." But then, when New Super Mario Bros. Wii came out, something seemed amiss... It looked almost exactly the same as New Super Mario Bros... It played almost the same as New Super Mario Bros... the only discernible differences were the multiplayer, a few motion-control gimmicks, a couple level mechanics and some power-ups. But, I still held faith in the series, because I knew that occasionally even the Mario series hits a roadblock in terms of evolution. However, with the recent release of New Super Mario Bros. 2, I noticed... It's the same thing again, but with a new coin collecting mechanic and some power-ups centered around it. And now, New Super Mario Bros. U is nearing release. (relatively speaking.) And, it's the same thing, AGAIN. This time there's the gimmicky Gamepad, but it's still the same thing. Now, the 3d Mario titles are still innovating as much as ever, but "New" series has been differentiating itself from earlier titles solely through gimmicky gameplay hooks. It's absolutely disgusting. As if that weren't bad enough, they've been dumbing down the difficulty. They've admitted that they're dumbing down the difficulty, in an effort to allow more people to be able to complete the game. They claim that this is because they want the game to be more open to a wider audience of people who didn't grow up playing the games and don't have the same skill level. Which makes sense, until you realize... the original games were hard as all hell, and back then there was no audience that had grown up playing them and built up that skill level, everyone was new to the series. Nowadays, there are people who have built up that skill level, so if the difficulty should be changing at all, it should be getting harder. Mayber I'm just being naive, but the way I see it, if you're going to change your game to cater to a demographic, it should be the newer demographic that didn't exist to begin with. There were always people who weren't good, but now there are people who are good, and they aren't getting the difficult experience they'd like. Now, ideally, a developer shouldn't pander to anyone and just focus on making a game good, if you're going to change the game to make people happy, make sure that you're still appealing to longtime fans.

Now, as annoying as the New series is, the 3d Mario games are continuing their excellence and, with the exception of Galaxy 2, innovation. Now, I think it's not a coincidence that the games that continue to innovate are being designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, while the New series got handed off to someone else at Nintendo. I guess this just proves that Miyamoto-san is the only person to be trusted with the beloved series, at least if I'm to be satisfied. But, I'd like to hear your take on this. Do you think New Super Mario Bros. is getting stale? Leave your comments below.