Should the New Super Mario Bros. series be considered a s...

[robometal cowboy]

Should the New Super Mario Bros. series be considered a spin-off?
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Here's a very interesting line of thinking. While it's easy to peg down the Mario and Luigi series as a spin-off, would you ever think of New Super Mario Bros. in the same way? Even though the mechanics are very similar to what most mainline Mario Bros. games offer, should we be including them in the franchise's main run of games? Perhaps looking at these as spin-offs gives us better insight into what the Big N is doing.

Article here

[OprahFTWinfrey]

Um... No? It's a reboot, obviously.

[Sycoraxic98]

Completely agree - it's the best way to explain a lot of things, in my opinion, and he lays out some very valid points.

[LDAF]

a very interesting article; never looked at it that way.

[LegendofSantiago]

Well...yeah, I always thought of the 3d Mario games as being the main Mario games.

[Cassidy]

Okay, everyone thinks way too deeply with Mario.

[gtt]

Yes.

[stealth]

super dumb article

[Lyude77]

3D Mario games are the spinoff.

[EpicGyllynn]

It's a sub-series of the Super Mario franchise, not a spin-off.

[BigLord]

Spin-offs are different than sub-series. This one is just "Mario with 2D gameplay", that doesn't qualify as a spin-off IMO.

The article is very good, though. It's just not worded correctly

[Bobbuffalo]

Super Mario, 64 and Sunshine (SPECIALLY goddamn sunshine) are more the spin offs of the series because they had little or almost nothing to do with the real mario games. No wonder why only geeks liked them. NSMB are the true Mario games that we havent in almost 20 years before the NDS game. The kind of games that never grew old and are liked by everyone. Mainstream auidences mostly forget about the 3D ones while the 2D ones are always in the collective memory.

Calling true classic 2D Mario as spin-offs just proves how ignorant and out of reality these "pseudojournalists" and their followers are.

[shadowbuster]

Not necessarily a spin-off... Nintendo took another direction with Mario games making them in 3D. The impact was so huge that people now consider this as the norm for future main Mario games. After like 10 years without a 2D Mario game, people grew accustomed to 3D Mario games and considered every other game as a spin-off, just my 2 cents

[TSweirdo]

Not necessarily a spin-off... Nintendo took another direction with Mario games making them in 3D. The impact was so huge that people now consider this as the norm for future main Mario games. After like 10 years without a 2D Mario game, people grew accustomed to 3D Mario games and considered every other game as a spin-off, just my 2 cents

Yeah, pretty much this.

[Muigi]

It's freakin' Mario. Do people honestly care about canon in this series!?

[Zanreo]

I've always really thought of both the "main" 2D and 3D Mario series as the "main" Mario, but yeah, this made me think...

[bound_for_earthbound]

I don't even really consider the RPGs or sports games spinoffs, really. They're all a part of the Mario Verse.

It's the Wario and Donkey Kong games that are the ones I consider spinoffs, since they're so far removed from their origins in the Mario series.

...Though in terms of gameplay, yes. The 2D and 3D platformers, excluding Paper Mario, and the Yoshi and Peach games, are the only ones I don't consider spinoffs.

[DonnyKD]

If it's a 2D game, or 3D one, it's a main Mario title in my eyes.

NSMB is just a sub-series, one I like to call "2.5D" or "Modern 2D".

[Mirr0rR3flection]

I've always really thought of both the "main" 2D and 3D Mario series as the "main" Mario, but yeah, this made me think...

Same here.

I always considered games like Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Party, etc., to be the true spin-offs. Like someone else said the New Super Mario Bros. series seems to be more of a reboot.

[Serebii]

That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

Plus, people are complaining about them being yearly rehashes now? What? The last one was 3 years ago. The one before was 3 years before that. There's two this year, sure, but that doesn't make it yearly

[KingJames7]

Nah. If anything the 3D Marios are the spinoff. In May I worked on NSMB Wii, then NSMB and now Super Mario 64 and the NSMB games, though easy, feel much more like Mario games than the 3D ones

[Elfteiroh]

Also, for those whining that the art isn't changing a lot recently, and that brings up the old games that changed continuously:
These changes came from the limitations of the consoles. They tried each time to make it better and better with the limited capabilities. The art changed because they were able to squeeze more and more juice out of them. Now, the consoles are very powerful and there is almost no limits to break. And for the Mario games, well, it can almost be said that the ceiling have been found. Still, look at the backgrounds off NSMB U, they are gorgeous and very much alive. In my book, this count as an amelioration.
Also there are MUCH MORE moving platforms. And they are not only moving from side to side and up and down. Again, an amelioration.

[Swedish_Otaku]

That's f**king stupid... why even post this?

[Honoguma]

The kind of games that never grew old and are liked by everyone.

A lot of the gaming community sees NSMB as a tired and boring take on the Mario franchise that hasn't innovated at all in comparison to the Mario sidescrollers of the 80's and 90's.