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GAF Imagines: What if 'New Super Mario Bros Wii' was not based on the DS game? (Pics)
#1
When Nintendo announced New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I was pleased. New Super Mario Bros. was a fun adventure, and I've never been able to have too much Mario.
I found it interesting that Nintendo would choose to base the new four-player game heavily on the graphical and gameplay style of New Super Mario Bros. My initial thoughts were that the game would have made more of a visual impact during its E3 reveal had it been a brand-new graphical imagining of 2D Mario. But then I considered the power of nostalgia, the excitement and praise of when GAF first saw Megaman 9. I wondered, how would we have reacted if Nintendo had elected to build New Super Mario Bros. Wii on one of the older Mario styles, rather than the DS approach. And what possibilities would such a choice have given us. To promote discussion and to help us imagine a different path, I took a screenshot from NSMBWii, and remade it using the gameplay and graphical styles of the previous Mario games. :      Notes
So I turn the thread over to GAF. If Nintendo had chosen an alternate foundation for NSMBWii, what would you have liked that foundation to be? And during the E3 conference, if Nintendo unveiled the game using one of these foundations, which one would have sent your internal hype meter into overdrive? |
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Cranky. Very cranky.
Rather sarcastic to boot. (06-25-2009, 04:12 AM)
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#5
Though I like the look of SMB3 more than SMW, for a multiplayer game, SMW looks the best.
The hardest thing would be pulling off wall jumps. It would have been preferable to see cel-shading, but oh well. The game rocks and that's what matters. |
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Member
(06-25-2009, 04:17 AM)
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#10
Originally Posted by Metal B:
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Super Member
(06-25-2009, 04:20 AM)
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#11
The closest Nintendo actually came to a sprite-based NSMBWii game was the 4-Player Mario Bros. in the Advance remakes. It used SMB2 All-Stars sprites.
I think it would be the same gameplay even if the graphics were different. Unless they wanted to make lots of sprites (a la Donkey Kong Country/Yoshi's Island), I don't think sprite art in the vein of Classic SMB-World would properly convey the action going on with new gameplay. |
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is too reasonable
for this forum (06-25-2009, 04:35 AM)
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#16
Originally Posted by Neiteio:
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respect the Juicy one
(06-25-2009, 04:48 AM)
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#17
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Member
(06-25-2009, 05:04 AM)
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#20
Awesome, I love the comparison shots. I'd be equally excited about any of the 8/16-bit Marios being revisited, especially the US SMB2 - that game and its unique gameplay have been left forgotten for too long.
That said, none of the old styles beat the route Nintendo took. The NSMB Wii style is easily the best-looking and most appropriate for an original game in 2009. Going with old sprites just for nostalgia's sake would have been completely unnecessary for this game, considering the entire concept of NSMB / NSMB Wii is offering a contemporary take on an old formula. |
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Banned
(06-25-2009, 05:10 AM)
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#21
Originally Posted by Toy Soldier:
Also SMB2 would be beyond the best fit, the vertical levels would be amazing. |
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Member
(06-25-2009, 05:20 AM)
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#23
Originally Posted by Blizzard:
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Got lost looking for
a hentai sim forum (06-25-2009, 05:41 AM)
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#26
Suddenly I feel more interested in NSMB Wii. :P
In all seriousness, I didn't understand why I never liked about the NSMB (DS) aesthetic until seeing these pictures side-by-side: it's the complexity and detail. I love abstraction, and even Super Mario World is more fleshed-out than I'd like to see, what with those clouds and mountains. Super Mario Bros. 1 has too much brown, while the others are simply ideal. As for gameplay, SMB2 isn't my favorite Mario game, but it would have amazing possibilities with multiplayer because of the throwing mechanic, especially if you could pick each other up like in Chip 'n' Dale or Parasol Stars (just as some examples). I think that would actually be coolest just because it's the one Mario game where you can do great things even before getting powerups (and they'd have to add at least one or two of those)--which plays very well since there are potentially four players competing for powers, dying and coming back, and so on. |
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provides useful feedback
(06-25-2009, 06:29 AM)
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#34
While I do love the nostalgia associated with previous iterations and their pixel art (and that Super Mario World one looks great, nasty filters put aside) and I really really did love Mega Man 9, I think I would have found New Super Mario Bros. Wii to be an even cheaper unveil had they reused the old pixel art for the game. It's a little different with Nintendo than it is with Capcom, because Nintendo admittedly have played the nostalgia tune on its old 8-bit and 16-bit Mario renditions to death and they don't have that 'freshly plucked from your childhood' feeling that seeing 8-bit Mega Man running around used to.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii seems to fall under the same problem Animal Crossing: City Folk does, in that all the improvements to the graphics are so subtly done and recreate the original inspiration so well in more detailed polygonal imagery that the style masks over all the actual improvements made to the game. Take a look at what the Wii Animal Crossing has now; all the objects are full 3D (trees and item pickups mainly, which until now have been bitmap billboard images), there's proper specular lighting on the water, the animations are redone and much improved (especially on fish and insects when you show them off after a catch), but because the style is still the same it's hard to appreciate what actual improvements have been made. And I think NSMB Wii, rather unfairly, falls under this same problem too. But I digress, because this is not the point of the discussion. If they were going to go with a pixel art approach I would have preferred something brand new, or at least based on the more colourful Mario-related platformers, such as Super Princess Peach, Yoshi's Island, or even that piece of art Orioto made with the beautiful painted colours and natural landscapes. Regardless though, I think NSMB Wii is a good look and I will enjoy it a ton, as I absolutely loved the return to form that the DS game was and with this being a 4-player Four Swords-alike backstabbing romp it will not matter what the graphic style is. Hell, even the 2-player throwaway mode in NSMB was surprisingly fun to play as me and a friend played it quite a lot on our trip to France a few years back. EDIT: The unveil wasn't ruined by its insistence on using an existing graphic style for a game that people are constantly "umm"ing and "aah"ing over the worth of, it was ruined because of Nintendo's boringly flat and unlively conference (and the fact that we knew about it 24 hours before the conference hit too). |
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Member
(06-25-2009, 08:02 AM)
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#35
Originally Posted by ascii42:
(Oh, and both of the Toads are male. EAD really doesn't seem to like female characters very much...)
Originally Posted by TheChaos:
(I like the color green...) On the subject though, really any of those games would probably be good. NSMB Wii looks fine, and looks like a lot of fun... sure, those various 2d styles would look great too, and the resulting games would probably be just as interesting, but what they've chosen isn't bad either. It looks good and looks like it plays great. 2.5d is a perfectly legitimate choice... |
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Member
(06-25-2009, 12:02 PM)
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#42
nothing.
The thing is that they all need to play the same. I'm sure at least one of the Toads is a placeholder, but whoever replaces it will have to play like Mario or Luigi would. So if we get Peach or Daisy or Wario or whomever, don't expect floating or body slams or enemy tossing that the other characters wouldn't have. I would have preferred a different look for the same, something a bit more ambitious, but they're trying to get the New SMB crowd from DS to buy the Wii rev, so I guess it makes sense to stick with the same look.
Originally Posted by Metal B:
Wait, no, that happened if he stuck out his tongue while jumping into water in the DS version, my mistake. :lol |
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(more a nerd than a geek)
(06-25-2009, 12:58 PM)
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#48
My eyeballs....arrgh.... if we HAVE to have folks banding together to form the Video Game Voters Network, can they work on banning filters from classic games?
I don't quite get why people keep whining about how NSMBW is "just an upscaled DS game." The game is similar (similar art, music, and control), as you'd expect from a sequel, but it's hardly a rehash of the DS game. The controls feel more precise, the wide areas allow for for movement, the cooperative aspect is quite fresh, and the levels (and their gimmicks) are new. |
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#49
I'm noticing a recurring theme.
 Fixed Now? (The sources I used for the NES copy-and-paste graphics were unfortunately prefiltered, and when shown alongside the SMW image I can understand the displeasure I am reading. It couldn't be helped, and I'm not photoshop-literate enough to remove or reduce their effect. If another GAFfer would like to try though, please feel free.)
Last edited by Mama Robotnik; 06-25-2009 at 02:34 PM.
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