Kor of Memory
Member
After watching the latest episode of Game Makers Toolkit, a part of at the very end of the video about Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze really stood out to me. For a brief moment, the narrator harped on how some of the things in Mario have grown stale.
Here is the specific moment. (10:26 if you're on mobile and/or the link doesn't work)
Anyway, this got my brain all twisting about and I decided to go through and look at every 2D mario game's enemy/obstacle variety, and see if there is really a lack of innovation going on in the series.
To start with, as I said, this game only talks about 2D Mario games. This means:
A couple things to note here. I deliberately left off the real SMB2/Lost Levels because the game uses the exact same assets as SMB1. I included the Gameboy titles but honestly, I shouldn't have. They use very little from previous games, and practically nothing carries over from them into future titles. However, I didn't want to exclude them just for being handheld titles because two of the "new" series also fit that description.
Next, in the list below you're probably going to notice a few things that aren't really enemies. Things like Fire Bars or Skewers. I did this because entire levels can be based on these things, and they do change up the gameplay when they are encounters.
Lastly, I used the enemies list provided from the Mariowiki.com but even in doing so, i noticed I was missing a few things, and added them in manually. Because of this, I'm sure my data isn't 100% accurate, and I probably have some gaps in my data. Despite this, I feel like the overall message from that data is still there.
So reading the chart below:
What I did is list every enemy from the game along the left. If the enemy was new to the entire series, it was marked in blue. Following a spectrum from Blue to Red, things move from one side to the other of the spectrum if they find themselves repeatedly used from game to game. If the enemy was absent for a game, then it got a reset and came back again fresh. I couldn't find a good way to get the data online, so I just screencap'd my excel sheet. So below are 5 unique images.
So lets start with the obvious things:
Both Gameboy titles are inside their own bubble. They have almost nothing to do with the entire rest of the series, and have very little to do with each other. Despite this, I don't think people think of them poorly. Yes, Mario Land is treated as some black sheep for being so unlike it's source material, but it still seems to have a soft spot simply because people wanted Mario on the Handheld. Mario Land 2 followed this, and even though it felt more like a Mario game, it was still in a crazy world that didn't feel anything like the mushroom kingdom.
Next, you'll notice the shrinking trend of new enemies after the series peaked with Super Mario World. This makes the entire New series seem like a cash in. Just reusing assets over and over again. The last two in the series are especially bad about bringing something new to the table. With NSMB2 bringing less new enemies to the table than the very first SMB. You can also see how the "Tired" category spikes up for the very last game.
Perhaps this isn't necessarily a bad thing. NSMBU obviously has the largest enemy count of the entire series, but due to Nintendo's preferred method of having 1 gimmick a level and then throwing that gimmick away. It's easy to guess which of that large cast are just one offs, and which ones you'll likely find from front to back.
A small thing of note. I separated Goomba from Galoomba since Nintendo has decided they both can live side by side. However, I did not ever seperate color variations. I realize the mechanical differences of a Green Koopa and a Red Koopa early on, but those lines started to blur with SMW's Blue and Yellow Koopa.
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So really, after all of this, I just wanted to say that 2D mario is beginning to bore me a bit. The staple Grass->Dessert->Water->Sky->Mountain->Ice worlds or whatever progression has become predictable, as are the enemies we find within them. I know I can expect a desert world with a Pokey in it, and a water world with bloopers.
However, I feel like a sprite swap for a substitution is okay. Like, I enjoyed the Galoomba's in Super Mario World, even though they were very close to the original Goombas. This is actually a leading reason why I enjoyed Superstar Saga so much. Giving us parallels to Mushroom Kingdom enemies was refreshing, even if they played mechanically similar.
The 3D games seem to avoid this because they haven't stuck with the "world theme" since Sunshine. Even though they have World 1 or 2 that has a backdrop of a mountain or cave, you'll find maybe 1 or 2 levels with that theme beside 6 or 7 levels with whatever the developers waned.
I hope the next 2D Mario game tries putting us somewhere new. Some parallel to the Mushroom Kingdom that forces the developers to hesitate to reuse some of the enemies we've been a little overexposed to. I mean, I don't mind seeing a Goomba or a Koopa. I consider these enemies staples, and it would feel a little weird without them existing at all, and people look forward to those enemies. But maybe we could find something new to replace Wiggler with, or all the skeleton enemies, or maybe give Piranha plants a breather.
Whatever it takes to force the developers to inject a little creativity into the series.
Here is the specific moment. (10:26 if you're on mobile and/or the link doesn't work)
Anyway, this got my brain all twisting about and I decided to go through and look at every 2D mario game's enemy/obstacle variety, and see if there is really a lack of innovation going on in the series.
To start with, as I said, this game only talks about 2D Mario games. This means:
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros. 2 (America)
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario World
- Super Mario Land
- Super Mario Land 2
- New Super Mario Bros.
- New Super Mario Bros. Wii
- New Super Mario Bros. 2
- New Super Mario Bros. U
A couple things to note here. I deliberately left off the real SMB2/Lost Levels because the game uses the exact same assets as SMB1. I included the Gameboy titles but honestly, I shouldn't have. They use very little from previous games, and practically nothing carries over from them into future titles. However, I didn't want to exclude them just for being handheld titles because two of the "new" series also fit that description.
Next, in the list below you're probably going to notice a few things that aren't really enemies. Things like Fire Bars or Skewers. I did this because entire levels can be based on these things, and they do change up the gameplay when they are encounters.
Lastly, I used the enemies list provided from the Mariowiki.com but even in doing so, i noticed I was missing a few things, and added them in manually. Because of this, I'm sure my data isn't 100% accurate, and I probably have some gaps in my data. Despite this, I feel like the overall message from that data is still there.
So reading the chart below:
What I did is list every enemy from the game along the left. If the enemy was new to the entire series, it was marked in blue. Following a spectrum from Blue to Red, things move from one side to the other of the spectrum if they find themselves repeatedly used from game to game. If the enemy was absent for a game, then it got a reset and came back again fresh. I couldn't find a good way to get the data online, so I just screencap'd my excel sheet. So below are 5 unique images.
So lets start with the obvious things:
Both Gameboy titles are inside their own bubble. They have almost nothing to do with the entire rest of the series, and have very little to do with each other. Despite this, I don't think people think of them poorly. Yes, Mario Land is treated as some black sheep for being so unlike it's source material, but it still seems to have a soft spot simply because people wanted Mario on the Handheld. Mario Land 2 followed this, and even though it felt more like a Mario game, it was still in a crazy world that didn't feel anything like the mushroom kingdom.
Next, you'll notice the shrinking trend of new enemies after the series peaked with Super Mario World. This makes the entire New series seem like a cash in. Just reusing assets over and over again. The last two in the series are especially bad about bringing something new to the table. With NSMB2 bringing less new enemies to the table than the very first SMB. You can also see how the "Tired" category spikes up for the very last game.
Perhaps this isn't necessarily a bad thing. NSMBU obviously has the largest enemy count of the entire series, but due to Nintendo's preferred method of having 1 gimmick a level and then throwing that gimmick away. It's easy to guess which of that large cast are just one offs, and which ones you'll likely find from front to back.
A small thing of note. I separated Goomba from Galoomba since Nintendo has decided they both can live side by side. However, I did not ever seperate color variations. I realize the mechanical differences of a Green Koopa and a Red Koopa early on, but those lines started to blur with SMW's Blue and Yellow Koopa.
-------------------------
So really, after all of this, I just wanted to say that 2D mario is beginning to bore me a bit. The staple Grass->Dessert->Water->Sky->Mountain->Ice worlds or whatever progression has become predictable, as are the enemies we find within them. I know I can expect a desert world with a Pokey in it, and a water world with bloopers.
However, I feel like a sprite swap for a substitution is okay. Like, I enjoyed the Galoomba's in Super Mario World, even though they were very close to the original Goombas. This is actually a leading reason why I enjoyed Superstar Saga so much. Giving us parallels to Mushroom Kingdom enemies was refreshing, even if they played mechanically similar.
The 3D games seem to avoid this because they haven't stuck with the "world theme" since Sunshine. Even though they have World 1 or 2 that has a backdrop of a mountain or cave, you'll find maybe 1 or 2 levels with that theme beside 6 or 7 levels with whatever the developers waned.
I hope the next 2D Mario game tries putting us somewhere new. Some parallel to the Mushroom Kingdom that forces the developers to hesitate to reuse some of the enemies we've been a little overexposed to. I mean, I don't mind seeing a Goomba or a Koopa. I consider these enemies staples, and it would feel a little weird without them existing at all, and people look forward to those enemies. But maybe we could find something new to replace Wiggler with, or all the skeleton enemies, or maybe give Piranha plants a breather.
Whatever it takes to force the developers to inject a little creativity into the series.