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[Smashman45]

As a Mario diehard, I agree that Mania has been far more exciting and delightful for me than any of 2D Mario's recent efforts through its few new zones by themselves, combined with the fun gameplay. Mirage Saloon and

Spoiler

Press Garden

in particular are the kind of added uniqueness to typical level themes that I wish Mario's 2D outings did more often.

2D Mario doesn't really need to take inspiration from its contemporaries (though it couldn't hurt), it could certainly attempt to stand out from itself a bit. NSMBU almost did that, and indeed has some nice backdrops, but it could've gone much further, that interesting Van Gogh level also serving as a strange outlier compared to everything else in the game. The NSMB games are mostly fun to play, but the same sterile look, and recycled tunes just make them all kind of a blur. A new visual style would do wonders on its own.

Disagreed on the story bits however, and the last thing Mario in general needs to do is take from its past. XD

Mario is the king of 3d platforming, when it comes to 2d I'd much rather play almost anything else.

Sonic, DKC, Megaman, Rayman, Shovel Knight, etc.

Where I'm at currently.

 

[Orniletter]

Soundtrack wise, the following kick the shit out of anything from 3D World:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxrS4F_HwM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WtwJPEJCA0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Wa8ymE3qo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTqrzwz6c8c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZVSqQaRJfQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqD4zftv99M

I could keep going.

Like, I get that you guys really like Mania, but can we turn down the hyperbole just a bit ?

"Kicking the shit out" ? lol no

 

[Scrawnton]

I don't think there's anything for Mario to learn from Mania. I loved playing Mania but my original thoughts about Sonic vs Mario stays the same, the best Sonic game isn't as good as even the worse Mario game.

 

[Nerrel]

Mania is beautiful, a real celebration of gorgeous pixel art. Colours burst off the screen, popping in and out as you high-tail it through each level. It's a real return to the glory days of the sprite work many of us cherished from yesteryear.

But Mario has totally abandoned his retro looks for an incredibly bland art style that just doesn't excite. It looks boring and has, in recent years, become incredibly stale. Inject some life back into the Mushroom Kingdom, look at Super Mario World - when did it become so safe?

Totally agree there. The NES and SNES games all had distinct visual styles that explored new territory, and they all look great in their own way. Considering the hardware limitations, it's actually kind of impressive that they managed to get such different looks out of the same systems. NSMB looked dull and basic from the start and it just kept repeating that look over and over, even when moving to radically more powerful systems. The difference in style between Mario 1 and 3 on the same system is much bigger than NSMB on a handheld and NSMBU on an HD home console.

Games like Muramasa, Rayman Legends and DKC: Tropical Freeze show what modern sidescrollers can look like when the developer actually gives a shit. NSMBU is so dull compared to those games, and even Mario 3D World on the same system. I wish they still bothered to push the visuals like they used to.

I see a lot of people saying 2D Mario is "stagnant," but NSMBU is the best 2D Mario game. They added good stuff like challenge modes. The level variation remains fantastic.

I think that demonstrates how important stimulation is in a game. Great music and art can carry a mediocre game and make it enjoyable to play. A great game with mediocre music and art can be really boring.

 

[TheDinoman]

"Kicking the shit out" ? lol no

Uh, yeah.

I guess it all comes down to taste, but while 3D World's soundtrack is nice, I don't have much urge to go back and listen to it again for the most part. Meanwhile every day I'm listening to Sonic Mania's Metallic Madness Act 1 and Metal Sonic's theme.

 

[MrBadger]

Mario is the king of 3d platforming, when it comes to 2d I'd much rather play almost anything else.

Sonic, DKC, Megaman, Rayman, Shovel Knight, etc.

I agree. I'm with everyone who says NSMBU has excellent level design, but aesthetics matter too. Tropical Freeze and Sonic Mania are great to look at and have amazing music as well as having great level design so I'm always going to pick them over any 2D Mario after World.

 

[LordKasual]

?????????????????????????????????????????????

you mean Sonic learned from Mario?

Mario has been doing what Sonic Mania just did for damn near a decade.....


For the last few years everyone keeps saying "OMG SEGA PLEASE JUST BE LIKE MARIO", and now Sonic Mania comes out and fans are telling a different story

Sensational games make silly threads lol. It's like you guys get tunnel vision and lose the ability to look a single day into the past before the game came out before making a thread


Sonic Mania is ONE GOOD SONIC GAME in a history of mostly garbage, and it's over 50% remixed content from original games, in a recent release history PLAGUED with remix games. And now we're talking about how Mario is stagnant? Come on yo....

 

[Jyester]

2D Mario has felt like a conveyor belt product ever since the first DS outing. I'm pretty sure Nintendo can make a great game if they wanted to, but it's just not high enough on their list of priorities. The fact that they have third parties make sequels to Yoshi's Island is telling.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love for Nintendo to knock one out of the park. But the reality is that they're not really trying to.

 

[dafortune]

I still don't understand why people keep talking about the new series as the current state of 2d Mario. It's all about maker now, the best game creation game ever made. I still play that game at least once a week. Nintendo doesn't need to learn shit from Sega just give me Mario Maker 2.0.

 

[JulianImp]

Overall, Mario has had a lot more good and varied games than Sonic has, but it's true that the former's 2D games have been pretty stale as of late. Guess they get small teams and budgets assigned compared to Wold/64/Sunshine/Galaxy/3D Land/World, which all feature a wide variety of environments and pretty good design.

What Mario could probably learn from Sonic Mania is that sometimes people actually do want games that borrow pretty heavily from a previous game and add some modern design philosophies on top of that, but I don't think 2D Mario has been that much of a focus for them, so Nintendo had been sort-of half-assing it with NSMB since they knew it would still sell like crazy.

 

[Synth]

?????????????????????????????????????????????

you mean Sonic learned from Mario?

Mario has been doing what Sonic Mania just did for damn near a decade.....


For the last few years everyone keeps saying "OMG SEGA PLEASE JUST BE LIKE MARIO", and now Sonic Mania comes out and fans are telling a different story

Sensational games make silly threads lol. It's like you guys get tunnel vision and lose the ability to look a single day into the past before the game came out before making a thread


Sonic Mania is ONE GOOD SONIC GAME in a history of mostly garbage, and it's over 50% remixed content from original games, in a recent release history PLAGUED with remix games. And now we're talking about how Mario is stagnant? Come on yo....

Sonic Mania isn't what Mario's been doing for a decade though. During the same time people have been asking Sega to learn from Mario (almost exclusively regarding development of 3D Sonic), they've also been complaining about how boring as shit the New Super Mario line is.

Sonia Mania has more legitimately new themes than all the New Super Mario games combined. Zones in Sonic are simply equivalent to background themes in Mario, and so for all the times we've seen Green Hill Zone, we've seen the same grass-layered overground (World 1-1), dark underground (1-2), flat-top trees (1-3) and Bowser castle (1-4) themes used endlessly in 2D Mario, often times repeatedly across a single game, let alone in each game. Same deal with the musical themes also. 2D Mario is massively more stagnant than 2D Sonic has been. There's basically only Generations, Mania and to a lesser extent Sonic 4, that have heavily cashed in on Sonic's past zones... every 2D Mario since NSMB has been lifting from old Mario wholesale, and not even adding what Sonic Mania does on top.

 

[RRockman]

Like, I get that you guys really like Mania, but can we turn down the hyperbole just a bit ?

"Kicking the shit out" ? lol no

Keep dreaming bruh, even Sonic's bad games have Fantastic OSTs. Sonic was always the best music wise.

Thise are interesting ideas, but I don't think it's something Mario needs to do, just like something like Meat Boy or DK wouldn't either benefit from it. Mario levels are usually based on a main idea and develop it, it's an approach inherently different to Sonic, Rayman and others. It's another style of platforming, not better or worst, but different. We should celebrate each series having it's own personality instead of trying to make all of them the same thing.

I agree to an extent. I don't nessarily think one shared idea would make them all homogeneous since they could easily put their own twist on the idea of interact with the environment. Kinda like how in Mario kart 8 a large part of the cloud stage is actually the beanstalk from a super huge question block. An actual Mario stage like that would be super cool and be something distinctively Mario.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Sonic 4 Episode 1 & 2 are on the same platforms.

Advance, Rush, Genarations and Boom are hardly natural technological progressions of each other. That's just BS.

You're already bringing up 3D games too, as well as intentional design changes. SMW and All Stars SMW are in the same platform too and the latter got retouched in many ways too.

Sonic Mania isn't what Mario's been doing for a decade though. During the same time people have been asking Sega to learn from Mario (almost exclusively regarding development of 3D Sonic), they've also been complaining about how boring as shit the New Super Mario line is.

Sonia Mania has more legitimately new themes than all the New Super Mario games combined. Zones in Sonic are simply equivalent to background themes in Mario, and so for all the times we've seen Green Hill Zone, we've seen the same grass-layered overground (World 1-1), dark underground (1-2), flat-top trees (1-3) and Bowser castle (1-4) themes used endlessly in 2D Mario, often times repeatedly across a single game, let alone in each game. Same deal with the musical themes also. 2D Mario is massively more stagnant than 2D Sonic has been. There's basically only Generations, Mania and to a lesser extent Sonic 4, that have heavily cashed in on Sonic's past zones... every 2D Mario since NSMB has been lifting from old Mario wholesale, and not even adding what Sonic Mania does on top.

And in this post again you compare it to New strictly and apply it to all games.

 

[Synth]

You're already bringing up 3D games too, as well as intentional design changes. SMW and All Stars SMW are in the same platform too and the latter got retouched in many ways too.

No I'm not. Pay attention. Rush, Generations 3DS and Boom 3DS are all 2D Sonics in the vein that NSMB is a 2D Mario. If those games are eliminated for not being sprite based, then so is NSMB and 2D Mario simply hasn't existed post-SNES.

There's a reason I ignore stuff like Lost World, because that's a 3D Sonics on all platforms, and the graphical differences between the 3DS version and Wii U version actually are technological. This isn't the case for the Adventure-era inspirations for the Advance sprites, the cel-shaded art of the Rush games, the traditional 3D look of Generations, or the completely reworked approach of Boom.

Yes, I had forgotten to include All-Stars as a unique style of its own also. So that'd be:

Pre 5th Gen
Mario Bros (Arcade)
Super Mario Bros 1 & Lost Levels
Super Mario Bros 2 (Non-JP)
Super Mario Bros 3
Super Mario World
Super Mario Allstars
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Super Mario Land
Super Mario Land 2

Post 5th Gen
NSMB / Super Mario Run

For all unique 2D Mario styles (unless I'm missing any). The poster I responded to said 2D Mario experimented with "much more often" than 2D Sonic. 2D Mario hasn't experimented with a new style (Mario Maker doesn't have one of its own) in the last 11 years. Contrast with 2D Sonic:

Pre 5th Gen
Sonic 1 / CD (Gens/MD)
Sonic 2 (Gens/MD)
Sonic 3 / Sonic & Knuckles (Gens/MD)
Sonic 1 & 2 (MS/GG)
Sonic Triple Trouble / Chaos
Sonic Blast
and arguably 3D Blast / Sonic Labyrinth (not too sure where isometric should sit on the 2D vs 3D spectrum)

Post 5th Gen
Sonic Pocket Adventure
Sonic Advance / Sonic Advance 2 / Sonic Advance 3
Sonic Rush / Sonic Rush Adventure / Sonic Colors
Sonic Rivals / Sonic Rivals 2
Sonic 4 Episode I
Sonic 4 Episode II
Sonic Generations (3DS)
Sonic Boom (3DS) / Sonic Boom Fire & Ice
Sonic Jump / Sonic Runners

And in this post again you compare it to New strictly and apply it to all games.

The reason is compared strictly to NSMB is this post, was because the poster I responded to is explicitly talking about the last decade of Mario throwbacks. Again, Mario Maker present no new styles of themes of its own, and so isn't in consideration. A Sonic Maker almost certainly wouldn't be either.

Put short, when talking about experimentation between 2D Mario and 2D Sonic, it's only worth contrasting everything from after the SNES/Genesis era, because the two series mostly cancel each other out before then (despite Sonic starting nearly a decade later). Since then however, 2D Sonic has gone through a bunch of unique artstyles, and nearly all games have introduced their own uniquely themed zones, with all new music for each (and usually multiple per zone also). There's simply no legitimate way to claim 2D Mario has experimented more, or rehashed less. It's plain false.

EDIT: Actually... Mario Land games should be included also, so I've added those in.
EDIT2: Colors 3DS actually looks like Rush and isn't a 3D Sonic like Lost World 3DS is.

 

[GoldenCrow]

Basically go back and look at what made everything about Super Mario World great. Such as the maps, the secrets, art direction, the music, the hidden blocks, etc. Then bring in some elements from the newer games.

I really dislike everything about New Super Mario Bros series it pales in comparison to Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros 3.

 

[Toxi]

I don't think it's a matter of being defensive, it's just a kind of silly premise. Asking what Mario can learn from Sonic Mania is like asking what Sonic Mania can learn from Gex. There might be a couple nuggets of inspiration worth mining, but overall they're in different leagues in terms of quality. And I say that as someone who has bought Sonic Mania and is enjoying it plenty.

They're in different leagues of quality? Really?

Sonic Mania has the same metacritic score as New Super Mario Bros U, the one everyone here tells me is the best of that series. While a metacritic score is hardly an objective determiner of quality, I think stuff like that illustrates that for most people, Mania is in that same league of quality and is a perfectly valid comparison.

 

[Opa-Pa]

I guess I don't really consider Sonic Mania /just/ a throwback title, because while yes it looks similar to the older games and has (too) many classic stages, to me it's first and foremost the Sonic 4 we should have had in the Saturn era and a natural evolution of the Genesis games both in terms visuals and mechanics (yes, if you actually play it you'll realize it does a lot of new stuff as well). It's pretty much something I imagined Mario was going to do before Sonic back when NSMB wasn't a thing, a continuation of World with extremely detailed pixel art reminiscent of Super Princess Peach, maybe.

So I find it a bit disappointing that people consider the Mania visuals and gameplay something to evoke nostalgia and nothing else. It's going back to its roots, yes, but maybe sticking to the original physics and having improved visuals from the originals that still resemble the classics is something that would have worked better for Mario too. Pixel art =/= Nostalgia pandering, it's just a visual style... One that happens to look far better than NSMB's generic 3D look.

I think it's weird that so many come to say Mario has nothing to learn from it while also admitting that NSMB's visuals and music suck. Is this some console wars pride sort of thing? Why not just admit gameplay is consistently good while those other two aspects need an overhaul and that Sonic Mania is a good example to follow in those respects?

They're in different leagues of quality? Really?

Sonic Mania has the same metacritic score as New Super Mario Bros U, the one everyone here tells me is the best of that series. While a metacritic score is hardly an objective determiner of quality, I think stuff like that illustrates that for most people, Mania is in that same league of quality and is a perfectly valid comparison.

Didn't you know? Decades of bad and mediocre Sonic games completely invalidate Mania's individual quality and since our precious Mario can do no wrong, there's no point of comparison!

 

[Doosi]

They're in different leagues of quality? Really?

Sonic Mania has the same metacritic score as New Super Mario Bros U, the one everyone here tells me is the best of that series. While a metacritic score is hardly an objective determiner of quality, I think stuff like that illustrates that for most people, Mania is in that same league of quality and is a perfectly valid comparison.

THIS

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Uh, yeah.

I guess it all comes down to taste, but while 3D World's soundtrack is nice, I don't have much urge to go back and listen to it again for the most part. Meanwhile every day I'm listening to Sonic Mania's Metallic Madness Act 1 and Metal Sonic's theme.

I'd rather just play Hisstocrat on repeat.

Then again we're essentially comparing bit remix to jazz fusion so it's not really a reasonable thing to compare the two objectively.

 

[Snarky(HEART)]

Sonic objectively has better music

 

[Dark Ninja]

Mario is still great

 

[ModBot]

We really don't need all these threads talking about how Mania should influence everything else. Really.