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First look at New Super Mario Bros. WiiU?

This makes 4 games with the NSMB art style. Ugh.

I didn't like it when they re-used Super Mario Galaxy's art style for the sequel and that one was at least 5 BILLION times better looking than NSMB.
 
Am I the only who thinks you shouldn't read too much into the clips shown so far. After all this was a showcase of the social aspects of the Wii U and not the game itself. Early Mario levels are hardly ever indicative of what the later levels will look like anyway. This looks like a very early level.
 
The foreground is meh.

The background is like... my early-90s fever dream of what Super Mario Bros. games would look like in the future. Like.
 
BocoDragon said:
The foreground is meh.

The background is like... my early-90s fever dream of what Super Mario Bros. games would look like in the future. Like.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the foreground sort of uglies up and clashes with the background. Can't wait to see a non-offscreen, hi-res version of this.
 
Um...random question, but can someone refresh my memory. Did NSMB:Wii have water geysers?
 
Oblivion said:
Fixed. Since we never got a proper one.
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Depends. I dunno.... I'd take that Super Mario World 2 name on the western cart for Yoshi's Island as evidence that it was internally considered a SMW sequel.
 
esspi.jpg
 
SPE said:
This seemingly obvious fact is lost on too many chumps in this thread.

If you look at all the platformer of recent times, they're broadly in two camps. One is old school, precision games, like NSMB and Super Meat Boy, that have basic, yet very clear art design that allows for complete clarity of action.

On the other, you have Limbo, LBP, Raymam, which are not pixel perfect platformers, but 'experiences' first. Having the foreground obscure the platforms, along with other fancy graphic effects all add to the atmosphere, but don't impact on the action they're not that sort of game.

DKR was a game in the former camp, but had too many sections from the latter. One of the reason it ended up fucking me off so much.

Sine Mora is another recent example where form and function don't meet. It is arguable the prettiest shmup ever, yet at a major cost. Far too often, I don't know what has killed me. Either the bullets don't stand out, or more likely, the background is actually the foreground and can kill the ship.
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3zWpR.gif


Agree with everything you've said.
 
I'm not sure if we can infer anything from this, but this is how the game looked a year ago:

New-Super-Mario-Bros.-Mii_b_117334.jpg
 
E3 DOES bring the crazies out. I think the foreground is alright, the grass makes it kind of pop. The background is gorgeous. But I'm sure they'll have the atrocious music that is such a hallmark of the NSMB line of games. Le sigh.
 
It's kinda worth noting:

vlcsnap-2012-06-03-17c3co9.png
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Peach's Castle in the background there? It has the exact same mountains and "shitty clouds" as in that NSMBW screenshot. So if you actually play a level over there, I wonder how much better THAT will look than the NSMBW shot. Might be interesting if 1-1 is over there, and looks like shit "on purpose," then you leave the area and things look better and better as you go.
 
Tathanen said:
It's kinda worth noting:



Peach's Castle in the background there? It has the exact same mountains and "shitty clouds" as in that NSMBW screenshot. So if you actually play a level over there, I wonder how much better THAT will look than the NSMBW shot. Might be interesting if 1-1 is over there, and looks like shit "on purpose," then you leave the area and things look better and better as you go.
Click to expand...

Perhaps each level adds more depth to the background...that would be crazy.
 
DungeonO said:
ITT: People think they can design a better Mario game than the developers who have designed Mario games for nearly 30 years.
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Well...not to toot my own horn or anything, but I HAVE been tinkering around with Lunar Magic twice a week for the past month or so.

Just sayin.

ConradCervantes said:
E3 DOES bring the crazies out. I think the foreground is alright, the grass makes it kind of pop.
Click to expand...

The grass looks much nicer than the flat textured junk that was in the prior games.
 
I'm just a little peeved, considering New Super Mario Bros Wii, Wii U, and 2 all look very similar. The DS one not so much, as the game is pretty damned ugly. It bothers me because even on the NES we had Mario games that looked significantly different than one another, except the three NSMB games I have issues with are on three different platforms. It seems incredibly lazy.

Granted I think NSMBWii controls a hell of a lot better than NSMB DS, with better, more precise platforming, so I don't mind 2 and WiiU in controls. It's the visuals that look so..boring. Even Sonic 4 Episode II looks like a bigger push than its previous game, and one would actually assume additional episodes would do more of the approach the NSMB series is doing.
 
I just hope the levels scale vertically and give more freedom, even in a 2D space. Allows for secret key exits and secret short cuts. That was the best aspect of SMW for me.
 
Olaeh said:
I told you the Mario Wii U game would use the NSMB artstyle. You thought they'd do something different for the "first HD Mario."

I told you :)
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Funny thing. When NSMB Wii came out, some guy (not on GAF) was pitching a fit about the world map because it wasn't like SMW. I told him "they're building Mario back up again. This one is SMB3. The next one will be SMW with a SMW overworld."

He didn't believe it because "NSMB is so bad cuz Nintendo can't make games anymore. They'll use this dumb map again."

Hee.
 
Ah yes, we knew it'd come but damn, these games are so much more fun than any of your generic modern military shooter borefest.
Looking forward to it's multiplayer mode. I LOVED NSMBWii's multiplayer, we had incredible amounts of fun!

And yay for more a SMW-styled worldmap! I hope it has real secret levels in there, something I've been missing since SMW.
 
Kaijima said:
What keeps being left out of the debate on one side, is that NSMB is not made exclusively for hardcore gamers.

The point about "clarity" should take into account how open, friendly, and easy to grasp the visual design makes it for the average person. Who is the audience Nintendo hoped to recapture with NSMB.

And it worked incredibly well.

I think it seems that nobody crying "lazy and generic" is trying to put themselves into the shoes of actual ordinary people. Not core gamers. Not people who care primarily about the art style of a game.

The truth is, the more stylized art is, the greater chance it has of turning a lot of people off. It becomes weirder, harder to instantly grasp, less friendly, and can be less intuitive to the uninitiated.

That is why the Mario games have always gone for that kind of clarity. That is why the 2D Mario games always kept things as simple as possible, compared to other Nintendo platformers. Even games made in the same era, their contemporaries.

The public has responded powerfully to NSMB's super friendly art style. Do people really think that Nintendo is unwiling to spend coin on a series that sells so much?

It's more that what people keep wanting them to do is simply unnecessary, and could even be counterproductive, to what they achieved with the brand.

It's the reason why Mario Kart looks the same as it has for a while now. Which is, in itself, an odd point - where are the cries about Mario Kart 7 using basically the same art style and themes as Mario Kart Wii, which itself was very similar to Mario Kart DS?

(There are, in fact, some people who hate on the visuals in current Mario Kart. But they seem to be a great minority compared to people who accept it.)

Mario Kart also has a very open, not-too-rich, not-too-weird visual style. It can be appealing to virtually everyone - except, perhaps, hardcore gamers who have tastes that require the stylized and novel to be excited. But that's OK with Nintendo, apparently. Like NSMB, Mario Kart currently sells bajillons of copies because almost everyone alive loves it.

NSMB has become a bread and butter version of Mario that invites a bedrock audience to buy into the platform. Ironically, the Wii U game screen even shows they're not resting on their laurels. If they were as 'lazy' and 'cheap' as people who want a different artstyle claim, I think that the New Super Mario Bros. Mii game (which looks to have been a mock-up or demo after all) would have been what they went with - something that really was identical to NSMB Wii without any effort to spruce it up.
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That's fine. But I don't accept it as above criticism when a movie studio dumbs down a movie just to meet lowest common denominator. If they are too afraid of turning people off or creating an art style that might make it more sophisticated to interpret, if they let potential $$$ signs dictate the art style of their games, that is not a reason to withhold criticism. Quite the opposite.
 
So I just realized what's probably the most depressing part of this new game: it's not doing anything new that the Wii couldn't have done (minus the obvious displaying in high resolution).

Now I have a sad. :(
 
Oblivion said:
So I just realized what's probably the most depressing part of this new game: it's not doing anything new that the Wii couldn't have done (minus the obvious displaying in high resolution).

Now I have a sad. :(
Click to expand...

What did any 2D Mario game before this do that the SNES couldn't?
 
Oblivion said:
So I just realized what's probably the most depressing part of this new game: it's not doing anything new that the Wii couldn't have done (minus the obvious displaying in high resolution).

Now I have a sad. :(
Click to expand...

It's online/socially integrated, for one.
 
maquiladora said:
At that scale, it honestly looks like two different levels of the same game on the same system, with the nicer art style world on the left.

I still think it might just be a mockup Mario and not an actual game.
Click to expand...

Knowing Nintendo, its not a mockup :\
 
Oblivion said:
So I just realized what's probably the most depressing part of this new game: it's not doing anything new that the Wii couldn't have done (minus the obvious displaying in high resolution).

Now I have a sad. :(
Click to expand...

There's an argument that you could have done most of this on SNES.

It's a classic genre... nothing envelope pushing should be expected. The most we could hope for is new graphical effects... and I think we'll see that in there.
 
Tathanen said:
It's kinda worth noting:



Peach's Castle in the background there? It has the exact same mountains and "shitty clouds" as in that NSMBW screenshot. So if you actually play a level over there, I wonder how much better THAT will look than the NSMBW shot. Might be interesting if 1-1 is over there, and looks like shit "on purpose," then you leave the area and things look better and better as you go.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure this is World one. It looks just like the first area from SMW, and they always start with the grass/normal area. But that would be a funny idea.
 
Huh,I was expecting it to be just a slightly modified version of the upcoming NSMB2 which would allow cross play between WiiU and 3DS. It's going to be strange to release two mainline 2D Marios of the same branch in less than a year with, supposedly, graphically little difference.
 
BocoDragon said:
There's an argument that you could have done most of this on SNES.

It's a classic genre... nothing envelope pushing should be expected. The most we could hope for is new graphical effects... and I think we'll see that in there.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure this is what he meant, seeing as we've seen less than a full minute of gameplay.
 
I..thought I made it clear I was referring to the graphics?

The hell are you people talking about?
 
Kaijima said:
Funny thing. When NSMB Wii came out, some guy (not on GAF) was pitching a fit about the world map because it wasn't like SMW. I told him "they're building Mario back up again. This one is SMB3. The next one will be SMW with a SMW overworld."

He didn't believe it because "NSMB is so bad cuz Nintendo can't make games anymore. They'll use this dumb map again."

Hee.
Click to expand...

I'm referring to the artstyle.
I don't see a problem with it. I just thought it was funny he thought Nintendo would drop the familiar iconic look just because this was "the first HD Mario."
 
Yeah, this is getting confusing. You have some people saying the NSMB art style is generic and bland, and then you have others going on about it from the technical side of things.

edit: Or maybe it's both. Or neither. aghhhh
 
The fact that people are arguing over a mock-up for a commercial is hilarious.

Do you people believe that Nintendo is also developing a mature zombie shooting game as well?
 
branny said:
Yeah, this is getting confusing. You have some people saying the NSMB art style is generic and bland, and then you have others going on about it from the technical side of things.

edit: Or maybe it's both. Or neither. aghhhh
Click to expand...

Both for me, sir.
 
Flying_Phoenix said:
The fact that people are arguing over a mock-up for a commercial is hilarious.

Do you people believe that Nintendo is also developing a mature zombie shooting game as well?
Click to expand...

Well we do know a New Super Mario Bros game is coming out for the WiiU (and probably at or around launch), so there's a reason why people are assuming this footage isn't simply a mockup (even though it might be a rather early version of the game).
 
Playing NSMB Wii with 3 friends was one of the best experiences I had this gen; only Trials Evolution and Reach split-screen came close.

I underestimated the game back then and ate so much crow. Will get this day one.
 
Just realized that this is most likely going to be the very first Mario Bros. game with online co-op :D
 
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