Topic: Super Mario 2025

Waiting in the wings of a Parabeetle is the preview of the next Nintendo Switch, and more importantly, the next Super Mario series entry. There’s rumour and precedent that we could know in a matter of days!

My guess: Super Mario Dynasty

My reasoning: I bet Nintendo has considered Mario for a dynasty warriors type game, even if seemed unlikely. But themes and concepts could be adapted to set Mario, at least in part, in an east Asia historical setting. What did Super Mario 128 teach us about more Mario computing power? More on-screen characters. So a kingdom battle could be an intriguing backdrop to a 3D platforming adventure. I also think mainline Mario will have horse riding for the first time. A giddy uppah..

Or we just get Galaxy the third (but nah..)

I am also really curious as to what the next mainline Mario will look like...

Maybe Mario 2025 is already too far along in development, but I wondered if Nintendo might lean into some of the elements of Astro-Bot? Specifically regarding the integration of levels related to other Sony-IP etc.

For example, the new Mario could have levels that are Zelda/Metroid/Starfox themed, and specific gameplay mechanics/nuances within each.

I'd be thrilled though for Galaxy 3, would genuinely welcome that

You know, speaking of a Mario themed Musou game, I always wanted a Smash Bros Musou. With all of the different characters and game environments, it would be pretty cool.

Another possibility for the next big Mario game is going the route of 3D World instead of introducing a more sprawling adventure a la odyssey or galaxy. If the next switch features expanded resolution and screen size, they could decide to market that with multiplayer. It does seems certain the joy con will remain as a shareable controller. If they could nail a really good 2P co-op Super Mario, that would renew the case for the joy con for a lot of people at the launch.

This is the style I’d hope they go. Focused 3D courses with well defined two player as opposed to a sprawling single player collectathon.

@NinChocolate Please god no. 3D World is the NSMB of 3D games and the exact opposite direction I want to see a Mario game go. It's too linear and constrained and thoroughly uncreative. I want a Mario game where I can use Mario's acrobatic tricks to figure out my own way forward, not for the game to tell me where I should go and what I should do. I want a Mario game that has unique, new gameplay, not the same old tricks we've seen from 3D Mario for the last 20 years. I want a Mario game with a unique settings and inhabitants, not the same generic Mushroom Kingdom residents we always get.

A full game like Bowser's Fury feels like the only correct answer to what the 3D Mario should be like. A full game of open world 3D Mario gameplay would be exactly what 3D Mario needs right now. It'd be a big, bold, explorable experience worthy of succeeding games like 64, Sunshine, and Odyssey. It would have enough structure that you could still play it like a 3D Land or 3D World experience should you so choose. Take Bowser's Fury, expand it to a full game, and sprinkle in the usual coat of paint of new environments/themes and gameplay gimmicks to go along with it, then you've got a winner. That's all they need to do and that'll give the Switch 2 a nice early system seller.

@Bolt_Strike I’ve had Bowser’s Fury since launch but I bought it mostly to play 3D World and haven’t gotten to it yet. I think will try to dig into that soon. It’s nice to know there’s a range of possibilities for Mario in terms of his movement and freedom.

@NinChocolate Well as far as movement, it's still 3D World and controls and plays like 3D World. But the changes in game structure are what's really exciting, and even if you like the linear style of 3D World I think you'll still enjoy it. What's genius about Bowser's Fury is that even though it's an open world sandbox it's structured like a linear game. Like, imagine the map screen in a linear game, but you have full control like a level and rather than selecting a level and pressing A to start... you just walk to it. That's basically how Bowser's Fury works. If you want to wander around and do what you want you can do that and if you just want to go from level to level in order you can do that too. So not only does it expand into open world gameplay but it also kind of feels like they merged the linear style into the sandbox style. So yeah, I don't really see how Mario should go in any direction but this one. It's the best way to satisfy the largest chunk of the fanbase.

I hope that Nintendo eventually brings out both a successor to Super Mario Odyssey and a successor to Super Mario 3D World.

Super Mario Odyssey is predominently a single player 3D game, with the ability for someone to join in and play as Cappy. So it is like a continuation off of Super Mario 64, SM Sunshine, SM Galaxy / Galaxy 2.

Super Mario 3D World, which I played on our Wii U with my daughter, is a full co-op game in that you can have up to 4 players, each playing an actual character to help finish the levels. If you want to play co-op with someone, 3D World is the way to go.

We've played both Odyssey and 3D World. But with 3D World's co-op option we had more fun together playing that game. My daughter and I also enjoyed Kirby Star Allies, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Yoshi's Crafted World. (And on the Wii U we played Yoshi's Woolly World, and on the Wii we played Kirby's Epic Yarn.)

If Nintendo only brings out one (and not the other) for the Switch 2, I think that would be a great loss for us gamers.

I guess the other option is for Nintendo to bring out a true co-op game that is challenging enough to be considered a successor to both 3D World & Odyssey.

The simplest answer is an online co-op adventure with both brothers in a free roam world that is reflective of the movie. Basically, Mario with a Zelda-like world with mushroom forests, warp pipes, yoshis and karts.

If this is meant to be the co-op version of Mario . . . then as long as it has local co-op so you can play on a single console and TV I'll be in.

If they do include karts, it would be nice to have a miniature version of Mario Kart inside the next Mario game. A mini game. Like how they had that coconut shooting game inside Donkey Kong 64. That was hilarious.

@darthkermit I don't think 3D World style co-op can ever really work in a sandbox style game like Odyssey. Co-op and exploration don't really mix well together because exploration is largely single player and driven by players' personal curiosity. What if different players want to explore completely different parts of the map? Hard to really call that co-op at that point. I think if you're doing co-op in an exploration focused game it kind of has to be asymmetric like Cappy in Odyssey or Bowser Jr. in Bowser's Fury. At the very least Player 1 needs to be the one to decide where to go and the rest have to keep up with them. If they tried to make it like 3D World, players would just be going off in completely different directions and not really working together.

Linear and constrained? Debatable. Uncreative? That's a bald faced lie right there.

Whether online or local, you limit the distance the players can wander from each other similar to Halo. If local, it could be split screen, or it could be one screen with player one in center-frame and player two wandering free but limited by a range.

Not really. It's a get to the goal style Mario game like the 2D games. That's naturally more limited than the sandbox style levels you see in games like 64, Sunshine, and Odyssey.

Also no. First of all, it offers pretty much nothing in terms of new gameplay mechanics. Mario has the same moveset he has for the last 20 years, there's no real overarching gimmick that shakes up the gameplay like FLUDD, Galaxy's gravity mechanics and spin move, or Cappy, there's new powerups but they're only used for a handful of levels/situations.

Second there's the levels. People praise the creativity of the level gimmicks but the levels are self-contained and whatever creativity exists in them doesn't last, so that doesn't really make up for the lack of creativity in the overall gameplay mechanics. Plus many of the level gimmicks are just recycled from Galaxy 2, so I can't even say that aspect of the gameplay is that creative.

So yeah, 3D World is definitely a far cry in terms of creativity from other Mario games. Sunshine, Galaxy, and Odyssey did much more to shake things up, 3D World is way too conservative (or at least base 3D World, Bowser's Fury is far better and closer to what 3D World should've been in the first place). It falls into the same issues of that era of "We can mainly only have Mushroom Kingdom stuff and characters, we can't really change much" that plagued other games like the NSMB and Paper Mario games and it's highly noticeable.

That's to be expected from a sequel to a game that took most of its design philosophies from the 2D side of things: games with simpler control schemes and heavier focus on level-specific gimmicks. It's not about the variety of ways Mario can finesse his way to the goal; it's about getting to that goal in the most objective point A-B way possible. Additionally, the point about the power-ups is odd, because they're far less situational here than other 3D Marios, which only gave you specific powers to be used in specific areas of a level.

That's deliberate. The game is very particular of not having its levels overstay their welcome. The levels introduce a mechanic, expand upon it within the level and conclude it - lather rinse repeat. The focus is on creating smaller, more concentrated levels with smaller rewards. A pick-up-and-play mentality that would go on to influence Odyssey(e.g. the overabundance of moons).

Again, probably deliberate. 3D World was helmed by a lot of the same developers who handled the Galaxy games, which effectively makes 3D World a culmination of lessons learnt while making those titles in particular.

Comparing it to what came after feels more unfair than comparing it to what came before. Odyssey in its current state wouldn't have existed if not for what was learnt from 3D World. It may take more from 64/Sunshine in terms of structure, but it's still full of concentrated linear sections. Same can be said for Bowser's Fury. It's structured similarly to Odyssey but built on 3D World's framework.

You don't have to agree, but it seems to me like you're appraising 3D World for less what it is and more for what is isn't.

I remember the rumors about the 3D Mario team working on a DK game, which made me think about how the next game could probably end up being something akin to Mario and Donkey Kong teaming up. If Bowser's Fury is indeed a tech-demo for the next big 3D Mario, and testing an open world format, I could see them doing something like Mario and DK island hopping. DK would probably function more like the gimmick of the game, similar to how Odyssey has Cappy. You'd be able to ride DK around and swing from vines using him.

Funny, because Wonder isn't entirely like that and that would be a FAR better 2D Mario game to use as a basis. Yes it has the simpler control schemes and level gimmicks, but it doesn't just rely on them to change up its gameplay. It actually makes game wide improvements and introduces new mechanics. It has new moves, abilities, and buffs using the badge system, the progression is less rigid and you have some choice of which levels to complete and in what order, and it actually introduces new characters, enemies, and environments. I'd be much more okay with a linear 3D game that follows a philosophy closer to Wonder's, but 3D World's problem isn't just that it's following the 2D games' philosophy, but NSMB's specifically. And the same issues that people hate about the NSMB series are an issue here.

That's true but the difference is that the 3D Marios aren't reliant on the powerups to shake up the gameplay.

Again it's an issue of being overreliant on level gimmicks to provide the gameplay changes/variety. Games like Galaxy and Odyssey have a similar philosophy of not having level gimmicks overstay their welcome but they also have overarching gameplay mechanics or gimmicks that spice things up.

Except if you're recycling gimmicks they become less fun. You know, the reason why they don't want level gimmicks to overstay their welcome? I've already experienced these gimmicks before, they're not as fun the second time.

I lumped those three games together for a reason, because they have something in common that 3D World is lacking. Odyssey being a game came after is irrelevant because there were games before 3D World that took a similar approach, the issue is that 3D World largely abandoned what they learned from games like 64 and Sunshine (and in some ways feels like it didn't learn what it should've from Galaxy), it's the lone game out of the 3D console Marios that feels like a regression. And notice that one of them, Galaxy, isn't even a sandbox game (it has some sandbox elements, but its levels are largely linear and Nintendo even considers it a linear game).

Anyway, what Sunshine, Galaxy, and Odyssey all have in common is that they were all unafraid to step outside of the usual tropes we see for a typical Mario game. It's not set in a generic Mushroom Kingdom environment, they have unique settings (Sunshine is on a tropical island, Galaxy is space themed, and Odyssey travels to various kingdoms), they have gameplay gimmicks that provides an overarching mechanic to base their level gimmicks and gameplay around (I mentioned these before, FLUDD in Sunshine, the gravity mechanics and spin move in Galaxy, Capture in Odyssey), they have unique NPCs and enemies fitting their themes instead of generic Toads and the usual classic enemies. 3D World lacks all of this and like the NSMB games feels like a generic Mushroom Kingdom game (yes it's technically the Sprixie Kingdom, but there's nothing about it that looks or feels materially different from the Mushroom Kingdom unlike the above examples) that just repeats what it did from the last game instead of trying to create a unique identity for itself.

Probably because what it isn't is the parts that were actually fun and creative and enjoyable about the 3D games, leaving what it is to be a hollow shell. You keep saying "this was a deliberate decision to realize its design philosophy" but its design philosophy is the entire problem, the design philosophy itself is a very controversial one that felt ill advised. What they've done with Odyssey and Bowser's Fury has brought back that magic that was lost from games like Sunshine and Galaxy.

@Bolt_Strike I won't argue anymore about this because at the end of the day we're probably never going to agree, but if it's not too much trouble, would you care to elaborate as to how 3D World relies more on NSMB's design? I'm not quite sure I understand where you're going with that mentality.

So what 3D World has in common with NSMB (especially the latter 3 games) is that they feel like very sterilized experiences. They feel handcuffed into sticking to certain elements and conventions and have a very rigid identity that makes them feel samey and repetitive, to the point where they feel less like legitimate evolutions of the series and more like full game-sized level pack DLC. Gameplay is largely similar, Mario has the same moveset from game to game and the only thing that changes is powerups really. The settings and environments tend to feel the same, just generic Mushroom Kingdom environments with the same grass, desert, beach, ice, sky, lava, etc. worlds. The enemies and bosses are mostly the same ones we've been seeing for the last 20 years, filled with generic Goombas, Koopas, Bullet Bills, Cheep Cheeps, Koopalings, etc. The games feel very afraid to go outside their comfort zone and it makes them feel like generic mush pumped out by a conveyor belt (or maybe if they were made today, by A.I.).

It seems like this was an overarching issue with the entire Mario IP during that period. Paper Mario has had similar issues and the devs have admitted they were restricted by higher ups from deviating very far because it "wasn't Mario" and they had to stick to certain conventions like keeping it in the Mushroom Kingdom and only using well known Mushroom Kingdom characters. Considering that the platformers from that era suffer from similar problems it's likely that this philosophy was mandated for the entirety of the IP at the time, so the platformers may have been subjected to similar restrictions. And those restrictions have made that era feel very soulless and bland.

@Bolt_Strike Hmm. I won't disagree with the notion that Mario games(especially the spin-offs) were getting aggressively tamer at the time. I think a lot of people agree on that.

I do however hesitate to agree on the idea that 3D World is on the same level of creativity as the New Supers. When comparing 3D World to say, New Super U, I feel the former is a much more inspired product. New Super U feels like it's going through the motions, not really doing much to really deviate from predecessors, with anything new feeling like an afterthought. I can't say the same for 3D World. It may not be as conceptually strong as its predecessors, but unlike NSMBU, it's got stronger variation in level theming and design, more varied enemies and bosses, and actually does more with its characters and story. Bowser's always expected, but he took on a great new form in a final boss that was better than anything before(even in the 3D Marios), and compared to his final boss in NSMBU, it leaves a much stronger impression.

That's the difference right there IMO: 3D World leaves more of an impact on the franchise than NSMB. It may not be as radically unique as Sunshine or Odyssey, but it's deviations, while minor, are still welcome changes to shake up the usual Mario affair - enough to help shape the games that came after it. Can't say that about NSMB.

Also, I certainly wouldn't say 3D World or any of the NSMB games feel like they created with AI. That's a major insult right there. You can dislike the games without being so disrespectful to the people who made 'em.