They should make a new superlong 2D Mario game, and if they did a quality job (ie, level designs in the same league as those of Super Mario Brothers 3...without having to shell out money for cheapo e-cards...), I would buy it before you could say "Look! A chain chomp!" But it's never going to happen. Unfortunately, the game industry thrives on pretty, shallow games. Or at least, that's what all the game designers think. Games need to be pretty because the mass-market for videogames, especially those in the Mario agegroup, base video game purchases largely if not entirely on first impressions (ie, does the game LOOK fun?). This is how a parent who knows nothing about video games and has never touched a controller will decide which video game to buy their child as a gift. And it is how a 9-year-old will come to crave a certain game and ask for it for Christmas or a brithday, etc., after seeing a gorgeous and enticing commercial on Nickelodeon. So because the young mass-market for video games doesn't really put a lot of research into their buying decisions, games need to look pretty to grab customers' attentions.
Also, games need to be shallow. A superlong videogame with uber replay value will entertain children for months...and video game companies don't want this. They want children to finish video games quickly and become bored, so that they need to buy new videogames. This is why the recent pattern is to make videogames easier (to make players beat them more quickly, and to appeal to players' egos as they play by making them think that they are good players) and shorter.
Case-in-point: Yoshi's Story, for Nintendo 64. This was, basically, a next-gen 2D Mario game, jsut like we are asking for right now. It was pretty (some of the most gorgeous sprites I've ever seen), short (only 24 levels compared to Super Mario World's 90-something), and ridiculously easy (come on, did we really need three heart fruits in the middle of the battle with the pathetically weak Baby Bowser?).
Case 2: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, another gorgeous, short (though I can't really accuse it of being shallow), and easy game, which pailed in comparison to the fortunately re-released Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the greatest video game ever made.
I loved Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion (aimed at older audiences, these games had to actually have some depth), but I do not plan to buy Metroid: Zero Mission, because the reviews that I've read say that it is linear, short, and easy (the three things that Metroid Prime was fortunately not). So it appears that the shallowification trend is spreading even among the best game developers (ie, Nintendo) and even to more mature game genres. I fear the future. I'm eagerly awaiting Metroid Prime 2, but I dread that it will be short, or easy, or linear, or all of the above, because almost all games are becoming that way nowadays.
Personally, I don't think that game developers give consumers enough credit. We are intelligent (even the nine-year-olds), and we do want to buy long, deep, challenging games. Super Mario Brothers 3 was the greatest selling game of all time for good reason, and if I'm not mistaken, Nintendo, it made you quite a bit more money than did Yoshi's Story. I would buy a 500-stage 2D Mario game. Lots of other people would, too.
This is not a signature.
Edited by - Hirocon on 4/11/2004 8:00:35 PM
