New Super Mario Bros. U review

[Nu-Eclipse]

Stating the obvious, but without figures there's no way to know for sure if the Galaxy games drove Wii hardware sales better than NSMB Wii did. NSMB Wii outsold Galaxy by roughly 2:1 and outsold Galaxy 2 by roughly 5:1 so it looks highly doubtful.

For one thing, I might be wrong but I don't recall Galaxy or Galaxy 2 being officially bundled with the Wii as a pack-in whereas I feel like I can recall NSMB Wii being officially bundled with the Wii (again I could be wrong but I can't be arsed to Google it).

[mr_sockochris]

Oddessy sold me on a Switch after skipping the WiiU (the only Nintendo console I haven't owned) so there must be some truth behind that statement.

[Dogg Thang]

I think Nintendo need the 3D Marios. NSMB might sell well but I’m betting it’s no system seller. It’s an easy inoffensive safe purchase for people who already own the system. I can’t imagine there is a way to demonstrate it but I’d speculate that Galaxy sold more Wiis than NSMB did. And that Odyssey sold way more Switches than a NSMB would have. And maybe if they’d had something that looked more impressive than 3D World, as good as it was as a game, they’d have sold more WiiUs too.

[wakka]

From 3D World to now. Barring rereleases we’ve only had Mario Maker, which is kind of a different beast to NSMB anyway.

I kinda felt like 3D Mario might be dead a few years ago due to the NSMB sales juggernaut, but fortunately it hasn’t proved to be the case.

[Nu-Eclipse]

We’ve had more 3D Mario in the past few years than 2D. Which is kind of surprising actually.

I don't think that's true. What timeframe are you specifying from?

In the context of 3D Land, 3D World and Odyssey we have had, in the same period, NSMB2, NSMBU, NSLU (originally touted as DLC but eventually pushed as a retail title), Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 3DS.

[Nu-Eclipse]

To this day though I still can't understand how the masses embraced classic 2D Mario over 3D in the modern era.

My theory is that there simply hadn't been a 2D Mario in a long time at that point. Before NSMB debuted on the DS back in 2006, Super Mario Land 2 on the GB in 1992 was the last proper 2D Mario game as there wasn't one on N64 or GC.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I guess?

[wakka]

It was all those dirty casuals the Wii brought in
That might not even be that off the mark, the 3DS sold about half what the NDS did but NSMB2 had a steeper drop off than that from what I can tell in sales momentum.

I actually do think the ‘casual’ contingent of Wii owners had a big impact. 2D Mario is more familiar to more people, and easier to grasp control and gameplay wise than 3D Mario if you rarely play games.

I’d love a Galaxy 3, but I don’t feel the impact NSMB had on the 3D Mario franchise was too negative. We got 3D World, which was great, then Odyssey which was an absolute blinder. We’ve had more 3D Mario in the past few years than 2D. Which is kind of surprising actually.

[Nu-Eclipse]

It was all those dirty casuals the Wii and DS brought in

Corrected to fully account for the Touch! Generations era!

That might not even be that off the mark, the 3DS sold about half what the NDS did but NSMB2 had a steeper drop off than that from what I can tell in sales momentum.

Yup. The very first NSMB game on DS remains the best-selling title in the NSMB series with 31m copies sold. NSMB2 on 3DS sold less than half of that with 13m. I remember critics and gamers alike being very meh towards NSMB2 (myself included) as it was just more of the same bland identikit 2D Mario from NSMB Wii and the coin-grinding element didn't really work at all.

[ItsThere]

I'm struggling to get into this and dying a lot more than I feel I should...

[Neon Ignition]

It was all those dirty casuals the Wii brought in
That might not even be that off the mark, the 3DS sold about half what the NDS did but NSMB2 had a steeper drop off than that from what I can tell in sales momentum.

[Atticus]

I loved NSMBU on Wii-U. It felt like the closest thing to Super Mario World you're likely to get these days. It's not a better game than either of the Galaxies but it's still a great game.

To this day though I still can't understand how the masses embraced classic 2D Mario over 3D in the modern era.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Yeah, and the thing is, I struggle to blame them because of the sheer difference. It isn’t that NSMB was more successful; it was probably more successful by an order of magnitude.

Hard to disagree with that. NSMB Wii decimated both SMG games for sales.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of the finest games of that Wii/360/PS3 generation but there's no denying that it underperformed (at least in Nintendo's eyes) - just under 7.5m copies sold worldwide when its predecessor sold 13m copies, and even that pales in comparison to NSMB Wii's 30m copies sold.

[Asura]

Yup.

NSMB Wii also pretty much destroyed any chance of there ever being a Super Mario Galaxy 3.

Yeah, and the thing is, I struggle to blame them because of the sheer difference. It isn’t that NSMB was more successful; it was probably more successful by an order of magnitude.

[Nu-Eclipse]

It's just because one of the early ones was a shocking success, even to Nintendo; the Wii game sold almost 30 million copies. It's insane.

Yup.

NSMB Wii also pretty much destroyed any chance of there ever being a Super Mario Galaxy 3.

[Nu-Eclipse]

You have to take the reliance of these ports as a signal Nintendo will super-cheap out of making new instalments for the current system and in this instance I'm fine with that.

Lol, you make it sound like producing an NSMB game is somehow expensive for Nintendo - they've recycled the same audio and visual assets since NSMB Wii! It wouldn't have killed them to have made a little more effort for a genuine "NSMB Switch", surely?