Retro|Spective 075R: Super Mario

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it's up there for me but it remains short of the Galaxy games. It doesn't take that long to go through, I'm not a fan of the non-Mario-esque designs it flips between having and not having that give it a Sonic Adventure air at times and whilst the hundreds of moons add life to it an awful lot of them lack Nintendo's usual care in their design. To go through it's excellent but the experience diminished for me the more I played it post-completion which prior to that only Sunshine suffered from. You can easily stop playing when it stops being fun but being a Nintendo game it's a shame it contained that experience for me. Still, by far the best game Nintendo released that year

[Nu-Eclipse]

Odyssey was a sheer delight from start to finish IMO.

Easily more fun that Breath of the Wild ever was and it is right up there with the best of 3D Mario as far as I'm concerned.

I honestly don't know of anybody who found the post-game Moon collecting to be boring. It sure as hell beat being made to replay the entire game as Luigi (a very, very, VERY tired and lazy trick used by the Galaxy games). Getting the Golden Odyssey was nothing less to me than utterly rewarding.

Very much a far more refined version of Sunshine in the best sense: Koizumi and Motokura flipping the established script with Mario to freshen things up. Easily one of the Switch's finest.

[wakka]

I loved collecting all 999 Moons, personally. There was a huge amount of variety in the game. So many beautifully crafted playgrounds. And it took me a while, too. I can't remember how long I spent on the game but it was a pretty substantial amount.

It's a far cry from the Blue Coins challenge on Sunshine, which is an exercise in frustration which effectively demands the use of a strategy guide (I didn't need one at all for Odyssey - although I did glitch that ****ing skipping rope challenge ).

I really liked that it went new and different places for a Mario game, too. New Donk City in particular felt very different to everything we've seen from Mario before. The Mexican level was great, too. And the castle on the Moon was visually absolutely stunning. I do get very bored of the usual Mushroom Kingdom locales, the fire world, the ice world and on and on, and it was great in this one that we had some genuinely different stuff.

Also, I loved the mopeds. Vrooooom.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I loved collecting all 999 Moons, personally. There was a huge amount of variety in the game. So many beautifully crafted playgrounds. And it took me a while, too. I can't remember how long I spent on the game but it was a pretty substantial amount.

It's a far cry from the Blue Coins challenge on Sunshine, which is an exercise in frustration which effectively demands the use of a strategy guide (I didn't need one at all for Odyssey - although I did glitch that ****ing skipping rope challenge ).

I really liked that it went new and different places for a Mario game, too. New Donk City in particular felt very different to everything we've seen from Mario before. The Mexican level was great, too. And the castle on the Moon was visually absolutely stunning. I do get very bored of the usual Mushroom Kingdom locales, the fire world, the ice world and on and on, and it was great in this one that we had some genuinely different stuff.

ALL OF THIS.

New Donk City was absolutely spot-on for putting an established videogame character in a "human" setting (take notes, Sonic!).

I also agree about the Mushroom Kingdom being boring at times...but seeing it again a la Super Mario 64 after so long was a genuine fckn hell moment!

In fact, Odyssey was absolutely brilliant in terms of celebrating EVERYTHING about Mario. So many fantastic nods to past games in the Mario universe. Wonderful nostalgia.

IAlso, I loved the mopeds. Vrooooom.

All about riding the Jaxi for me. Brilliant and chaotic!

[wakka]

I also agree about the Mushroom Kingdom being boring at times...but seeing it again a la Super Mario 64 after so long was a genuine fckn hell moment!

Yeah, I didn't mean that level of Odyssey at all - that was such a cool choice to include and I loved playing around on that one with the moped. I meant more the New SMB parade of 'traditional' Mario worlds - so glad they didn't do that with Odyssey. It was so much better for it. Loved the garden world manned by robots. That was such a cool one. Or the one with the dinosaur! There's so much to love in Odyssey.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 138 - Mario Party: The Top 100
With blistered feet the party continued with a third 3DS release, this time using the top 100 hundred mini-games culled from the prior entries in the franchise. The game scored weak reviews, its reliance on old content further driving home the tiredness of the franchise.




Party'd Out?

[Travesty]

Game 138 - Mario Party: The Top 100
With blistered feet the party continued with a third 3DS release, this time using the top 100 hundred mini-games culled from the prior entries in the franchise. The game scored weak reviews, its reliance on old content further driving home the tiredness of the franchise.




Party'd Out?

It was really bad, I felt it relied purely on nostalgia of old mini games, and as I have not played Mario Party games religiously, I really had very little nostalgia to any old mini games. Also after Star Rush, Top 100 felt really slow and tedious. When we first time started playing Top 100, on friend of mine started laughing and asked "are there really over 100 mini games in the Mario Party franchise?".

[Neon Ignition]

Game 139 - Mario Tennis Aces
Several new moves and many new characters were added for the most recent Mario Tennis entry which saw frequent DLC updates post-release and kept the gameplay simple to pick up but with more systems than before so there was a notable step forward for the franchise. It paid off with stronger reviews than the prior entry and strong sales.




Aces?

[Neon Ignition]

Game 140 - Super Mario Party
A new Nintendo console obviously meant another excuse for Mario to hold a party. The seventeenth entry in the sub-franchise, it returned to the same gameplay set up that had been used in Mario Party 1-9 and contained 80 new mini-games and the addition of character specific dice. With 20 selectable characters, this entry had the biggest roster to date and saw stronger reviews than many prior entries as well as revived sales having sold near 20m units.




Was the Party Back On?

[wakka]

Jesus, 20 million. Well, you can see why they keep making them.

I played this one. It was okay. Better than its immediate predecessors. Frankly these games are never nearly as fun as they ought to be.

I played Tennis Aces too. The core gameplay was strong but I felt let down by the single player mode. I wanted a proper quest but it was pretty lacklustre. And everyone online was really good, and I was really bad, so that was the end of that

[Neon Ignition]

Game 141 - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Building on the WiiU entry with tons of content and DLC, Ultimate reached 89 playable characters and was intended to be a culmination of all the content from the prior entries to leave the franchise at something of a full stop. Covering multiple franchises from across several companies, the game also saw the initial Amiibo launch bring physical representations of the fighters, something that is still seeing Nintendo play catch up with the releases. Selling 30m units, the game is one of the biggest success stories for the company leaving fans wondering what the future will bring.




The Ultimate?

[Nu-Eclipse]

The Ultimate?

As much I don't care for SSB's gameplay mechanics, I consider it to be quite clearly the greatest videogame crossover series since Marvel & Capcom started collaborating in the early 1990s. The sheer quantity and quality of the fanservice in Smash is simply unmatched by very few, if any, other IPs in gaming past or present.

Also, despite inane blabberings about PR from some, it's quite clear that Ultimate is pretty much the absolute peak of the franchise (even if the core fans still love SSB Melee more). It's really difficult to see where the series goes after this IMO. Sure, it could continue to be ported to future Nintendo hardware and more characters could be included (even though we know that Nintendo/Sakurai-san were very selective about who they wanted in the game), but it's hard to shake the feeling that we've seen all there is to see from Smash on the whole.

Hell, even Sakurai-san has recently confirmed that's he on indefinite hiatus/semi-retirement from videogame development, which pretty much hints that he considers Ultimate to be his grand opus...unless he's spouting PR, of course...

[Neon Ignition]

It would be an immense challenge, also because so many people likely expect the volume of content they've reached now but I'd quite welcome a complete re-invention of the series. Essentially still a fighting game using the characters and fan service but playing absolutely nothing like the existing games, just a ground up reinterpretation.

[Asura]

Unpopular, but it narks me that the Smash community nucleates around two games for pro events. Pick one.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Unpopular, but it narks me that the Smash community nucleates around two games for pro events. Pick one.

By that logic, tournaments for SSFIIX, SFIII: 3rd Strike, SFIV-era and SFV shouldn't be a thing anymore, then?