New Super Mario Bros. U

The running complaint with Nintendo, hardware oddities aside, is that they've almost completely stopped releasing new games in so many of their beloved franchises, particularly on consoles. We've seen one Metroid game in the last seven years, and no future release from that franchise has even been confirmed. We've seen one console-based Zelda game in the last eight years, and again, there's no news of an upcoming release. Star Fox hasn't put out a console game since 2005; Pikmin was absent for nine years before 2013's Pikmin 3. I bring all this up only to serve as a contrast to Nintendo's bread and butter franchise, as there have been five new console-based Super Mario titles since 2007. That's nearly one a year, and I'm ignoring two original handheld games and a Super Luigi spin-off in the same timeframe. Bottom line, Nintendo loves itself a lot of Mario games. And Pokémon, too, I guess.

But how many is too many? New Super Mario Bros. U is the fourth installment in the New Super Mario Bros. offshoot series already, and that series was born on the DS in 2006. The gimmick, back then, was an honest-to-goodness return to basic 2D side-scrolling Super Mario games, which was nice; the series had been exclusively rendered in 3D environments for more than ten years at that point. But then the Wii tried its hand at the same exact concept. And then so did the 3DS and then ultimately the Wii U. And then the Wii U spun it off into the aforementioned Luigi-centric game. At this point there have been more 2D Super Mario releases since 2006 than there were from 1990 to 2005. Not to mention Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel, and most recently two games with the suffixes 3D Land and 3D World.

I'm not complaining, even if it may sound like it; the games are all impeccably polished and completely enjoyable to play. This one right here is probably my favorite Super Mario game since 2007's Galaxy, although I don't think I'll bother to go for 100% completion the way I did in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I can't even keep track, for the most part, of which fun levels and quirky gameplay elements belong to which games anymore. It's crazy!

I guess all I'm saying is that I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to sneak in another two or three Super Mario games before we see a new Metroid or Zelda. I'm a sucker and a nearly lifelong Nintendo fanboy, so I will buy and play every single one - am I part of the problem? Dang, I am, aren't I? Whatever - Nintendo's release schedule notwithstanding, this was a great, fun game.