Have you seen the footage from the New Super Mario Bros. U unveiling at E3? While response was good, it seems that some people complained that it looked very similar to the other titles in the “New” series on DS and Wii – aside from also being very pretty.
Thankfully, the producer of the 2D Mario games, Takashi Tezuka, spoke out to Gamespot about the intentionality of this:
”It’s intentional. That similarity in the visual style and the control style is all intentional. The things we feel like we’ve already promised the gamer is that Peach will be kidnapped by Bowser, and Mario will move from left to right. We know that’s what people are expecting! [Laughs] We know that there are all types of Mario games, as you said. So for us, with the New Super Mario Bros. series, we don’t really need to mess with it. This is what people want.
One of the things we always focus on in development is that we want a wide audience to play these games and enjoy them. So we’re looking at games that are accessible and intuitive. So, for example, we have a recurring enemy type from one game to the next. If in the first game the enemy acts a certain way and has a certain functionality, our audience says, “OK, I know what to expect.” If they see that character in [the new] game and it’s completely different, I don’t think that’s a good thing. For characters like the Goombas and the Koopas, those are the building blocks, the fundamental things that we’re not going to change.”
Sounds like good news to us!
