Luigi 64DD said:
When I say "very original and different", I mainly mean visual and just the overall theme. The gameplay of each game is nearly identical even between SMB and SMB3 (besides SMB2 USA), so that doesn't matter. By my definition, SMW is different enough from SMB3 to count. When I say "count", I mean that in my mind, there is a sort of standard of different-ness that a game that is a true sequel should stand up to, which SMW does while SMB:LL and post-DS NSMB don't IMO. Keep in mind that this is only an honorary designation, since SMB:LL is obviously a sequel in reality.
I wasn't actually talking about visuals and themes, in-fact I did mention that the themes and visuals between the games were, in-fact, different, but the games themselves aren't too different, which is mostly the point I was trying to prove with my post.
I don't think that graphics should be what ties games together, and while I'm not a fan of the New SMB games re-using graphical themes, I believe the reason is because it's a 3D game, and varying 3D model artstyles without changing character designs is much more complex than 2D sprites. I don't have any confirmation on this, though, it's just a hunch.
Although admittedly, despite my claims the games are mostly the same, SMB and SMB3 are different from eachother in many ways, as I've played both myself, and their differences especially shine in Super Mario Maker; if you compare the Super Mario Bros. playstyle to the SMB3 one, you'll see that they play very differently, almost to the point where a level designed for SMB could have it's design broken when converted to SMB3.
I think this kind of thing is what points out the radical differences between two games. From my experience so far, if you compare SMB3, SMW and NSMBU's playstyles, they all play at least somewhat similarly, while the original Super Mario Bros. is the odd man out, and I believe this is what points out the differences between the games.
Note, I'm not mentioning Mario Maker because it's my only access to these games, I actually had SMB3 and SMB on my Wii before I sold it and I currently have SMW; the only game I don't own that has a playstyle in Mario Maker is New Super Mario Bros. U.
Luigi 64DD said:
However, if I were to choose between SMB:LL and SMB2 USA for which deserves the title "Super Mario Bros. 2" more, I'd choose SMB2 USA because it keeps the above-mentioned standard more, despite the fact that it was originally not a Mario game and that SMB:LL was originally the direct sequel to SMB (and still is in Japan).
Well, I do prefer SMB2 over SMB:LL (however I haven't played either one) but I was talking more objectively than subjectively about it, and more about what was supposed to be considered the "sequel" until SMB2 USA came along. However, SMB:LL does have graphical differences from the original, it's just that they're not as large in quantity as SMB2 and SMB3, and SMB2's environmental and theme differences are just by complete accident anyways.
And because of that, I kind of believe the idea of changing the overall look and feel of the games started with the team looking at SMB:LL and wanting to do more than just change a couple tiles, which sounds more likely in my mind, than looking at the SMB2 in the US and deciding that the unrelated environments + the mario characters was the way to go.
Luigi 64DD said:
Some reasons why I think SMW deserves the designation of a full-blown sequel more than SMB:LL or most of the NSMB series:
SMW was at least somewhat visually different from SMB3.
Of course, it's true that it looks different from SMB3, I just wanted to point out that originally that wasn't always the case, and that Nintendo had wanted to do the kind of things they did with NSMB long before it even existed (although that was already pointed out by SMB:LL, which I find it kind of ironic that Miyamoto told them they couldn't make the same game when they had already done it before, but I'm guessing it's because it was supposed to be the SNES's launch title)
The setting was completely different with Dinosaur Land rather than the Mushroom World.
I don't think that the setting itself is really all that important, especially when despite being a different setting they have a tendency to look at least somewhat of the same regardless of the place the game is actually supposed to be set in, and because of that I wouldn't really care if a new NSMB game took place in the Mushroom Kingdom as long as the levels looked different from the rest of the series.
If anything, the setting itself is just a story thing, and doesn't really impact the game itself unless the game is story-based, but most of the games aren't, whether it's NSMB or SMB.
Luigi 64DD said:
It had completely different music.
While I would certainly find it obnoxious if the same music was reused in each installment, the soundtrack wasn't completely different, and SMB2, SMB3 and SMW all re-used music from the original Super Mario Bros. in some form. In-fact, Super Mario World did it twice. Although I'm not so sure about SMB3, because I heard that the SMB underwater theme title music was actually added in All-Stars, so I have no idea.
Luigi 64DD said:
Meanwhile, with SMB:LL and the 3 latter NSMB games:
SMB and SMB:LL are exactly the same visually. Most NSMB have been very similar to DS visually, although to a lesser degree with U.
Well, actually, SMB and SMB:LL are not exactly the same. Similar, yes, but there are several obvious differences with some of the tiles in the game, like the ground blocks and the game's mushroom powerups, among other things. There isn't a single doubt that the NSMB games look very similar to the DS version, but that's because they're not 2D; they're 3D, despite NSMBDS being arguably 2D, but it was trying to pull off that look in the first place.
Luigi 64DD said:
Setting is identical between SMB and SMB:LL. Setting is also mostly identical throughout the NSMB series, even down to world themes.
Yes, both games take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, but as I stated before, that doesn't matter, because it's really just a plot element and doesn't have much to do with how the actual game looks. In terms of world themes, yeah, they do seem pretty hackneyed, but from what I've seen in SMBU, they gradually introduced newer ones, like Soda Jungle, and arguably Layer-Cake Desert, but there's still not too many.
Luigi 64DD said:
Music is identical between SMB and SMB:LL. NSMBW had new music, but that has been reused with the exception of a few songs in NSMBU.
As I said earlier, yeah, I see how it's obnoxious for the music to be reused, but the original SMB games did reuse music, just not as much as the NSMB games because they reused main themes for the main worlds, while the originals only reused them for more minor things, like Star Road in SMW and Subspace in SMB2, to name a few.
