Unpopular opinions about the Mario series

I would absolutely love to see Wario Land; Shake It!! get a remake or remaster. I know it was received okay when it released, but I really liked it back then; great hand-drawn artstyle that still holds up to this day, some very clever platforming puzzles for the chests, and awesome level design. Unfortunately, also hampered by some gimmicky controls (the shaking part), I'll admit.

But the latter could be addressed by just mapping those actions to buttons, like how Donkey Kong Country Returns did from Wii -> 3DS. Look also how Metroid Prime Remastered has new control options for those who would rather play it like a modern FPS (coincidentally, both my examples are Retro Studios games).

And yeah, in case you can't tell by my sig and profile pic, it's a game I really like lol. I am gonna post it here cuz it doesn't seem like this is a very memorable game to many out there in the Mario fandom. It's probably my most controversial favorite game in the Marioverse though, and I'd love be able to play it on modern hardware with small QoL and accessibility improvements.
 
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CozyPoo said:
I would absolutely love to see Wario Land; Shake It!! get a remake or remaster. I know it was received okay when it released, but I really liked it back then; great hand-drawn artstyle that still holds up to this day, some very clever platforming puzzles for the chests, and awesome level design. Unfortunately, also hampered by some gimmicky controls (the shaking part), I'll admit.

But the latter could be addressed by just mapping those actions to buttons, like how Donkey Kong Country Returns did from Wii -> 3DS. Look also how Metroid Prime Remastered has new control options for those who would rather play it like a modern FPS (coincidentally, both my examples are Retro Studios games).

And yeah, in case you can't tell by my sig and profile pic, it's a game I really like lol. I am gonna post it here cuz it doesn't seem like this is a very memorable game to many out there in the Mario fandom. It's probably my most controversial favorite game in the Marioverse though, and I'd love be able to play it on modern hardware with small QoL and accessibility improvements.
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Have you considered playing the game on Dolphin emulator? That's what I usually do for Super Paper Mario and the two Galaxy games, since I actually prefer the controls that way (I use a Xbox 360 controller, and Dolphin allows me to map shaking to any button press). I could do the same for DKCR, but I own the 3ds version.
 
Superstar Peach said:
Honestly I miss simpler selection in MK series.. it'd be nice if you just chose from a categorized selection of classes instead of having to read the graph for everything..
With a little additional notes of like "good underwater!"
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The kart customization should probably be labeled better then. Maybe have preset combos but you can customize them to your liking. I don't want to go back to "wild wing = fast" era of the Double Dash/DS/Wii times.

CozyPoo said:
I would absolutely love to see Wario Land; Shake It!! get a remake or remaster. I know it was received okay when it released, but I really liked it back then; great hand-drawn artstyle that still holds up to this day, some very clever platforming puzzles for the chests, and awesome level design. Unfortunately, also hampered by some gimmicky controls (the shaking part), I'll admit.

But the latter could be addressed by just mapping those actions to buttons, like how Donkey Kong Country Returns did from Wii -> 3DS. Look also how Metroid Prime Remastered has new control options for those who would rather play it like a modern FPS (coincidentally, both my examples are Retro Studios games).

And yeah, in case you can't tell by my sig and profile pic, it's a game I really like lol. I am gonna post it here cuz it doesn't seem like this is a very memorable game to many out there in the Mario fandom. It's probably my most controversial favorite game in the Marioverse though, and I'd love be able to play it on modern hardware with small QoL and accessibility improvements.
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Honestly Good Feel should just develop another Wario game than a Yoshi game.
 
Pauline is boring.

She has enough personality it's just that she doesn't have that much going on. She dated Mario 40 years ago, she was kidnapped by Gorillas, she sings 2 songs, she's another princess mayor... Idk, i don't think any of those traits are particularly interesting. I feel like people only as popular as she is because she's in Odyssey, bc of her design and the fact she's an OG.

I also think Rosalina's boring, but in the complete opposite way Pauline is.

Rosalina is a mysterious magic space woman, she takes care of powerful cute lil star beings, probably came from Earth and is probably related to Peach in some way, that's all very very interesting but Rosalina herself has 0 personality to back all that up. She's nice, she's shy but too shy, she doesn't smile all the time but she does most of the time... Eh, she's like a floating lamer version of Peach. I wish she had the personality Rabbid Rosalina has but less exaggerated of course.

I still like both of them, i'm just saying.
 
My issue with them is more their design. Most female characters look derivative. Painfully derivative. Daisy has the excuse of being maybe being this otherworldly Peach in alternate reality Sarasaland, a literal clone. Pauline is the original, maybe Peach is just a retooled Pauline from a very dated era of portraying women in games. What is Rosalina's excuse of looking practically identical to Peach? I don't necessarily hate any of them for how they look but you look at how the male derivative characters like Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi look and you compare it to Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, Pauline. It's not a very good contrast. Like, Peach and Daisy are more similar to each other than Mario and his freaking twin Luigi whose twin status (between fraternal and identical) is ambiguous to begin with.

Are people really scared of designing female humans that don't exactly tick all the boxes of conventional attractiveness or female nonhumans that look like the male counterparts.
 
LeftyGreenMario said:
My issue with them is more their design. Most female characters look derivative. Painfully derivative. Daisy has the excuse of being maybe being this otherworldly Peach in alternate reality Sarasaland, a literal clone. Pauline is the original, maybe Peach is just a retooled Pauline from a very dated era of portraying women in games. What is Rosalina's excuse of looking practically identical to Peach? I don't necessarily hate any of them for how they look but you look at how the male derivative characters like Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi look and you compare it to Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, Pauline. It's not a very good contrast. Like, Peach and Daisy are more similar to each other than Mario and his freaking twin Luigi whose twin status (between fraternal and identical) is ambiguous to begin with.

Are people really scared of designing female humans that don't exactly tick all the boxes of conventional attractiveness or female nonhumans that look like the male counterparts.
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I'd say that Peach and Daisy are distinct enough, except for the outfits. The dresses are just recolors of each other, but the hairstyles, color, and facial structure are unique enough.
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garfeld the cat 2 said:
the rabbid versions of the main characters have better personalities than the actual main characters
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but they're rabid. as in legitimately foaming at the mouth to cause mayhem. Also, they are identity thiefs, and are entirely white, with no diversity of any kind except to stir up the ecosystem. but If you like crazy energetic charismatic (in a weird way) characters then oky doky.
 
DesaMatt said:
Pauline is boring.

She has enough personality it's just that she doesn't have that much going on. She dated Mario 40 years ago, she was kidnapped by Gorillas, she sings 2 songs, she's another princess mayor... Idk, i don't think any of those traits are particularly interesting. I feel like people only as popular as she is because she's in Odyssey, bc of her design and the fact she's an OG.

I also think Rosalina's boring, but in the complete opposite way Pauline is.

Rosalina is a mysterious magic space woman, she takes care of powerful cute lil star beings, probably came from Earth and is probably related to Peach in some way, that's all very very interesting but Rosalina herself has 0 personality to back all that up. She's nice, she's shy but too shy, she doesn't smile all the time but she does most of the time... Eh, she's like a floating lamer version of Peach. I wish she had the personality Rabbid Rosalina has but less exaggerated of course.

I still like both of them, i'm just saying.
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to me it seems like you listed several reasons to find these characters interesting, then proclaimed they aren't interesting.

mario characters don't need to be deep, tragic, multi-layered shakespearean icons. pauline is glamorous, has this dazzling air above her, and is generally highly charismatic; rosalina is kind of forlorn, is shown to have some regrets, but acts motherly and sensible towards the lumas. those are perfectly suitable characterisations that make the universe of the games attractive and engaging beyond mere gameplay.

contrast those to an actually boring, trite female character like candy kong, who pretty much amounts to "hey sweetums, wanna touch my melons, let me use your instrument xoxoxo :* :*" -- although i could argue she was never anything more than a minor NPC and basically just fulfilled basic game functions
 
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So I finally played Mario Party Superstars for myself and I think I prefer Super Mario Party.

Superstars just feels soulless to me. It has no personality, probably because it's just a rehash of old everything. All the music feels so much more corporate and dull (See: Panic!). The character list is also pathetic, and 50% of it is characters I dislike. The overreliance on N64 material bothers me too. It really just feels like the whole thing was made as nostalgia bait to sell to 90s kids who grew up playing the N64, not a celebration of the Mario Party series.

Super Mario Party, on the other hand, really isn't all that bad? The control scheme is annoying and they really missed the mark with how few boards there are and how small they are but I have a genuinely fun time playing it. I've clocked in maybe 70 hours over the past month or so because I enjoy it that much. With Superstars, having owned quite literally every other Mario Party (except for Advance and Top 100), I'd rather just go play those.

E: To clarify, this is from the perspective of a Mario Party nerd. I can understand why Superstars would be so good for someone who's new to Mario Party or someone who isn't as passionate about it as I am. For me though, it's just not doing it for me.
 
General Shy Guy said:
So I finally played Mario Party Superstars for myself and I think I prefer Super Mario Party.

Superstars just feels soulless to me. It has no personality, probably because it's just a rehash of old everything. All the music feels so much more corporate and dull (See: Panic!). The character list is also pathetic, and 50% of it is characters I dislike. The overreliance on N64 material bothers me too. It really just feels like the whole thing was made as nostalgia bait to sell to 90s kids who grew up playing the N64, not a celebration of the Mario Party series.

Super Mario Party, on the other hand, really isn't all that bad? The control scheme is annoying and they really missed the mark with how few boards there are and how small they are but I have a genuinely fun time playing it. I've clocked in maybe 70 hours over the past month or so because I enjoy it that much. With Superstars, having owned quite literally every other Mario Party (except for Advance and Top 100), I'd rather just go play those.

E: To clarify, this is from the perspective of a Mario Party nerd. I can understand why Superstars would be so good for someone who's new to Mario Party or someone who isn't as passionate about it as I am. For me though, it's just not doing it for me.
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I can see where you're coming from but I feel like part of the reason I enjoyed Superstars was because I never played any of the N64 trilogy and MP6 was the only GameCube entry I played, so most of the content was new to me. I've never played Super Mario Party though.
 
Kitty Cheshire said:
I can see where you're coming from but I feel like part of the reason I enjoyed Superstars was because I never played any of the N64 trilogy and MP6 was the only GameCube entry I played, so most of the content was new to me. I've never played Super Mario Party though.
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In my opinion it's better to just experience the original trilogy, and it feels that Nintendo just kinda recycled some bits of old games onto the Switch. However, it's still a good taste of the 64 games and a lot of fun, kind of like the whole trilogy smooshed into one game. Super Mario Party is more just like pure Mario Party fun, simplified into an easy-to-approach and enjoyable experience in a fairly compact game.
 
MegaBowser64 said:
In my opinion it's better to just experience the original trilogy, and it feels that Nintendo just kinda recycled some bits of old games onto the Switch. However, it's still a good taste of the 64 games and a lot of fun, kind of like the whole trilogy smooshed into one game. Super Mario Party is more just like pure Mario Party fun, simplified into an easy-to-approach and enjoyable experience in a fairly compact game.
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Well, I don't own an N64, I'm not paying for NSO Expansion Pack, I don't want to pirate them, and RIP Wii U VC
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Why does it suck though?
 
Paper Mario's art style should've stayed an aesthetic instead of made canon. Its better as a "Things look the way they do because its being taken from a storybook" instead of "Everything and everyone is made of actual paper and giant real world objects can just show up sometimes". The ONLY exception is SPM because all the digital shapes and UI can be seen as like, a flash game or webcomic version of the story.
 
To me doesn't really matter, I just want the traditional battle system back.
 
Citrus-Shygal said:
Paper Mario's art style should've stayed an aesthetic instead of made canon. Its better as a "Things look the way they do because its being taken from a storybook" instead of "Everything and everyone is made of actual paper and giant real world objects can just show up sometimes". The ONLY exception is SPM because all the digital shapes and UI can be seen as like, a flash game or webcomic version of the story.
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I wouldn't say yours is a hugely unpopular opinion, especially given the criticism that the later games received. I myself wholeheartedly agree with you here, I much preferred the more "organic" stories/artefacts/bosses of the original trio with the paper aspect being just an artstyle plus fourth-wall breaks, as opposed to the paper aspect being literally the entire selling point/punchline of the game and its story and humour.

Including Paper Jam too, I'm still furious that the game doesn't use anything organic from the first three games and the paper aspect introduced from the book is entirely focused on Mario and characters/enemies having Doppelgängers literally made of paper.
 
Considering how generic the stories and settings of the first 3 games are I can't say I'm all that upset by them going with something more literal.

Not that the settings from the later games are super original but them being literally made of arts n crafts at least makes them less common.

Plus Mario is an absurd series, it should do the absurd thing.
 
I am in favor of a good middle ground I think.

I love the little visual jokes that come with things being made of paper, eastereggs, absurdist humor and so on. I just don't think it should be explicitly said and built upon in the story.

The modern Paper Mario games are a little bit too much in that regard though when almost everything is a paper joke or a paper reference.
 
Tbh I don't think the classic Paper Mario games have brilliant humor either. A lot of their jokes consist of acknowledging that they're in a video game or speaking with an accent. Thousand Year Door and Super Paper Mario were especially egregious with the fourth wall jokes

Most of the appeal of those games writing is through their charm than like hahaha funny.
 
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