Super Mario 3D World is a game developed by Nintendo EAD and released for the Nintendo Wii U In November of 2013. It is a sequel to the 2011 handheld game Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS
That’s what anyone says, but what I’d say is that Super Mario 3D World is one of the most fun games I’ve played in my life, and in this review, I’ll tell you why.
The Wii U is at the time of writing the worst-performing home console released by Nintendo. Its predecessor the Wii was the best one so far in terms of sales, and its successor the Nintendo Switch is currently the best-selling console in Nintendo’s history (if we count it as a home console). I tell you this to put you in perspective and to show you that this was a dark time for Nintendo, who just “lost” the casual market to mobile phones.
On top of that, Super Mario 3D World came during a period that wasn’t ideal for the Mario franchise.
Alongside 3D Land/World, there was the New Super Mario Bros series, which was the spiritual successor of the Super Mario Advance line for GBA which in part are remakes taken from Super Mario All-Stars, which itself is a remake compilation of the first Super Mario Bros games for the NES.
What I’m trying to say here is that while all of these games are faithful to the first games, they’re also cut from the same cloth, and if you don’t spice things up as time goes by, eventually the player gets tired of the same stuff every time.
That’s precisely what happened with New Super Mario Bros, with NSMB2 and NSMBU coming out about 4 months apart from each other, with the only real “distinguishing gimmicks” being coins and flying squirrels, but feeling exactly the same as the previous entries in every aspect. This burnt out players and I wouldn’t blame them if they wanted to skip out the next Mario game and maybe try out other things.
But Super Mario 3D World was different.