New Super Mario Bros. series (Nintendo DS/Wii/Wii U/Switch)

Best: Revitalized the series’ 2D rollout

When the first New Super Mario Bros. game launched in 2006, the series hadn’t seen a new 2D side-scroller since Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, and you didn’t even play as Mario in that one. The “New” in the New Super Mario Bros. title positioned it as a resurgence of the classic Mario formula, which came as a welcome surprise because people were missing that style of game by then. In the years since, “New Super Mario Bros.” has become the default branding for games of this style.

It’s now been several years since we’ve had a new Mario side-scroller. We have all these questions about a possible 3D game after Odyssey, but it’s been 11 years since New Super Mario Bros. U. So maybe it’s also time we got a new New Super Mario Bros

Worst: They all kinda blend together

While each New Super Mario Bros. game has distinguishing factors, like New Super Mario Bros. U’s Boost Mode that lets someone use the Wii U GamePad to interact with the environment, the series broadly lacks the same innovation we see in 3D Mario games. They’re solid, clearly meant to be evocative of classic game design, and can be fun to play with friends. But there’s a reason the New Super Mario Bros. games aren’t talked about with the same breathless fervor of Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario Galaxy. They’re fine! They’re good! But that’s all they really are. Hopefully that changes somewhere down the line and we can see side-scrolling Mario games innovate in the way they did before.

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