Nintendo’s not the kind of company to do it, but a Mario 64 2 would be great right about now. Make everything adorably fake and lo-fi, like with puffy trees made of overlapping circles instead of intersecting spheres, but modernized enough to still clip models sensibly. Dropping JPG’d leaves while you climb them, which obey subtle wind everywhere outdoors, along with octagonal flower patches that’d otherwise sway randomly. Just plus the hell out of everything. Make it vibe the way the original did when nobody knew any better. Build a tiny world vaguely evoking a bigger one, but then pack it full of more details and oddities than any one person would ever notice. Any time a playtester gets to some hard-to-reach nook and is disappointed nothing happens, tell a dev to put stuff there. Y’know, ‘bring this flowerpot to the aquarium and there’s a secret dolphin level’ kinda nonsense. A game that looks like it weighs ten megabytes and has a strategy guide an inch thick.
Super Mario Wonder was pretty solid, but kind of short. It would have been a great buy at $30, but Nintendo do Nintendo stuff so it’s $50+ forever.
Wonder is way more replayable than Mario Bros U, it’s also continuing to charm the heck out of me in a way that a Mario game hasn’t since Sunshine. I am very satisfied with my purchase.
Nintendo will never drop their prices since people keep buying their games at those prices even long after the release date. Switch has an attach rate of 8 games and most of those games are Nintendo games. When people buy a Switch for the first time they buy it with Nintendo games. Nintendo isn’t competing with anyone on their console, hence why their games rarely go on sale.
