Mario games were always kind of tech demos for Nintendo innovation and the innovation is kind of boring now
In the 90s it was graphical fidelity and gameplay mechanics, smb1-3 on the nes, smw on snes, m64 were serious contenders for “oh my god this shit is crazy and plays like a dream”.
Sunshine is around where the graphical fidelity started to lag but the physics were still nice.
Then they started to innovate in other ways and galaxy brought in motion controls which were well done (arguably) and the (by then) distantly lagging graphics were almost a feature
But odyssey showed that doesn’t work anymore. Everyone has motion controls now, even phones, and they’re often just annoying. The switches innovation isn’t something that really applies directly to gameplay itself, so ultimately odyssey stays just a standard game, with solid graphics thanks to great design but noticeable slowdown in several areas because it’s running on an outdated tegra tablet, and the same old platformer gameplay because there’s nothing new to do with it.
They did have some cool level design that helped it feel fresh and interesting at times but it ultimately felt like it had similar problems to sunshine: not a bad game, but not an experience the way mario 64, mario world, or mario 3 was. Maybe I’m just too old
The ones that leap out of water to get you on world 3 were already quite stressful.
That fish didn’t terrify me near as much as the angry sun though. Back then I often did “almost complete” runs where I’d just kept a lakitu cloud to skip the sun level from world 8.
Mario games were always kind of tech demos for Nintendo innovation and the innovation is kind of boring now
In the 90s it was graphical fidelity and gameplay mechanics, smb1-3 on the nes, smw on snes, m64 were serious contenders for “oh my god this shit is crazy and plays like a dream”.
Sunshine is around where the graphical fidelity started to lag but the physics were still nice.
Then they started to innovate in other ways and galaxy brought in motion controls which were well done (arguably) and the (by then) distantly lagging graphics were almost a feature
But odyssey showed that doesn’t work anymore. Everyone has motion controls now, even phones, and they’re often just annoying. The switches innovation isn’t something that really applies directly to gameplay itself, so ultimately odyssey stays just a standard game, with solid graphics thanks to great design but noticeable slowdown in several areas because it’s running on an outdated tegra tablet, and the same old platformer gameplay because there’s nothing new to do with it.
They did have some cool level design that helped it feel fresh and interesting at times but it ultimately felt like it had similar problems to sunshine: not a bad game, but not an experience the way mario 64, mario world, or mario 3 was. Maybe I’m just too old
SMB3 4-1, blinking at the screen, hands frozen, muttering “It… it ate me.”
The ones that leap out of water to get you on world 3 were already quite stressful.
That fish didn’t terrify me near as much as the angry sun though. Back then I often did “almost complete” runs where I’d just kept a lakitu cloud to skip the sun level from world 8.