The Grandfather Clause keeps a Strictly Formula plot active throughout the Super Mario Bros. franchise, but even in his humble beginnings, some problems were always waiting for him to plumb out.
Main games
- Super Mario Sunshine was the first 3D Mario platformer to have Mario die if you fail a minigame. This would be carried over into later games, except this time he can be in the air and fail a game. This was reversed in Super Mario 3D World, as running out of time in a Mystery House challenge simply resets the event chain.
- Critics of the New Super Mario Bros. sub-series that derisively call the series sequels Mission Pack Sequels may remember that the original game's sequel had much of the same criticism, and was part of the reason Super Mario Bros. 2 was initially favored for Western release instead.note As well as the Japan only sequel Super Mario Bros. Special and the All Night Nippon: Super Mario Bros. and VS. Super Mario Bros. variants of the original game.
- While later New Super Mario Bros. games are often criticized for a lack of innovation, the first game in the series avoided drastic changes to the Mario sidescroller formula apart from significantly incorporating some of Mario's moves from Super Mario 64 (namely Triple Jumps, Wall Jumps, and Ground Pounds). At the time, this wasn't seen as a flaw since it was the first major sidescroller game after the rise of 3D games in the late '90s and was Mario's — and the video game industry in general's — grand return to 2D games; the game also still had more than enough original content such as new powerups, locations, obstacles, and enemies to stand on its own as a great creative new entry. Afterwards, while New Super Mario Bros. Wii also didn't drastically change the core gameplay and started reusing the Video Game Settings from the original, the addition of simultaneous co-op play, a tweaked Spin Jump, and the reintroduction of ridable Yoshis and the Koopalings after long absences led many to consider it an Even Better Sequel. However, when New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U were released afterwards—in the same year—their additions were much more minimal and less impactful with no further improvements to the core gameplay, and their significant reusage of content from Wii led many fans to view them as gimmicky rehashes of it, with them now also recycling the soundtrack on top of the Video Game Settings (completely on 2, to a lesser extent on U). Then, as Nintendo continued using U as the flagship title for modern 2D Mario for almost 11 years until the announcement of Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023, many fans increasingly looked back on the entire New Super Mario Bros. sub-series — including the original two games — with disdain, seeing it as representative of Nintendo's divisive attempts at giving the franchise a firmer brand identity in the 2010s and early 2020s with the lack of originality becoming its biggest criticism.
- Critiques of games released in the period between Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Odyssey tend to center on how homogeneous they became, being very light on new characters, settings, mechanics, or ideas (barring the latest gimmicky movement-based powerup), and being way too focused on the aesthetics and characters of the 2D console games. But as mentioned above, in the early days of the New era, this reuse of older characters and aesthetics was seen as a good thing, since it had been so long since players had seen them. After spending years in Isle Delfino or space, it was kind of nostalgic to go back to old-school Mushroom Kingdom levels. But when those aspects went from things that hadn't been seen in years to coming out with clockwork regularity, players became a lot less enthused. The Koopalings were probably the most notorious example; it was a legitimate surprise when New Super Mario Bros Wii brought them back, but when they served as the bulk of the boss fights in 2, Wii U, Luigi U, Deluxe, Paper Jam, and Color Splash, and became playable in spinoffs such as Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros.note , and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, a lot of players became downright sick of them.note
- Super Mario 3D All-Stars:
- The game attracted controversy due to the decision to give it a limited release, with the announcement trailer flat-out stating that the game would be removed from sale from both physical and digital marketplaces after March 2021, even though distributing the digital version costs nothing and removing it is a completely pointless move that would only screw consumers over. This happened previously with the Wii port of Super Mario All-Stars. What made that more bearable was A) with the inability to download it and then remove it, it was less obvious, B) The port was a physical disc, and a Wii port of a SNES game would be rather niche, so making it limited-edition was more understandable, and C) the original versions of the games were available on Virtual Console, while there is yet to be another way to play Sunshine and Galaxy on the Switch (64 was eventually released on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass).
- Another controversial aspect of the collection was that the games were barely changed from their original versions, with the biggest alterations being the higher display resolutions and certain textures in Super Mario 64 being upscaled using AI. The original Super Mario All-Stars also consisted of faithful remakes that didn't add anything to the original games (and some details were even lost in the process, like The Lost Levels using the same graphics as Super Mario Bros. 1 instead of its own) — but they also received massive audiovisual upgrades to bring them up to 1993's standards, meaning they at least felt new. By comparison, 3D All-Stars does very little to feel like more than the collection of three decades-old games that it is.
- Many of the later games in the series were criticized for giving players more lives than they could possibly lose, but the trend started in Super Mario Bros. 3. Not only were coins and 1-Up Mushrooms much more plentiful in that game, but there were other chances to get 1-Ups; if you match three of the cards you get at the end of the level, you can get 2-5 1-Ups, and are guaranteed a 1-Up even if the cards don't match. The reason for this was to help the player stock up on extra lives in the early game, which they would need for the later worlds. Plus, the original Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES didn't have the ability to save the game, thus making the extra lives even more necessary as to not make the gameplay too frustrating. Later games, however, added the ability to save in addition to being noticeably easier, thereby making 1-Ups mostly irrelevant until they were removed in Super Mario Odyssey in favor of deducting 10 coins for each death.
- The usage of the Koopalings could be seen as this as well, as fans began to complain about their appearances. After their most recent appearance up to that point was Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, fans desired to see them return, and got their wish in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. But over time, the Koopalings began to appear too frequently, and when one appeared, all of them had to. In particular, every New Super Mario Bros game included them as bosses, whereas the first had employed a bevy of unique King Mook bosses (plus the returning Petey Piranha) when it wasn’t using Bowser or Bowser Jr, all of whom required some strategy to beat. By contrast, the Koopalings only vary in the arena they’re in and all have the same strategy to beat.
RPGs
- Several criticized elements in Paper Mario: Sticker Star were present in previous installments, but due to Sticker Star's minimalistic storytelling and lack of creativity, these elements ended up being Flanderized and, thus, much less enjoyable.
- Sticker Star takes the idea of "paper-thin characterization" to its logical conclusion by including excessive self-aware humor about the characters being two-dimensional, visual gags like characters stacked like sheaves of paper, or having various models become bent or creased. Truth be told, the characters and setting played with the paper theme from the beginning—North American ads for the N64 game featured Bowser dangling Peach above a paper shredder, The Thousand-Year Door had Mario fold himself like origami, and Super Paper Mario had entire sequences in which the world was drawn and colored like a drawing at the start of a chapter for the first time, plus other parts of a level being drawn in when certain puzzles were completed, and several characters appearing using special effects where a box is drawn up then flips to reveal the characternote . The first three games were considered charming and clever for their use of the paper theme, but Sticker Star's explicit comments on it at the expense of other charming aspects went past the point of being irritating.
- Sticker Star's conflict of "Bowser kidnaps Peach again" received criticism for being overly simplistic, despite the original Paper Mario having the exact same premise. The 64 version, however, took time to characterize both Peach and Bowser and was packed with characters, allies, enemies, and Arc Villains of all shapes and sizes (and it was the first Paper Mario game, so the series did not yet have its reputation for more involved and original storylines). Sticker Star, on the other hand, is so bare-bones that it ignores Peach's existence for most of the game, casts Bowser as a straight-up mute Generic Doomsday Villain, reduces Luigi to background cameos carefully inserted into levels, and depicts every enemy and character with their generic modern designs — even the King Mooks are just shiny Giant Mooks with no personality. Noteworthy in that early promotional materials tried harder to maintain the older designs for enemies such as Goombas, but ultimately defaulted to modern designs in the final game. The only creative variety you will encounter in the world around you is Kersti (a stand-alone character) and a few Toads with different colored spots.
- Paper Mario storytelling and characterization have never actually been that complex or involved, the sole exception being Super Paper Mario and its aspirations to cosmic-scale romance. The partners you received, if they had character arcs at all, usually had them concluded by the time they joined up with your party, and their contributions to the story were mostly generic reactions filtered through their respective Character Tics. NPCs outside the hub also had generally limited dialogue only slightly beyond Welcome to Corneria levels. Super Paper Mario and Sticker Star suffered by not even rising to that level: SPM's non-Tippi partners had only a paragraph or two of total dialog on encounter,note while Sticker Star only provided you with Kersti; Sticker Star further tripped up with its hub world inhabitants, who were all singularly obsessed with stickers and paper, where their predecessors had unique lives and affairs of their own. Color Splash actually moves back towards the characterization levels of previous games to the point Huey, the resident Exposition Fairy, is in the running for one of the most characterized partners with Tippi and Vivian, but Color Splash retains other unpopular elements from Sticker Star, so it still has much to overcome for that recognition.
- The marginalizing of story even in games known for story became evident as policy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, which, compared to the original, was essentially a retread without much of the scope, stakes, or character. Fans of the original were annoyed at the weaker story, as it'd been largely well-received and not gotten in the way of the gameplay, but as Galaxy 2 turned out incredibly strong on the gameplay front, they were content to Play the Game, Skip the Story. However, this seemingly led to Nintendo and Miyamoto taking the lesson not that "story doesn't need to be good", but "story shouldn't be good," leading to a similar approach being taken in Sticker Star without taking into account the difference in genres: platformers are mostly defined by their gameplay, and one not having an Excuse Plot is the exception rather than the norm, so a weak story can be more than made up for with fun mechanics and level design. RPGs, however, are a more story-heavy genre, so even the best game mechanics (and Sticker Star's revised combat system was not exactly well-liked by fans) would be difficult to enjoy without good writing to back it up.
- Antasma from Mario & Luigi: Dream Team had little characterisation and was seen as inferior to past Mario RPG villains. However, past villains often came across as Generic Doomsday Villains as well. The difference is they were often Eldritch Abominations or a Knight of Cerebus whose lack of motives or personality made them more mysterious and menacing (the Shadow Queen, the Dark Star or the Shroobs) or were surrounded by secondary villains that did have good characterization (Grodus, Smithy and Cackletta); Antasma is neither. He also had the misfortune of been compared to Fawful, who started out as a secondary villain and became a Big Bad, and Dimentio from Super Paper Mario, who had a larger focus on plot due to him being The Starscream for Count Bleck. Antasma notably doesn't even last to the end of the game, as not only did he forge a Big Bad Duumvirate with Bowser, but Bowser had been betrayed so many times in prior games that he was prepared this time and surpassed him as the Final Boss when Antasma tried to betray him.
- The Mario & Luigi series never really had many interesting Toad NPCs, there may have been Toadbert, Toadiko and Dr. Toadley, but that was it. Most were just the standard multicolored Toads, and by Dream Team the standard multicolored Toads were the only Toads to speak of, outside a token appearance by Toadsworth. This was mitigated by the fact that there were other interesting and unique NPCs that were unique to the series. Paper Jam does away with the unique NPCs and has most of the NPCs be generic Toads or Paper Toads.
- On a related note, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is often mocked for an overabundance of Toad NPCs. While Superstar Saga and Dream Team have a good range of different species as NPCsnote , Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story do not. In Partners in Time, the NPCs are limited to the Toads at Peach's Castle and the Yoshis on Yoshi's Island while the only non-Toad NPCs in Bowser's Inside Story are the brainwashed minions in Bowser's Castle. It is slightly easier to forgive it in these games because that is still more NPCs who are not Toads than the three in Paper Jam (two Yoshis and Wiggler/Flutter); Paper Jam also has the misfortune of coming after Paper Mario: Sticker Star where making all the NPCs Toads severely tainted the species' reputation for many fans.
- Similarly, the issues the Mario & Luigi series had with tutorials and padding go back to the original games too, with the first having things like the Border Jump and Hammerhead/Starshade Bros tutorials to slow the pace down. This was in part mitigated by how Superstar Saga didn't have that many mechanics to teach in general, and was willing to end without dragging things on too much. Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team merely increased the number of these segments, which ended up turning the game from one with a tutorial or mini game every area or two to one with a tutorial or mini game every twenty minutes and made the issue more noticeable. This is also a rare case of the sin being addressed. Paper Jam and the Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story remakes streamline the tutorials and make them largely optional. The former game introduced several guides for the field and battle that can be viewed in the pause menu and allow you to brush up on techniques for movement and combat at any point, and also shortens field move tutorials, giving you a prompt on how to do them at the top of the screen and allowing you to talk to Starlow for an in-depth explanation. The remakes lose the shortened field move tutorials to mimic the original games, but excise almost every other tutorial and just inform you that the Battle Guide is updated instead.
- Super Paper Mario and to a lesser extent, The Thousand-Year Door, get some criticism for featuring a lot of Backtracking and the former especially taking perhaps too much glee in wasting the player's time for the sake of a gag. The original game is no stranger to this, a lot of its puzzles requiring little simply ferrying items back and forth between areas the player had already visited, and it featuring a number of deliberately longwinded and annoying sidequests, such as a lengthy chain of letter deliveries that often requires the player to return to the area they had delivered from, and Koopa Koot's favours (a series of errands that involve tedious and routine tasks for just a few coins). It, however, usually does not get lumped with its sequels for a number of reasons.
- The original game has a fast movement ability called the Spin Dash that's available from the start and makes moving through previously-cleared areas more breezy. The Thousand-Year Door, in comparison, has its fast-movement ability tied to a partner that's only unlocked midway through the game's third chapter and is unusable whenever the player has to switch partners or is separated from them by the plot, and Super Paper Mario locks its fast-movement Pixl behind a 100-room Bonus Dungeon.
- Paper Mario's backtracking usually involves travelling between maybe four to six screens, whereas the following games would do things like have the player go back and forth between the start and end of the map three times in a row or require the player to redo a 100-room dungeon a second time for contrived reasons.
- Unlike the following games which required doing things like pressing the A button to say "I love you!" 100 times to progress or tracking an NPC across almost every major location in the game, then jumping on him over and over to wake him up (and if you're going for 100% Completion, you have to do this twice!), all of the deliberately long-winded, trolling-the-player stuff in the original game is optional.
Mario Kart
- The Spiny Blue Shell that debuted in Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart: Super Circuit was a quite honest and balanced weapon in those two games, since it targeted the player in first, but would hit any other racer who happened to be in its path along the waynote . However, in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, the item was overhauled and given wings, thus bypassing other racers and only hitting whoever is leading the race, and it also explodes, which means damage that takes longer to recover. While normal damage (i.e. being hit by a normal shell) only takes two seconds or so to recover, an explosion flat-out stops the kart, and it takes roughly five to ten seconds to get back up to full speed. Exploding on contact, alongside it only hitting the leader (although the explosion can hit nearby racers), usually means the only kart getting any benefits whatsoever is the one in second place, which often happens — unsurprisingly — to surpass the one at the head of the race. This feature, already problematic when playing MK:DD!! in single player, was even more frustrating in Mario Kart DS, and outright plagued single player races in Mario Kart Wii, where getting hit by a Spiny Blue Shell inches before the race ended was so common that unlocking characters and/or karts requiring Golden Cups at 150cc difficulty was nearly impossible. Thankfully, Mario Kart 7, while still having the Blue Shell target the first-place driver and explode upon hitting them, also stripped it of its wings, thus reverting it to its pre-Double Dash! form: now everyone else risks being hit by the shell in the process (which admittedly is also a bit of a nuisance as it only gives you a short amount of time to get out of the way or risk getting annihilated). In Mario Kart 8, an explosion can still hit nearby racers but otherwise the Spiny Shell acts just like getting hit by a regular shell, effectively fully reverting it to its original status and making it slightly more useful in taking out other racers. The Super Horn was also added as a new item in the aforementioned game, which creates a shockwave capable of destroying any item, even Spiny Shells. Considering how rare the item is however, its usefulness is debatable.
- Mario Kart: Double Dash!! also introduced a new gimmick that forced players to use two characters at once (one for driving and one for using items). Since both of the kart riders can hold items, this meant the amount of items in play was doubled, leading to item spam in the whole race and increasing the chances of getting an item that screws everyone else over. Most of the more powerful items, however, were limited to certain characters, with a signature powerful item for each racer, the only exception being that unlockable characters King Boo and Petey Piranha could use everyone's signature items rather than having any of their own, which was a fair balance since the only items usable by every racer were the more abundant items such as bananas and mushrooms. Mario Kart Wii amplified the problem with items by introducing more items that can either screw everyone over or screw one person over if they can't shake the item off. On top of this, the game had twelve players in a race instead of the standard eight, and the stronger items could now be used by any racer, which meant more items popping up and causing chaos, even though the stronger items were more common if the user was further behind in a race. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe the problem is still present and it's amplified further by how items work being a combination of sorts of both games, allowing racers to get two (possibly powerful) items at once from item boxes in a game that has twelve players in a race.
- Bikes by themselves were not inherently bad; Waluigi had a motorcycle
as a vehicle in Mario Kart DS, but that game hadn't introduced distinctions between karts and bikes, so it didn't have any problems. However, bikes were made distinct in Mario Kart Wii by losing the ability to do Super Mini-Turbos, but getting the ability to do wheelies to compensate, and wheelies being much more beneficial than Mini-Turbosnote led to a mass migration to bikes. This one was also addressed, with Mario Kart 8's bikes only doing wheelies as a cosmetic effect during boosts. Though a new vehicle class called ATV, which have similar benefits to using the bikes in the prior game, led to the game's competitive meta being mostly dominated by them. - The coins mechanic was heavily disliked by players for nearly every game it appeared in. Super Mario Kart used coins as a way to boost speed, and you'd lose coins for being hit, going off course, or being bumped. Mario Kart: Super Circuit brought the coins back, and they doubled as a requirement to be met if you wanted to get the best rank. Mario Kart 7 had the coins return once more, though they would only give you a slight speed boost and you wouldn't spin out from a bump if you had no coins. However, coins were needed to unlock parts for your karts, and it got really ridiculous, with some parts requiring thousands or even beyond ten thousand coins to unlock. Mario Kart 8 not only retained the coin system and unlocks that the previous game used, but now coins can be an item you can pick up, which means that your measly two-coin bonus will not protect you from the red shell the person behind you will use, in addition to Mario Kart 7's Lucky Seven, an item that summoned seven items for you to use in a race, being upgraded to the Crazy Eight with the addition of the coin item among the other seven.
- Decomposite Characters or Palette Swaps clogging up the roster goes back to Double Dash!! , which included baby versions of Mario and Luigi as well as Koopa Paratroopa and newcomer Toadette. Although fans were not fond of them, they mostly didn't mind, as Baby Mario and Luigi were a reference to the well-loved Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Paratroopa was a recurring Mook whose inclusion was necessary to serve as a partner to the returning Koopa, and Toadette was heavily influenced by the female Toads from Paper Mario 64 and thus distinct enough from the regular Toad character. However, later games would take this concept and run it deep into the ground to varying levels of success. DS introduced Dry Bones, the skeletal form of Koopa Troopa whom had originally appeared in Super Mario Bros. 3 and various later games, Wii introduced Baby Peach, whom had previously appeared in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Yoshi's Island DS, Baby Daisy as a counterpart to Baby Peach whom newly debuted in the game, and Dry Bowser, Bowser Stripped to the Bone as seen in New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart 7 featured Metal Mario, Mario using the Metal Box power up from Super Mario 64 whom also got used as a boss character in Super Smash Bros., and Mario Kart 8 has the four previous babies, Baby Rosalina as yet another new baby character, Metal Mario, and Pink Gold Peach (giving Peach a metal form just like with Metal Mario) in the basic version, and Tanooki Mario, Mario with the Super Leaf power-up introduced in Super Mario Bros. 3 in its Super Mario 3D Land incarnation, Cat Peach, Peach with the Super Bell power-up from Super Mario 3D World, and Dry Bowser, all as Downloadable Content for a total of ten alternate versions of other characters, more than a quarter of the roster. All of them are divisive at best or scrappies at worst. The Deluxe version of 8 eventually added Gold Mario, yet another Mario recolor whom is Mario with the Gold Flower power-up from New Super Mario Bros. 2, as the sole character to unlock (being just a simple pallete swap of Metal Mario to boot), further exacerbating the issue. The removal of original characters like King Boo, Diddy Kong, and Birdo in these games didn't help either. However, King Boo returned alongside Dry Bones and Bowser Jr. in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and most of the forgotten characters from past games would eventually return in Mario Kart Tour, which helped restore faith in a lot of people by featuring several brand new playable characters such as Pauline, Kamek and Nabbit who had never been playable in the Mario Kart series beforehand and including tons of unique and interesting costumes for certain characters as well. Likewise, Birdo would be introduced to 8 Deluxe via the Booster Course Pass, as would several other characters beloved for their uniqueness.
- Elements of the series originating outside of Mario games tend to be divise because the connections to the Mario series can be as tenuous as "they're both on a Nintendo console and Nintendo created both of them". However this trend's roots start all the way back in 64, which was where the playable roster first included Rare's version of Donkey Kongnote , who unlike the original Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr. (the former retconned as Cranky Kong), didn't have any connection to the core Mario cast. Then Double Dash!! included Diddy Kong as his default racing partner, Wii introduced Funky Kong, and Tour featured all three of them alongside Dixie. However, the Kongs' technical connection to the Mario world made it easy for most gamers to tolerate or even embrace their presence. DS had R.O.B. as an unlockable character who didn't have any connections to Mario, but the fact that it was the only non-Mario character meant that fans saw it as a fun Unexpected Character and tolerated its presence. Wii brought in a kart based on Captain Falcon's Blue Falcon, and introduced Miis as a playable character (who became mainstays of the series). 7 had two racetracks and one battle course set on Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort, a game that very heavily featured the Miis. 8 (and its Updated Re-release 8 Deluxe) is when this problem reached the limit, as it used DLC to introduce Link, Villager, Isabelle, and the Inklings as playable characters, along with tracks based on those three franchises, F-Zero, and Excitebike. Mario Kart 8 is one of the better-received installments, but there's criticism about the game feeling more like Super Smash Kart than Mario Kart. As a result, the above-mentioned criticism about Decomposite Characters replacing more original ones has become a complaint that is also raised about non-Mario characters. The Arcade GP installments also regularly feature Namco characters such as Pac-Man, Mametchi, and Don-Chan as part of the roster, but those were themselves spin-offs of the series.
Other
- Many fans were very disappointed by the news that the then-long-awaited Rayman DLC for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope would not have Mario and Rayman together in the same story, as the plot of Rayman in the Phantom Show would focus only on Rayman and the Rabbids, labeling it as a massive They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. The same thing happened in Donkey Kong Adventure from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, with Donkey Kong having a solo adventure with the Rabbids without any involvment from Mario. The difference of why nobody saw a problem with Donkey Kong Adventure is that Donkey Kong is a regular character in the Mario franchise, debuting alongside Mario himself since their very first appearence in the Donkey Kong arcade game, and him, alongside many elements of the Donkey Kong Country series showing up frequently in Mario spin-offs. Unlike Donkey Kong, Rayman's franchise hasn't been in the limelight for a long time, with its last major release being a decade agonote , and given the Rabbids' reputation among Rayman fans, many saw this as an opportunity to finally bring him back to full glory in a crossover with Mario. Having him not truly crossing over with Mario is seen as a wasted oportunity for this reason and only further tarnished more the Rabbids' reputation in Rayman fanbase's eyes. To add insult to injury, while Donkey Kong Adventure implements many elements of Donkey Kong Country into the game, other than the Vortex and Shock Rocket powers and very brief mentions of Globox and Mr. Dark, Rayman in the Phantom Show doesn't have much Rayman representation beyond Rayman himself.
