this is the only mario 3ds thread i found, so im bumping it

famitsu just reviewed Super Mario 3D Lands and gave it a 38 aggregate score:

Quote:

- Super Mario 3D Land (9/9/10/10, 38 points): The top scorer of the week seems to fulfill all of Shigeru Miyamoto's stated goals for a 3DS Mario game, if Famitsu's editors are any indication. "From the length of the stages to the placement of enemies and tricks to the difficulty, everything seems just right here, making for a really comfortable play experience," one wrote. "The bits of the game that take advantage of 3D depth are a lot of fun, inspiring you to hunt around for all of the hidden stuff. There's a wealth of helper functionality for beginners, and there's also a lot of cute little touches to the game that will bring up twinges of nostalgia." "The 3D space of this game is really well thought-out," another added, "allowing you to enjoy the 3D-based tricks while still feeling like a 2D Mario. It may just be Mario, but then, nothing is like Mario. The mix of discovery and surprise here is what you come to expect from the series."

http://www.1up.com/news/japan-review-check-super-mario_2

and an interview w/Miyamoto about his involvement w/the game. how at first he wasnt going to be that hands on, but since he is OCD about mario, he had to get more & more involved:

Quote:

Every time Shigeru Miyamoto swears he won't get all that involved in a new Mario game, he winds up being wrong by the end of the project. Super Mario 3D Land. "For this game, I worked as general producer," the creator of Mario told Famitsu magazine this week. "I've made the Mario series alongside Takashi Tezuka, and especially I tend to be the main person in the 3D games. With those titles, I've been working alongside the producer Yoshiaki Koizumi for a pretty long time, so 3D Land is being made with him overseeing a group of younger directors. I kept my distance from the project at first, but became more deeply involved midway -- I don't think it'd be satisfying as a Mario game to everyone unless I made myself known on the little details." What is this "satisfying as a Mario game"-ness that Miyamoto tries to pursue in his work? "Well, like how the enemies in Mario should be, or what the music should sound like," he replied. "It's hard to put into simple terms, but it's something that I really have to be looking at or else it won't happen. Having a new control scheme can really erase that Mario-ness from the game, and you'd be surprised at how long that can go unnoticed during development. Still, the main points of it became clear as we discussed it -- for example, how much acceleration Mario should have in order for his jumping to feel really good and Mario-like. I helped fine-tune the numbers behind all of that; it was a really fun part of development." (Did Miyamoto ever angrily "upend the tea table" on this project, as he's famous for doing? "I don't think there was any major upending," he replied, "though the staff might have a different take on that! Like I said, I came into the project to make it more Mario-like.") This "Mario-ness" drive also explains in part why 3D Land takes a lot of its design cues from Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES. "New Mario has Super Mario World at its core, and this game has Mario 3," Miyamoto explained. "Part of that is because a lot of the staff is from the Mario 3 generation, but there's also the fact that Mario's falling speed is cut down a fair bit in the 3D titles. It's more fun to have him zoom down in the side-scrolling titles, and it's more fun to make it a lighter sort of thing in 3D. That's why implementing the Tanooki stuff made more sense here." For Miyamoto, the concept of 3D land was to take the accessibility of games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii and bring it to a 3D screen. "It's been the case in the past that action games with 3D visuals have been difficult to play because it's hard to get a grasp of depth and range," he said. "The easier it is to gauge that, the easier the game becomes to approach. That's why I wanted to get a 3D Mario out as soon as we could. When Super Mario 64 came out, a lot of people dropped out because it was too hard to play -- you could go in any direction now, not just in a 2D plane, so it got harder in that respect, to say nothing of motion sickness. Some people liked that evolution, while others couldn't keep up with it. The New Mario series was an effort to get back to the core of it, and this game is kind of an in-between -- it's 3D, but it's a Mario that lots of people can play." Along those lines, 3D Land features the return of the sort of player-assist functionality that first popped up in New Mario Wii. "Opinions were divided on that in New Mario Wii," Miyamoto admitted, "but I also received commentary along the lines of 'Super Guide let my child play it to the end' and 'I got to enjoy playing this with my dad.' It's tough putting something like that in a 3D game, but there are lots of hint movies in Ocarina of Time 3D as well. I think it's implemented in a pretty fun way here." 3D Land comes out next week in Japan and mid-November in the rest of the world, and unless Miyamoto is lying, hardcore gamers should have nothing to worry about. "If you just want to finish the game, that's relatively easy," he closed. "Try to collect all the Star Medals, though, and you'll find it pretty rewardingly tough. There are other features in the game, too, for players confident enough in their skills."

http://www.1up.com/news/shigeru-miyamoto-super-mario-3d

i enjoy reading about miyamoto & mario, but thats probably just me.