It’s the early 00s and the world is now obsessed with 3D gaming. The Sega Saturn had been built more around 2D, and it had at least commercially been seen as a failure. Sony’s PlayStation had won out in the console wars. Microsoft were about to enter the console market with their Xbox. The first one. Not to be confused with Xbox One (never got why they did that). This was the original Xbox. Never owned one, but the ones I saw? Those things were big.
The big games were Metal Gear Solid 2 and Grand Theft Auto III. Games had made the jump to 3D. The gaming landscape was settling into a status quo still recognised today.
The era of the mascot platformer had passed, mostly. The pixel art of 2D gaming was seen as old now. Everyone wanted 3D and arcade-perfect graphics.
That’s what was going on with the home consoles. The handhelds, however, were another story. The Game Boy Advance was Nintendo’s next version of the Game Boy, and an upgrade to something approaching Super Nintendo quality. A 16-bit system existed with a user base estimated at around 81 million.
But rather than make 2D platform games for their handheld, Nintendo looked to their past. Remember how the SNES had Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World? Both had already been remade for 16-bit hardware. Nintendo decided to re-release these games as the Super Mario Advance series.
I remember having some relations over from the USA, and they were glued to their portable Nintendos. I assume they had made quite a lot of progress on the plane. When I glanced over their shoulder, I was delighted to see they were playing a Mario game. Throwing turnips at bad guys in a game I called Super Mario Bros. 2, but they called Super Mario Advance.
Nintendo had got another generation into Super Mario games by re-releasing what they already had.
It worked. Outside of the Pokémon series, which became massive, the Super Mario Advance series was among the most successful on the GBA. With the Game Boy Color receiving a port of the original Super Mario Bros. (which included The Lost Levels as a bonus), the entire Super Mario Bros. back catalogue never really went away.
While the massive 3D games of the time were hitting larger TVs, Super Mario remained big on the little screen.
The Mario Advance series saw to it that another generation grew up with Mario.
The re-releases worked, and it was great to see another generation “Hooked on the Brothers”. But there were no new adventures.
Mario, though, has a frenemy. Evil Mario, known to gamers as Wario. After being defeated by Mario in Super Mario Land 2, he took that series for himself as Wario Land. Wario seems to be Nintendo’s go-to character for testing the waters. (I’m looking at you, WarioWare.)
To tell the story of how we get to New Super Mario Bros., we need to go back to Wario Land.