Look at the release calendar. Seriously, just look at it. If you’ve spent any time scrolling through the eShop lately, you’ve probably noticed a weird, lingering emptiness where a certain red hat used to be. It’s a controversial take, I know. People will point at Super Mario Bros. Wonder and say I’m crazy. But if you dig into the data and the release patterns of the last few years, a strange pattern emerges: it really feels like Nintendo has forgotten about Mario in favor of coasting on his past glory.
Mario isn't dead. Obviously. He’s the face of a theme park and a billion-dollar movie franchise. But as a video game protagonist? He’s starting to feel like a legacy act playing the county fair instead of the rockstar he used to be. We are living in an era where the "Main Mario" team at Nintendo EPD (Entertainment Planning & Development) goes years—sometimes half a decade—without putting out a transformative 3D experience. While Link gets Tears of the Kingdom, Mario gets... another remake of a GameCube RPG? It’s a bit weird, right?
The Great 3D Drought
The most glaring piece of evidence is the gap between the big ones. Super Mario Odyssey landed in 2017. It was a masterpiece. It redefined what a sandbox platformer could be. And then? Total radio silence on the 3D front for nearly nine years, barring the Bowser’s Fury expansion which, let’s be honest, was a glorified tech demo for what a seamless open-world Mario could look like.
Nintendo used to treat Mario like their sharpest blade. Now, he feels like a safety net.
When you compare the development cycles of Mario to Zelda, the disparity is wild. Eiji Aonuma’s team is constantly pushing the hardware to its absolute breaking point. Meanwhile, the Mario team seems content to let the "New" series aesthetics or "Wonder" style carry the load. Super Mario Bros. Wonder was fantastic—don't get me wrong—but it felt like a brief spark in a very long, very dark tunnel. It’s almost as if the internal logic at Nintendo HQ has shifted: "Mario sells regardless, so let’s put the real R&D budget into Zelda and Metroid."
Remakes, Remasters, and the Lack of New Ideas
If you feel like you’ve played every Mario game on the Switch three times already, it’s because you basically have. The current strategy makes it look like Nintendo has forgotten about Mario as an evolving platform for innovation. Instead, they’ve turned him into a museum curator.
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Think about the recent lineup:
- Super Mario RPG (Remake)
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Remaster)
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong (Remake)
- Super Mario 3D All-Stars (Limited-time port collection)
These are incredible games. Thousand-Year Door is arguably the best RPG Nintendo ever published. But it’s a twenty-year-old game. When a company relies this heavily on nostalgia, it usually suggests they don't know where to take the character next. It’s safe. It’s profitable. But it isn't "New." It’s the gaming equivalent of a band only playing their greatest hits because they haven't written a good song since 2005.
The spin-offs aren't helping either. Remember when Mario Strikers was a gritty, high-intensity chaotic mess? The Switch version, Battle League, felt sterile. It lacked the soul of the GameCube original. It was launched thin and "fleshed out" with free updates that just brought it up to what should have been the Day 1 standard. This "live service" approach to Mario sports games—Mario Golf: Super Rush suffered from this too—makes the franchise feel like a commodity rather than a prestige product.
The Movie Effect and Brand Dilution
There is a theory floating around the industry—and honestly, it holds some water—that the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie has actually hurt the games. Since Mario is now a global multimedia icon on par with Mickey Mouse, Nintendo might be getting "brand-protective."
When a character becomes that big, you stop taking risks.
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You don't want to weird people out with something like Super Mario Sunshine’s FLUDD or Galaxy’s disorienting gravity if you’re trying to sell pajamas to five-year-olds in Nebraska who just saw the movie. This leads to "The Mario Standard." It’s polished. It’s bright. It’s fun. But it’s also incredibly predictable. If Nintendo has forgotten about Mario as a pioneer of game design, it’s likely because they’re too busy managing him as a corporate mascot.
The "Safe" Problem
Contrast Mario with Kirby for a second. HAL Laboratory is out here making Kirby a mouthful-mode-eating car in a post-apocalyptic 3D world (Kirby and the Forgotten Land). They’re experimenting. Even Splatoon is taking more risks with its lore and mechanical depth.
Mario, meanwhile, feels stuck in a loop.
Even Super Mario Bros. Wonder, for all its psychedelic charm, still follows the "Flagpole at the end" 2D structure that has defined the series since 1985. It’s brilliant execution, but it isn’t a revolution. We are waiting for the Breath of the Wild moment for Mario—a total dismantling of what a platformer can be. And we’ve been waiting since 2017.
Is the Switch 2 the Answer?
The elephant in the room is the upcoming hardware. Rumors about the "Switch 2" or whatever Nintendo calls their next console are everywhere. It is almost certain that a brand-new 3D Mario is being held back to launch that system.
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But that doesn't excuse the lull.
By holding Mario back to be a "system seller," Nintendo is essentially admitting that the character is a tool for hardware sales rather than a creative priority. If they had a surplus of ideas, we’d be seeing them. Instead, we see Mario Kart 8 Deluxe—a game from 2014—topping the charts in 2024 and 2025. When your ten-year-old game is still your most popular title, where is the incentive to innovate? There isn't any. That’s the trap.
What Nintendo Needs to Do to Prove Us Wrong
If Nintendo wants to shake the narrative that they've put Mario on autopilot, they need to break the mold. We don't need Super Mario Odyssey 2. We need something that makes us uncomfortable.
- Real Narrative Stakes: No, we don't need The Last of Us with Goombas. But Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi series used to have genuine heart, weird villains (looking at you, Fawful), and stakes that went beyond "Peach is in another castle."
- Mechanical Overhauls: Bowser’s Fury gave us a glimpse of a seamless world. Imagine a Mario game where you don't select levels from a menu. You just explore a massive, interconnected Kingdom where platforming is the primary mode of traversal.
- Stop the Drip-Feed: No more releasing bare-bones sports titles and promising to "add more characters later." It devalues the brand.
Ultimately, the idea that Nintendo has forgotten about Mario is a bit of a hyperbole, but it’s rooted in a very real frustration. Fans aren't just hungry for more Mario; they are hungry for the version of Mario that changes the industry. We haven't seen that guy in a long time.
How to Stay Ahead of the Next Mario Era
If you're tired of waiting for the next big jump, here is how you can actually engage with the franchise without feeling like you're just replaying the same levels:
- Explore the Rom Hack Scene: If you have a legal way to play, the fan-made community (like SMW Central) is doing things with Mario’s physics and level design that Nintendo hasn't touched in decades. It’s where the real innovation is happening right now.
- Dig into the Obscure: If you haven't played Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins on the Game Boy (available via Nintendo Switch Online), do it. It’s weirder and more creative than most modern 2D entries.
- Watch the Indie Space: Games like Pizza Tower or Penny’s Big Breakaway are taking the "Mario DNA" and sprinting in directions Nintendo is currently too afraid to go.
- Hold the Standard High: Don't just buy every remake because it has the red M on the box. Vote with your playtime. If the audience continues to reward "safe" ports, "safe" is all we will ever get.
Mario is still the king. But even kings can get lazy when they sit on the throne for too long. It’s time for Nintendo to remind us why he was crowned in the first place.