Nintendo couldn't have timed the game's release better: The DS had finally picked up genuine traction thanks to a strong roster of holiday 2005 releases, and the DS Lite hardware revision - which would outsell the standard DS model by a factor of five or six - had just debuted in Japan and was less than a month away in the America and Europe. On the contrary, Mario's backward-facing sequel appealed to millions of people precisely because it reminded them of games, and game design, from long ago. So in a way, it felt like a real follow-up to Super Mario World." "I liked the 3D Mario games on Nintendo 64 and GameCube, but they just didn’t scratch the same itch for me. "I picked up right when it came out, and remember being really excited to play a 2D Mario again," says James Petruzzi, designer of the upcoming pixel platformer Chasm, which he acknowledges drew some influence from Mario's DS smash ("I was actually inspired by its great wall-jump mechanic for Chasm," he says). Otherwise, it's mostly business as usual, as defined by Mario platformers circa 1986-1991. Mega-sized Mario, by far the most iconic image to emerge from New Super Mario Bros., appears only a handful of times in the game. While many long-time Mario fanatics found the game's lack of invention to be a disappointment, its predictability - its familiarity - proved to be its strength. Despite its title, NSMB was the most basic and stripped-down Mario adventure since Super Mario Land for the original Game Boy. More than 20 years later, its DS follow-up did almost exactly the opposite: It threw out the innovations and refinements of Super Mario's sequels through the years, abandoning the three-dimensional platform design of Super Mario 64, the complex level design of Super Mario World, and the breadth of power-ups seen in Super Mario Bros. That 1985 classic set a new standard for video games, offering unprecedented depth, variety, and control mechanics - a tremendous achievement in action game design. makes for an interesting study in contrasts versus the original Super Mario Bros. By any definition of the word, it was a massive hit. To put it in perspective, NSMB was the top-selling game on the second most successful game console ever. That seeming misappellation, however, sits at the very core of the game’s success: It went on to become the 10th best-selling retail game of all time, and the second best-selling Mario platformer to date (right behind the original Super Mario Bros., which enjoyed the benefit of being a pack-in title for most of the NES's life).
Many critics have lamented long and loud the irony of such a brazen throwback of a game wearing the title "New" Super Mario Bros. In other words, NSMB made a difference by being, well, old. That game's revolutionary achievement? It proved games don’t have to be revolutionary in the sense of inventing new, groundbreaking concepts in order to make an impact. A decade ago this week, Nintendo debuted one of its most revolutionary creations ever: New Super Mario Bros.