The S-3 stage serves as a good example of arbitrariness in their positioning. And exploration becomes the search for a needle in a haystack since, with so much coin scattered, it becomes more difficult to perceive which ones are actually indicating something. At the same time, taking the risk of picking up five coins positioned along a pit is of little value, as there will be twenty more on the next platform. Finding a secret block or collecting eight red coins to get a life is made irrelevant now, as the thousands of ordinary coins collected throughout the game make the player have more than four hundred lives – no exaggeration here – to spare. 2 goes against their usual purpose and even affects other elements of the design. Therefore, the abundance of coins in New Super Mario Bros. This was usually achieved following these rules: Mario’s basic path to the flag should not contain too much of them, as this would discourage exploration, and they should not exist in large numbers, which would prevent them from alerting the player to the importance of their locations. The problem is that for these factors to work effectively, the coins’ positioning in the stages is crucial and needs to be meticulously planned. ![]() The purposes of the coins in a conventional Mario game are numerous: they give one life after one hundred of them collected those placed in dangerous places allow players to adjust the difficulty at their own pace and be rewarded for it and they also encouraged exploration, revealing hidden passages, shortcuts, and other secrets. The absurd amount of coins also contradicts the purpose of the various functions correlated to their collection. The result is not a good one: levels usually struggle to accommodate this large number of coins – which are also often randomly positioned – while attempting to retain the franchise’s familiar platform elements and bring back some of the old ones, such as the increase in verticality caused by the Racoon Suit. However, rather than building the levels around this objective, the developers chose to just implement this goal to the design of the first New Super Mario Bros. The goal in the game is to collect a lot of gold coins, or, more precisely, one million of them. ![]() Its central gimmick, however, is also poorly implemented. 2 you don’t find any significant expansion of the possibilities of gameplay. 3, which added the possibility to go back to previous screens – making horizontal movement complete – and to fly, thanks to the power of the Racoon Suit – thus also developing vertical movement through the stages. The evolution then came with Super Mario Bros. That is, all the elements present in the game are there for the same reason: to extend the possibilities of gameplay. And the music follows the rhythm of these actions. Coins encourage exploration, creating opportunities to reach places that would never be considered without them, and reward their collection with one life. Pipes accustom the player to this essential mechanic while serving as secret shortcuts. The initial goomba introduces the player to the urgency of jumping. ![]() All of their elements have the purpose of driving the player to the final flag. ’ stages are excellent examples in this regard. In other words, each new title doesn’t intend to be more complicated than the previous one but tries to expand, in an innovative way, the use of its primary mechanics. After all, a Mario game, above all else, needs to be intuitive. ![]() And the developers also rarely aim with each game to make the gameplay more complex. Mario games rarely boast a deep storyline: the Italian plumber always has to save Princess Peach, who was abducted by Bowser. 2, however, is the collection of coins, which is a poor decision that goes against the intricate level design that the franchise has always cherished. The current 2D titles appear to follow a different guideline, basing their design on familiar elements while highlighting their main gimmick: the Wii version, for example, focused on its multiplayer mode and was reasonably successful. 3D Mario games have always excelled at renewing themselves, making its most basic mechanics – like jumping – more interesting in the most imaginative ways possible, either by abusing and twisting gravity in Super Mario Galaxy or by prolonging the jump in Super Mario Sunshine.
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