As much i love mario, i do have to admit that the new super mario bros series is starting to bore me. They are fun games with good quality but they feel like the same game over and over again. This video i stumbled upon sums up most of my thoughts of how mario is starting to loose his touch.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6147-Old-Man-Mario

If you dont want to watch the video, the gentlemen in this video is basically saying that "We are used to nintendo making us do the same things over and over again with mario but they always would present it to us in a way that made it feel new again....until recently" and for some reason they have decided to stop doing that with mario platformers latly. From my perspective i have a feeling nintendo is unsure where to take mario next as space is considered the final frontier and i believe their answer should be to take him through time.

Like with mario galaxy having many galaxies, this mario game could have many time zones while still keeping that nintendo feel. Like a prehistoric dinosaur level, a prehistoric caveman level, an ice age level, a midevil level, a war level (though toned to be friendly like saaaay toads vs kooopas firing bomb-ombs) and even a futuristic level if they want to do more galaxy like gameplay. I think with this level of flexibility, it could be really easy to come up with missions for stars (or other items to collect). You could climb to the top of the castle in the midevil level, you could help a caveman-toad build his wheel ( i could see chizeling with the WiiU gamepad touchscreen by tapping to work well with that), you could help unfreeze a mamoth like character in the ice age level and he could give you a star as thanks.

Now im not hating on nintendo entirly or saying they are lacking inovation (skyward sword for example feels very different and new compared to twilight princess and other m gives a completly different feeling from the prime seires) , its just weird to see nintendo stop innovating with mario in his MAIN GENRE.

Thank you for reading, feel free to post any thoughts in the comments