Seriously, what's going to be in 3D?

When 3D Classics: Urban Champion came out last Thursday, many people weren’t very happy with Nintendo. Why? Because Urban Champion is not a “classic.” It was one of Nintendo’s worst creations, and yet, here it is, with the same slow-paced boring gameplay and easily forgettable soundtrack. To the game’s defense, Nintendo did make the 3D effect look pretty cool, but the newest addition to the 3D “Classics” series made everyone wonder: where are the real “classics?” More specifically, “Where is 3D Classics: Super Mario Bros.?” Well, I’m here to tell you something: there will not be a 3D Classics: Super Mario Bros.

There are several reasons as to why I don’t think 3D Classics: Super Mario Bros. will not come to be, at least not in the recent future. First of all, Super Mario Bros. is a 2D sidescroller. You can’t make those in 3D. What’s going to pop up? Nothing! If you move the ground up, you have to move Mario up as well, because Mario can’t be floating behind the ground. It just doesn’t make sense. Then you have to move the enemies up, the blocks up, the flagpole up, etc., to the point where everything is  moved up to the same layer, and that would no longer make the game look 3D. It’s not like ExciteBike, where you’re looking at a 2D plane, and it’s not like Xevious or TwinBee, where the ship is floating in the air, again on a 2D plane. Super Mario Bros. can’t be made into a 3D Classic because it’s played on a line, not on a plane.

One might argue that same point, though, for Urban Champion. How did they make Urban Champion, a 2D sidescrolling “fighting” game, into a 3D Classic? What Nintendo did to Urban Champion was rotate the camera angle. Could they do that with Super Mario Bros.? No, and for two reasons. First of all, there is no solid backdrop in Super Mario Bros. like Urban Champion did. Urban Champion had a huge building that took up the space between the action and the cityscape background, but Super Mario Bros. only has emptiness, an aspect that would make the game look awkward. The second reason is that it would just take too much time. The stages Urban Champion is basically the same thing over and over again, just with a different color scheme every single time. If it took that long to make Urban Champion, image how long it would take to do Super Mario Bros. Every sprite would have to be remade. The gameplay would have to be altered. From what Nintendo seems to be getting at, small games would sell better, especially with the 3DS being not even out for half a year.

Ehh... Looks like too much work...

3D Classics: Super Mario Bros. might look cool, but knowing Nintendo, that game won’t be out for quite a while.