Are 20 new Mario games enough for you?

New Super Mario Bros. 2 came out today in North America. It's the third entry in the NSMB series, and the seventh entry to the mainline Super Mario Bros. games. It's also the eighth original Mario game to come out in the past twelve months alone (with two more coming by the end of the year), fifteenth if you include Virtual Console games, and twentieth if you include Ambassador games.

Yep, you read that right. 20 new Mario games, all within twelve months of each other. Wow.

It's pretty obvious. 20 new Mario games is too much. Heck, 8 is too much, but that's not stopping Nintendo, eh? But there's this strange feeling inside of me that I can't get rid of, something that I don't want inside of me. When I think about it, it makes me sick. Why would I think like this? What in the world would make me feel this way?

Yes, you guessed it. I still want more Mario. But why?

Was this game really needed?

Why am I not sick of Mario by now? I think it all comes down to the versatility of Mario. Of the eight original Mario games that came out in the past year, three of them were sports titles, two of them board games, one of them a 3D platformer, another one a racing title, and the most recent one, NSMB2, a classic 2.5D platformer. You see, if Nintendo decided to release 8 different Mario Tennis games all within a twelve-month frame, I'd probably want to shoot myself. But the fact that every one of the eight Mario games is distinctly different from each other means we haven't grown too tired of it yet.

But it is for that same reason that all of us are tired of NSMB. I mean, seriously, do we need two NSMB games in one year? And it's not just that, it's that they seem so similar to each other. Sure, Nintendo is selling NSMB2 as a coin-collecting arcade game and NSMBU as a full-on HD console experience, but it doesn't help that they have the same exact branding on them. And it's not that I hate the NSMB series – NSMB Wii is one of my favorite games of all time. It's just that with every new Mario game that comes out, every new other game doesn't. Now that is the reason why we don't want more Mario: by putting so much emphasis on Mario, Nintendo has ignored their other franchises as well as forgone their chance to create new I.P.'s.

That is, I think, the reason why people want Nintendo to stop with all the Mario. It's not that we don't want more Mario (believe me, we all want more Mario), but we want more of other things, like more Zelda, or more Metroid, or more F-Zero, or more Star Fox. The fact that the only Nintendo franchises that have confirmed sequels are Animal Crossing, Pokemon, and Mario is apalling. Remember E3 2010? We had new Kid Icarus, new Metroid, new Wario, new Mario Galaxy, new Kirby, new Donkey Kong, new everything. E3 2012? Mario, Mario, Mario, Mario. STOP IT!

This looks pretty, but I prefer something else...

So guys, I'm gonna keep this blog short and sweet. As much as I love Mario games, and as much as I am excited for Paper Mario and NSMBU, I've had enough. I'm ready for something else. And perhaps, after 2012, we'll finally get a taste of something else. We'll finally not have to deal with 20 new Mario games. We'll finally not have to worry about "New" Super Mario Brothers. We can finally rest in peace, knowing that Nintendo, after doing what needs to be done with Mario, will move on to bigger things. Things like Metroid. Or Star Fox. Or Zelda.

At least, that's what we think...

So tell me, my fellow MyIGNers. Are you tired of Mario yet? How much Mario is too much Mario?