21. New Super Mario Bros. (DS)

It may sound strange now, but back in 2006, classic 2D-style video games still felt like a bit of an endangered species. Consider this: 11 whole years (!) had passed since the Super Mario series’ last original side-scroller, Yoshi’s Island. You can see why folks were twitchy. As such, Nintendo announcing New Super Mario Bros. for its DS handheld made for a welcome surprise.

The game’s title alone was intriguing: no numbers, no subtitles, just the word “New” attached to the name of the side-scroller that changed everything back in ‘85. Indeed, this “new” Super Mario Bros. attempted something of a return to baseline, jettisoning some of the series’ later complications in favor of more basic Mario action. I wondered if it’d rekindle the deep enjoyment I had derived from the original NES trilogy.

It did not. While GameCube’s slightly troubled Super Mario Sunshine had exposed some cracks in the edifice, New Super Mario Bros. ended up being the first mainline Mario that felt inessential. Its straightforward level designs and basic run-jump-bop action came off as bland, and its new ideas proved a mixed lot.

The wall-jumping maneuver was inoffensive, but the new power-ups ranged from “who cares?” to actively detrimental: The mega-mushroom rampages were just mindless spectacle, the mini mushroom was simultaneously too powerful and a frustrating prerequisite for important shortcuts, and the unwieldy blue shell suit actively tried to send you careening off cliffs. I grew bored, and stopped playing around the sixth or seventh world.

New Super Mario Bros. was a solid platform game by most standards and the start of a welcome revival for side-scrolling Mario. But it didn’t measure up to the very high standard of its predecessors. — Alexandra Hall

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