Did Mario forget his roots?

According to Nintendo's Yoshiaki Koizumi, who has worked on games like Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Super Mario-games have forgotten their roots.

"I feel like the core experience is something that we may have started to get away from a little bit when we first started presenting games in 3D like in Super Mario 64," he told Gamespot. "The idea in those games is that you walk around in those environments and give the players a lot of opportunity to explore."

"But the real basics of the Super Mario series is that players have to get to the goal of a level without dying. You have short levels with a very quick tempo, and it should be a very thrilling experience."

According to Koizumi, we will see a lot more of that in Super Mario 3DS - shorter, three-minute levels that will be more true to Mario than the last couple of games.