My statement was meant to be generic. My point was that we haven’t played the game, so we don’t even know if any of these complaints are valid. “That’s the way they designed it” and we won’t fully know why until we see the game. *THEN* we can all complain.

I’m still guessing that from a design perspective, all of the characters have to play the same. This is both for the reason that Nikita just mentioned, and the fact that if one character had a certain unique ability (like jumping higher/longer) it would have a huge effect on level design. You should be able to do everything in the game with 1, 2, 3 or 4 players, and these experiences should be basically the same (but with increasing chaos).

If the levels were designed to employ different character attributes, it would be the Lost Vikings.

I’m no Nintendo apologist–I simply think that the strength of these complaints is unwarranted, given the information we have.

I can’t argue with a multiplayer game with Tingle and his brothers. I think i might be one of those lone Tingle fans but i’ve always loved the guy.

Except in Majora’s Mask. He was creepy as hell in that game.

EVEN IF, the color theory about needing four different colored characters is legit, that is simply Nintendo’s preference, and what they should be doing is allowing the player to choose for themselves. If four people are playing and two of them want to be a similar color (a la Smash Bros) then they are FREE TO DO THAT. But if someone playing has trouble differentiating between the characters because of that they simply TALK TO THE PEOPLE PLAYING and everyone fixes the issue because the game has options built in that allow the people playing to play how they like.

Humans are PRETTY smart, Nintendo. Not always, but most of the time, if they are given some options they can figure out the best way to deal with these issues themselves. I understand Nintendo is trying to make this simple for everyone, but at the end of the day it just seems like micromanaging with a pinch of “whatever”.

Oh and the only reason Mario, Luigi and the two Toads are all going to just the same height is just because Ninty said so. Luigi is now generally known to “jump higher” and they are changing that for this, so there really is no excuse to leave out characters like Wario and Daisy who “can’t jump as high”.

You win most generic statement of 2009! Runners up: “You know why Michael Jackson’s not alive? Because he died,” and “You know how I bought this game? I spent money.”

That’s a lame defense man. I’m sure Nintendo’s “expert design” of having two toads running around is going to be a LOT more fun than if we had four unique characters somehow. In fact, why not make them ALL toad, no – no SCREW THAT. ALL TINGLE. Who cares if it’s the wrong franchise, MIYAMOTO IS NEVER WRONG, I mean- Wii Music showed all those doubters, right?

…right?

I think Matthew’s comment that you can only ride Yoshi was simply to clarify what we already know about this particular game. He wasn’t speaking generally. Obviously, Yoshi has been a playable character in the past. For this game, they wanted to use him as a power-up. That’s it. Yoshi riding on another Yoshi would be like dogs and cats living together.

You know why there are two plumbers and two toads in this game? That’s the way they designed it. I believe Nintendo knows what they’re doing when it comes to making Mario Games, especially lately.

That said, I think Reynard’s comment about having similar controls across all four characters makes the most sense. Think about it from a level design perspective.

What Miketendo said makes more sense because you have 4 players each with a different color to easily differentiate one from the other. Now that is a better reason than “you can only ride yoshi”.

Wario wouldn’t jump as high as Mario or especially Luigi, but he can jump as high as a Toad alright. And he’s been in a Mario platformer before working with the good guys: Super Mario 64 DS.

As for Daisy, she’s never been in a platformer (I’m still holding out for Super Princess Peach 2 with both of them), so they could do just about anything with her and she could have been a cool selling point as a never-before-playable character.