Hey Nintendo, Jack here. Unabashed button-pusher and Nintendo fanman. Just a thought here, something a bit crazy. A little ditty for your developers and product managers to chew on in the coming year.

You see, the consumers have spoken about Super Mario Bros., and maybe the future of the franchise isn’t necessarily one that’s dominated by 3D.

In this day and age of making things more powerful and pushing polygons and GPU usage and telling engaging emotional stories, it’s crazy talk, I know, but “facts” and “sales numbers” and “what consumers really want” are annoying like that.

Our friends over at Nintendo of Canada managed to snag some time with Mario himself to record a few New Super Mario Bros. and holiday themed voicemail greetings. While you can pick one of the three greetings to use on your phone’s voicemail system, it looks like one of the messages might be used by some video game retailer to remind gamers about New Super Mario Bros. Wii‘s imminent launch.

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Trailers and teasers are great, but sometimes it’s nice to have a good long look at an official high resolution screen grab. Flip through the pages for shots from Galaxy 2, Metroid other M, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Golden Sun DS, and more!

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Great to see Yoshi back, but not so great to hear midi music return.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has honored Nintendo with two Interactive Achievement Awards, including Handheld Game of the Year for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS and Adventure Game of the Year for Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.

Both games have also enjoyed strong momentum, with more than 2.5 million copies of Super Mario Galaxy sold since its Nov. 12, 2007, debut and more than 1.1 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass sold since its Oct. 1, 2007, release.

Nintendo received nine nominations in eight gaming categories. The awards were presented the night of Feb. 7, 2008, at the Academy’s annual Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain conference in Las Vegas. The awards are among the most respected in the interactive entertainment community.