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First of all, Karl Benz would like to have a word with you.
Anyway, I don't know if I'm jsut misreading your line from earlier, but...
While it will probably be fun, all I see from this game is another Nintendo cash-cow with "Mario" slapped in the title
...to me, would be like my saying that Square-Enix is just slapping "Final Fantasy" onto that RPG they have coming out in Spring 2010, or Microsoft just slapped "Halo" onto that FPS they released in 2007. It's not like making a (good) kart racer or a (mediocre to fun) -insert random sport here- game and tossing in Mario, he already is a platformer. For better or for worse, this is his core series - it'd be like Mega Man X as opposed to regular old Mega Man, though that's a terrible metaphor.
That said, so what? Masa already pointed out the gist of what I wanted to say, but from a completely cynical money making standpoint, you don't break what works. Sure, you add to it as time goes on, but you don't go screwing around with what made it do so well in the first place. NSMB Wii is essentially just taking an extremely popular winning formula on the DS and throwing it on their ridiculously popular console in hopes of gaining the same kind of sales the handheld version got, while throwing in something extra to give those casual gamers more incentive to play. As it is, you really can't make an out and out bad Mario game - a little cookie cutter and safe, but hell, I could say the same about certain other franchises by other companies on other consoles.
Actually, I could say that about almost all of them at this point.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Not every game has to be Shadow of the Colossus - if every game was, the gaming world would be a worse place for it, because then we really wouldn't appreciate it for what it is, and instead just be picking at its little niggling flaws (and yes, it has them) that we overlook because it's such a tremendous experience. Besides, Super Mario Galaxy was more then an adequete step forward for Mario games, NSMB was them caving in to the demand for a sidescroller, and by golly, they gave a sidescroller with all the little additions the 3-D games incorporated. It's comfort food, and in a way, it's also there to make money plaina nd simple since it's a guaranteed system seller. You can make all the artsy, creative games you want, but if none of'em sell, hell, you didn't help anyway. You need the blockbusters to keep yourself alive, and given the current financial situation, I can't blame them for trying to give themselves a little bit of security.
Oh, and before anyone brings it up, I absolutely love Shadow of the Colossus, long before it became the cool thing for "smart" gamers to like. Hell, I loved Ico to death long before that, and will do terrible, evil things to people to get to play The Last Guardian. Similarly, No More Heroes and Killer 7 are extremely flawed, but incredibly awesome games, and I loved Grim Fandango since I first got it when I was in 7th grade on my family's crappy old Celeron PC. I'm sure there aren't any in here, just wanted to scare the "I love this highly pretentious game because it's cool to despite never having played it" crowd.
