2D Mario
"Doing this now at the 30th anniversary [of Super Mario Bros.] is really putting some more of that creativity into the players. But at the same time, we as the developers feel that it’s time for us to move in a new direction, and we’re preparing to work on the future of Super Mario from here on." - Miyamoto, 2015.
“We will continue to make 3D and 2D Mario games, but I want to make one that even exceeds New Super Mario Bros.” - Takashi Tezuka, 2015.
Will we ever see a 2D game made entirely of Kotabe’s art?
We’re at almost like a turning point. When you look at Mickey Mouse there is the classic Mickey Mouse, and then there is the modern Mickey Mouse and the classic one has a lot of flavor to it and the modern Mickey Mouse looks really great, but it is losing a little bit of the flavor, and that’s something we discuss to make sure we keep that intact as we’re creating characters. And of course the development team for any Mario game may want to use Kotabe’s art, but there is also a character-development team that’s really working hard to create new styles and new work. Once they get more work done, I think more and more of that will be reflected into games.
And you feel like the pristine, perfect flavor for 2D Mario is that beautiful, clean Kotabe art?
I do believe that Mr Kotabe’s art has become kind of a standard within Nintendo, but we definitely want to continue to see if we can evolve that as time goes by.
- Miyamoto, 2017
Whatever this new 2D Mario game is, I can assure you that it's not another New Super Mario Bros. game, which at this point isn't that bold prediction at all.