Nintendo blames... itsself???

[A Black Falcon]

I wasn't losing... you just got us off subject. :)

Oh, my original arguement. Actually, level design WAS a part of it. Part of my original arguement was that the levels in SMS DO share more level design ideas than SM64, by far. After my 5th beach/river with palm trees, I get tired of them... it just repeats similar ideas in its levels! It really is unavoidable with all the levels having a tropical theme, just like how if all the Mario 64 levels were in Lava world they'd start to look the same... but its just one other point where Mario 64 is better than its sequel.

And of course there are palm trees in Mario Sunshine's levels. The whole theme is "tropical island"! But the levels are much better designed and more unique (in architecture) than Mario 64's.

You pretty much repeat what I said in my last post.

As for level design... hmm. Given the limitations of having just one theme to work with, they did a good job. But its unfortunate that they weren't allowed to do multiple themes... all I can do is think about how much better the game would be with varied themes. Because setting isn't just graphics, it really affects the whole level design. Like that list of Mario 64 themes -- those 9 themes (if you don't count Castle) are all different and all lead to major level design differences even when the setting is otherwise fairly similar. SMS lacks that possibility, so even when its got better design, larger levels, more to do in levels, and a nice variety of settings given the theme, they still can't help but repeat eachother a lot... and it loses the chance for the gameplay possibilities that were added to Mario 64 by its having 9 major themes instead of one!