The 'New Super Mario Bros' series was heavily influenced by the "past".
Takashi Tezuka, a producer of the series, has revealed that Nintendo tried to learn lessons from the past and apply them to the gaming series.
Takashi told Game Informer: "For the 'New Super Mario Bros' series, we did what we always do, which is go back and review what we had in the past, and we looked at how we could make changes to make something appropriate for the current generation.
"The 'New Super Mario Bros' series continued for a long period of time, and one of the things I think we accomplished during that period was creating new Mario fans."
The game brought the series back to the classic 2D gameplay and proved to be a success for Nintendo. However, Takashi observed that it remained a mix of old and new.
The producer shared: "We’d been working on the 'New Super Mario Bros' series based on the idea of recreating the experience of the original 'Super Mario Bros', which released in 1985, in a new way.
"You can think of it as carefully preserving the core gameplay while dressing it up with new elements that enhance it."