New Super Mario Bros. 2 is not the greatest Mario game. It is not the most revolutionary or the most challenging. But it is a perfect time capsule of a specific era—the era of the Nintendo 3DS, of first-wave handheld DLC, and of a design philosophy that said "more is more."
The Archive hosts a massive collection of user-recorded gameplay videos. By searching the "Moving Image Archive," you can watch complete 100% completion runs of NSMB2 , including the DLC Coin Rush levels. This allows you to study level design even if you cannot play the DLC yourself.
While critics gave it solid scores (averaging in the high 70s/low 80s on Metacritic), some called it “safe.” But for completionists and speedrunners, the coin-collecting loop remains deeply satisfying.
