As a serious, fan-site-creating Mario fan for the vast majority of my life now, We've played a lot of weird Mario games. Even without including the "Mario plays yet another sport" style of spin-offs, there's everything from the well-known weirdness of Super Mario Bros. 2 to the tiny, early monochrome weirdness of Super Mario Land to the melon-infused, cloying cuteness of Yoshi's Story to the coin-drenched oddity of New Super Mario Bros. 2.

On the surface, Super Mario Run has all the trappings of a standard 2D Mario game-coins, goombas, koopa troopas, a jumpy mustachioed guy with a red hat and blue overalls. The graphics and sound assets seem to be taken directly from the New Super Mario Bros. series, and it all looks much better on the iPhone's retina screen than it ever did on the limited portable screens of the DS and 3DS.

For a one-button game where you can't directly control your speed, you can get a surprising amount of fine control out of Mario here. Different tap lengths give different jump heights, of course, but there are also wall jumps, enemy bounces, mid-air spins to extend your distance, and special blocks that allow for long jumps and backflips.

More than jump precision, though, being pushed constantly forward feels especially limiting to the sense of exploration that's always been integral to Mario games. Playing Super Mario Run, you have to quickly tamp down the usual urge to look everywhere and track down every coin and hidden item. Instead, you're constantly making split-second decisions on whether to stay on the low path or jump for the high path (or sometimes a middle path) with little time to really consider your next move. There are occasionally blocks that freeze you in place to think about that next decision, but not as often as you might like.

In Super Mario Run, the world scrolls by too fast for any of that, leaving you with an experience that looks familiar but feels like something utterly different-something much simpler. Playing the rest of the game's 24 levels (and two other modes) next week might change that feeling, but right now, Super Mario Run feels too different for this fan to easily accept.