Games are basically graphical trickery, none of the Mario games are next-gen and are actually more low poly than anything.
If you stripped out the FX Mario World uses, the models would look like crap and Nintendo is good at making shit look like a tasty meal.
Why do I sense hatred/disgust? I'm not sure if you're against Nintendo or the 3D Mario titles itself or the use of effects to artificially enhance low-level graphics in general.
I know nothing about game development but I still managed to try and a look at the Super Mario 3D World's .SMDs (Mario had separate body part models for eyeballs and even eyelids complete with a small bump for the flap's edge!) and compared it to Mario Kart 8's .OBJs (Mario isn't dismembered), and it lead me to believe that most SM3DW's models were crafted with care.
Mario's model in MK8 is definitely low poly because I can immediately see the flat sides even when zoomed out.
But with Mario's SMD file, I had to zoom and zoom all the way in several times on his cap to make sure that his models have flat surfaces on it. It's kinda hard to distinguish where the flat areas and the pointed corners are.
It's either 3D World's main 3D objects (characters, blocks. etc.) are high poly or my eyes are just simply untrained to detect the polygons at a certain distance or my PC is somehow using graphical tricks only on those .SMDs to hide those pointy corners and flat edges.
The only thing I'm quite sure of is that I'm not wearing what the English idiom call the "rose-tinted glasses".
Looking back at the screenshot, I now doubt that the wet ground Mario is running on is simply an image plastered over an entirely flat surface. Those grooves certainly look deep judging by how the shadows dip into it. His pouting lips I now believe, aren't just an image with fancy lighting. Even the POW Block's letters seem to pop out.
Just in case Mario's 3D World model were indeed as low polygonal as his MK8 model, is it really such a bad practice in the game/graphic development world to use effects to hide jaggies and make things look good? You make it seem like it's some sort of taboo.
:-(