The way I see it at this point is that maybe it's time to get some new people on-board the development team.
^I don't think this is an option. After talking with Kimi before they would prefer that the project is their own work and as such it holds lots of memories for them.
While SMBO was still being actively developed, we mentioned that we were not interested in bringing anyone else onto the development team. While SMBO holds a lot of sentimental value to me and Kimi, we also made this decision because we felt the general feel of SMBO would not be quite the same if someone else were to take it on. I'm sure there are plenty of great level designers out there, but each one has his/her own style, and not every one of them has the depth of knowledge about the Mario universe that Kimi and I have. The latter point is very important, because just about all of SMBO's concepts were inspired in some way by a concept in an official Mario game.
