Wii Warm Up: Reusing assets

The unreleased Gamecube Kirby looked to be running on the Super Smash Bros. Melee engine. Most of the character art in Super Paper Mario Iooks a whole lot like that of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and we don't think that's just consistency in style.

Nintendo seems to be reusing art and code from previous games. The advantages of such a practice are obvious: reduced cost, quicker development cycles, and less need for debugging.

But does it bother you to have a new game that isn't entirely new? Should Intelligent Systems have redrawn Mario for their new game? Or is there no reason to redo perfectly good work? What do you all think about the reuse of assets in new games?