I'm not exactly justifying this but it's very apparent to the Mario Kart developers that characters are very low in the team's development priorities, because to them, they're just skins with different stats, regardless if if they look like Wario or if they look like Bowser. Tracks are really...
"If you strip Donkey Kong Country of the things that made it good, would it still be a good game?"
The game you're describing wouldn't even be Donkey Kong Country anymore, it would be an entirely different game. A game is a sum of parts, you can't just extract essential portions from it and be...
Final Fantasy VI is a massive game, it's pretty clear that Super Paper Mario is developed by people who have complete adoration of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
Clones are cost efficient characters that are basically the result of leftovers, plus Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach have the benefit of being medium-sized heavy characters (with Pink Gold Peach in particular being made for the female audience). They should not be receiving as much hate as they...