Unpopular opinions about the Mario series

Nintendo really needs to stop focusing exclusively on Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser when it comes to the Mario series. Wario's been relegated to minigame collections, - most recently just a collection of old minigames from these collections - Donkey Kong and Yoshi have basically been shoved onto Retro Studios and Good-Feel like Nintendo doesn't want to deal with them, and almost all of the other characters have either just dropped off the map entirely or just appear in one or two games in a row before disappearing. Even characters like Birdo or Diddy Kong who were in a ton of spin-off games back in the GameCube and Wii eras have just disappeared almost completely. With Mario Tennis Aces things have gotten better for characters like that, but we're still jumping over the hurdle I feel.

Like I get that the four I mentioned are the main characters, but they're just stuck in a rut with the Mario cast. Even Super Mario Odyssey trying to be both "new" and "old" simultaneously had only had Cappy and Pauline as the only major characters outside of Mario, Peach, and Bowser (Tiara always kinda seemed like an afterthought to me tbh and the Broodals are treated just like all the other bosses - like they don't matter at all - except you fight them more times).

Where's the experimentation? Remember when they made Luigi's Mansion out of the blue? Or Super Princess Peach? Or when Mario Super Sluggers brought everyone together for a giant 80-or-so character roster? Stuff that focused on other characters without any provocation? Even just bringing some of the RPG characters into the spin-offs or main games would do wonders for character diversity.

Mario has some of the coolest characters Nintendo has made but many of them have been shoved off a cliff and buried by pictures of Mario, Peach, and Bowser.
 
Tbh, Mario's never been about the characters. They did offer some charm, but the real deal is the platforming sweetness, so... eh. A single character can accomplish running across the screen, so a single character it is. I'd consider the other characters nice bonuses to expand any little bit of lore the series has, if any at all.

Some of the other series Nintendo has honestly benefits more from large casts of characters, and have better characters imo. I would rather not ask that Mario strengthens one of its weaker points and rather makes its strong point, the gameplay even better.
 
Pokerninja2 said:
Nintendo really needs to stop focusing exclusively on Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser when it comes to the Mario series. Wario's been relegated to minigame collections, - most recently just a collection of old minigames from these collections - Donkey Kong and Yoshi have basically been shoved onto Retro Studios and Good-Feel like Nintendo doesn't want to deal with them, and almost all of the other characters have either just dropped off the map entirely or just appear in one or two games in a row before disappearing. Even characters like Birdo or Diddy Kong who were in a ton of spin-off games back in the GameCube and Wii eras have just disappeared almost completely. With Mario Tennis Aces things have gotten better for characters like that, but we're still jumping over the hurdle I feel.

Like I get that the four I mentioned are the main characters, but they're just stuck in a rut with the Mario cast. Even Super Mario Odyssey trying to be both "new" and "old" simultaneously had only had Cappy and Pauline as the only major characters outside of Mario, Peach, and Bowser (Tiara always kinda seemed like an afterthought to me tbh and the Broodals are treated just like all the other bosses - like they don't matter at all - except you fight them more times).

Where's the experimentation? Remember when they made Luigi's Mansion out of the blue? Or Super Princess Peach? Or when Mario Super Sluggers brought everyone together for a giant 80-or-so character roster? Stuff that focused on other characters without any provocation? Even just bringing some of the RPG characters into the spin-offs or main games would do wonders for character diversity.

Mario has some of the coolest characters Nintendo has made but many of them have been shoved off a cliff and buried by pictures of Mario, Peach, and Bowser.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with this. I find the combination three most common appearing characters to be extremely bland, safe, and just...well not interesting characters. To add to your list of characters that they once gave roles to, Partners in Time gave Baby Mario and Baby Luigi roles as well, and that was pretty much their only starring appearance to date (I don't really count Yoshi's Island because they were more like objects than actual characters in those games). However, I don't quite agree to see what's wrong with, uh, "out sourcing" Donkey Kong and Yoshi to 2nd party developers: as long as they do a good job making their games, there's not much issue with it. Much of the Mario spin-offs anyway was developed by 2nd party devs to begin with such as Intelligent Systems, Nd Cube, Camelot.

Super Mario Odyssey's cast of Mario characters is bleh too aside from Pauline being given a major role which was a plus. I knew that the game will not reference Donkey Kong characters in New Donk City besides just a random name drop in the streets, as if their name is arbitrarily there to remind us "hey you know, Squawks the Parrot? He exists." I knew that they're not going to do much outside of small nods. Toadette was an exception and I liked that but as always, she's an exception and she honestly shouldn't be an exception. New Super Mario Bros. 2 lacked Wario and it's a huge omission because that game was coin oriented, it made less sense to leave him out of it.
 
It's not an issue of characters not appearing in games or that Mario/Peach/Luigi/Bowser/Toad are overtaking focus, it's more of an issue of Mario spin-offs being pretty dry in general this generation (and honestly, that's a pretty big reason Nintendo Directs don't interest me; Mario spinoffs are smaller fish, they seem to just get announced on the fly). Those characters you want are pretty much tied to how many spinoffs there are, Dr. Mario World and Mario Kart Tour are cases in point. There's no Mario Golf yet while Mario Tennis Aces was released and had its lifespan drawn out through drip-feeding that doesn't justify the content (drip feed would make more sense for a game that already has tons of content), we haven't had Mario Baseball for ten years, we haven't had Mario Strikers for ten years, Mario Sports Superstars was barren and forgotten despite surprising us with horse racing, there hasn't been a Mario Party this year while Super Mario Party has been needing new content since release, there hasn't been any Fortune Street/Itadaki Street or a new Mario Sports Mix for years, we don't have the odd Yakuman DS or DDR Mario Mix either. Super Princess Peach should get a sequel. Mario Kart, we haven't had a new one for over five years now, with recent ones only being a port and some gross exploitative mobile game. All these games I feel we're waiting for are opportunities for Cappy and Pauline, but it's telling Cappy hasn't really shown up in a game beyond being a prop in Smash Bros. and Super Mario Run, and Pauline's only playable appearance would be Mario Tennis Aces (and she's just props in other games past Odyssey), and it's been over two years now

I guess it might be seen as a good thing that Mario isn't cynically milked as a sports or party, that might be argued, but people tend to generally like the sports games, at least, a lot? And it's not just Mario sports and Mario Party that's in a drought, where are the new Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario games people have been asking for a while?

Mario is just having a down year overall. Super Mario Maker 2 and Luigi Mansion's 2 are going to be the two major releases this year. But this generation, we're just not seeing much.

I do think it's just a problem overall that the main platformers don't use all spinoff characters. It's not a character-driven franchise, so wouldn't that be more reason to go more the merrier with more playable platformer characters?

I love Mario, but if we get the day where I can throw Wario into lava 2D platformer style, I'm for that.
 
Pokerninja2 said:
Nintendo really needs to stop focusing exclusively on Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser when it comes to the Mario series. Wario's been relegated to minigame collections, - most recently just a collection of old minigames from these collections - Donkey Kong and Yoshi have basically been shoved onto Retro Studios and Good-Feel like Nintendo doesn't want to deal with them, and almost all of the other characters have either just dropped off the map entirely or just appear in one or two games in a row before disappearing. Even characters like Birdo or Diddy Kong who were in a ton of spin-off games back in the GameCube and Wii eras have just disappeared almost completely. With Mario Tennis Aces things have gotten better for characters like that, but we're still jumping over the hurdle I feel.

Like I get that the four I mentioned are the main characters, but they're just stuck in a rut with the Mario cast. Even Super Mario Odyssey trying to be both "new" and "old" simultaneously had only had Cappy and Pauline as the only major characters outside of Mario, Peach, and Bowser (Tiara always kinda seemed like an afterthought to me tbh and the Broodals are treated just like all the other bosses - like they don't matter at all - except you fight them more times).

Where's the experimentation? Remember when they made Luigi's Mansion out of the blue? Or Super Princess Peach? Or when Mario Super Sluggers brought everyone together for a giant 80-or-so character roster? Stuff that focused on other characters without any provocation? Even just bringing some of the RPG characters into the spin-offs or main games would do wonders for character diversity.

Mario has some of the coolest characters Nintendo has made but many of them have been shoved off a cliff and buried by pictures of Mario, Peach, and Bowser.
Click to expand...

Wario has pretty much been a spin off only dude for years. Thats nothing new DK's main claim to fame post arcade was done by a 2nd Party developer so him getting "shoved onto retro studios" is to be expected, in fact RS has quite the pedigree so if anything them being given DK was shown that Nintendo does give a crap about the series. Same with Good Feel with Yoshi. They've made plenty of gems and frankly their run with yoshi via woolly world and crafted world are arguably some of the best yoshi games we've gotten in YEARS.

I would also point out you complain about the lack of experimentation and then bring up a rather poorly reviewed sequel to a baseball game that did very little beyond adding gimmicky motion controls and re-using a crapton of assets. Hell even Super Princess Peach, much as I like that game is pretty much a dolled up Starfy game and likewise apart from Perry introduced basically zero characters and relied on the 4 you're complaining about them using too much of.

And the rpg characters can fuck right off for all I care.
 
Pokerninja2 said:
Nintendo really needs to stop focusing exclusively on Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser when it comes to the Mario series. Wario's been relegated to minigame collections, - most recently just a collection of old minigames from these collections - Donkey Kong and Yoshi have basically been shoved onto Retro Studios and Good-Feel like Nintendo doesn't want to deal with them, and almost all of the other characters have either just dropped off the map entirely or just appear in one or two games in a row before disappearing. Even characters like Birdo or Diddy Kong who were in a ton of spin-off games back in the GameCube and Wii eras have just disappeared almost completely. With Mario Tennis Aces things have gotten better for characters like that, but we're still jumping over the hurdle I feel.

Like I get that the four I mentioned are the main characters, but they're just stuck in a rut with the Mario cast. Even Super Mario Odyssey trying to be both "new" and "old" simultaneously had only had Cappy and Pauline as the only major characters outside of Mario, Peach, and Bowser (Tiara always kinda seemed like an afterthought to me tbh and the Broodals are treated just like all the other bosses - like they don't matter at all - except you fight them more times).

Where's the experimentation? Remember when they made Luigi's Mansion out of the blue? Or Super Princess Peach? Or when Mario Super Sluggers brought everyone together for a giant 80-or-so character roster? Stuff that focused on other characters without any provocation? Even just bringing some of the RPG characters into the spin-offs or main games would do wonders for character diversity.

Mario has some of the coolest characters Nintendo has made but many of them have been shoved off a cliff and buried by pictures of Mario, Peach, and Bowser.
Click to expand...
This is basically my main complaint with the Mario RPGs: they tend to focus on Mario, Peach and Bowser, and to a lesser extent Luigi (except Mario & Luigi). In Mario & Luigi especially, the game could stand to add another recurring Mario character like Donkey Kong, Wario and Waluigi to the game to freshen things up, like how Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time had the Baby characters have their time while utilising a new villain (dampened by the literal final boss being Shrowser). Similarly, if Donkey Kong were the antagonist, then the characters would interact with a whole new world of inhabitants like parrots, elephants and so on.

Thank you for reading.
 
Doctor Healmore said:
If they ever remake Partners in Time then they had better throw Shrowser into the battle ring. He is unworthy of being called a "final boss".
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Or at least give him a half-decent design so he doesn't look like they just played around with hue sliders in Photoshop. Just imagine how cool a Shroobified Bowser would look given the Shroob-based enemies in the game.

...

...Oh yeah and make it an actual boss battle with none of these weird gameplay shifts. That's another complaint I have with games but that's a discussion for another time.
 
Calling Shrowser the final boss of PIT is a bit of a misnomer if you ask me.
 
It's more a glorified mini game than anything else.
 
extremely unsolicited Mario opinion of the month: I find it weird when people say "Why do they put generic enemies and all Koopalings in Mario Kart instead of neglected spinoffs characters people actually care about?"

because , it's like, Goombas, Hammer Bros, Pirhana Plants absolutely *are* more important, relevant to the Mario series and "deserving" to be in something like MK than Ashley or K. Rool, no matter how much I would personally prefer the later group. The real question is why Goombas aren,t in yet (I think trying to make it a "why X instead of Y" thing is silly anyways because MK could support a much bigger character roster anyways. See Crash Team Racing).
 
To add to that, they are only "generic" because we know there to be multiple of these in universe. Design wise they are the originators of everything that bases itself off that.

You don't call the originals generic. It would be like calling Mario's design generic because Luigi, Wario and Waluigi exist.
 
A character being generic is a perfectly fine reason to dislike them, as they aren't unique enough to stand out and be an interesting character that's liked.
 
Yeah, I was talking about character designs.

For characters that are generic personality wise, that is a reason to not like them, but I don't think it warrants going as far as disliking them because of how generic they are. If a character doesn't do anything bad you're not gonna hate them for that.
 
winstein said:
This is basically my main complaint with the Mario RPGs: they tend to focus on Mario, Peach and Bowser, and to a lesser extent Luigi (except Mario & Luigi). In Mario & Luigi especially, the game could stand to add another recurring Mario character like Donkey Kong, Wario and Waluigi to the game to freshen things up, like how Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time had the Baby characters have their time while utilising a new villain (dampened by the literal final boss being Shrowser). Similarly, if Donkey Kong were the antagonist, then the characters would interact with a whole new world of inhabitants like parrots, elephants and so on.

Thank you for reading.
Click to expand...
I agree that the RPGs should use more characters from the rest of the series though I can't see DK being an RPG antagonist, he'd be more likely to be a protagonist imo. But I also support the reverse, anything new in the RPGs to get acknowledged/referenced in other games instead of staying in some contained bubble (despite the RPGs making many nods to other games as if they were in the same universe which counteracts that bubble idea or makes it a one-way wall). Also I think it would be cool to see characters with similar traits interact, like Wario and/or Nabbit interacting with Popple. And of course, the most dangerously fabulous combination the world could ever dream of, Waluigi and Dieter.


Paper Mario though, that series needs to get back on the level of the first 2/3 games before they think about trying anything new again. Get the cast back to TTYD levels of variety and originality, then we can think about what Mario characters that haven't appeared in it yet should show up. Meeting new characters is a fundamental part of the Mario RPGs in my opinion.
 
Wittgenstein said:
I agree that the RPGs should use more characters from the rest of the series though I can't see DK being an RPG antagonist, he'd be more likely to be a protagonist imo.
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Perhaps there could be a twist where it's not the modern Donkey Kong, but the older Donkey Kong (aka Cranky Kong) in his past self that would be the troublemaker.

Thank you for reading.
 
Now I'm imagining in the M&L series, within time travel shenanigans, they both team up with modern DK and have to fight young cranky.

-Edit-
Now I'm imagining M&L run into the entire DK Family on a jungle island, they all get along except Cranky who is enraged upon seeing Mario
 
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