Do you support the clones?

Dorayaki

Dorayaki

King Bowser
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As we know, Metal Mario has appeared in several game titles, but for unknown reason, MM does not appear in every single spinoff game despite of being an easy creation. Meanwhile, there are of course fans who dislike the clones and don't mind them to dissapear at all.

In terms of origins, I'm kinda dissapointed with Gooigi or Silver Luigi not getting the favor in sport games as Metal Mario's partner. Meanwhile, Pink Gold Peach is kinda arguable, I know she couldn't reprise Metal Mario's role in earlier mainline because that was still Peach's damsel-in-distress era, however, now Peach has got major player roles in Showtime and Sparks of Hope, there is really no excuse for Nintendo to not give PGP a major debut in those games.

Should the clones be further utilized? Or should they be totally removed for the lack of demand?
 
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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 do and advocating their removal doesn't necessarily mean they'll add Waluigi in Mario Kart 7.
 
I'm okay with clones as long as they can serve an interesting game play purpose. As said above, the metal characters allow for the creation of heavyweight medium characters, and Gooigi had unique mechanics based on his ability to move through certain walls and obstacles because he's part liquid.

When clones are merely costume swaps I'd prefer that they be sorted under costumes rather than take up a character slot for organization purposes, so the participants of an average race are more varied.
 
I feel clones are just to take up spots in the roster. To have totally new characters but still have the "clones", they could just be variants of existing characters, like Metal Mario for Mario and Cat Peach for Peach. That way everyone's satisfied!
 
I love Metal Mario, to me he's his own character and deserves a unique slot on rosters. If they do costumes for Mario Kart 9, I'm hoping they still make Metal Mario separate to regular Mario. It'd be weird not to at this point.

Pink Gold Peach and Gooigi are harder for me to figure out, I can totally see Gooigi getting his own unique slot, maaaybe Pink Gold Peach too but these two are less likely to get unique slots.
 
I really like the Galaxy Clone Marios from Mario Galaxy. They're really challenging to race. I think they might be in the second game too; I'm currently watching a longplay of it. I also like how you are motivated to stay ahead of them because I think if you touch them, you die.
 
We saw that thread title and thought we lived in a far stranger/cooler and more awesome reality than we did a few moments ago. We don't mind roster clones that much so long as there are already fairly substantial inclusions in the roster.

Peachette in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe + Booster Course Pack stings a lot less than Pink Gold Peach being in something like Mario Sports Superstars; by the time Peachette got in, we had gotten enough DLC for the various forms of MK8 for characters like Link, Isabelle, Birdo, Kamek, and Funky Kong to all be in the game, so the idea that one of those DLC slots was "wasted" on Peachette is kinda whatever since the MK8 roster post-DLC, Deluxe, and BPC is probably the most rock-solid roster in the series. Meanwhile, Mario Sports Superstars has 18 characters and not only did they blew two of 'em on metals, they made sure those were the onlyunlockables for some reason. Yippee.
 
I'm hopefully past the point of being super annoyed with them but i apparently do still have a lot to say.

It's partly about presentation, isn't it. If they're sitting on the main character roster, it's gonna feel like missed potential and a disappointment to unlock. If you select a character and get a submenu of alts, it's a pleasant bonus that doesn't bother anyone, even when those alts are even lower-effort than standalone clones.

I'll also belabor the point that I think clones should, like, come from somewhere that feels logical. I don't think so many people would have been mad about Pink Gold Peach if she had actually been in something like NSMB2 first, instead of appearing out of the ether in a racing game of all things. Why does Mario Kart keep inventing characters that have nothing to do with, like, its premise? How much do i want a character with no apparent substance, or reason to exist, to be shoehorned into future games, merely to justify their existence retroactively? Peachette was similarly baffling when she randomly debuted in a remake of NSMBU and wasn't thematically relevant to anything, though i suppose she was established just well enough that i don't really mind her showing up in spinoffs. At least i have context for what she is, if not why.

What just struck me about the clones singled out in that image is that they aren't even just recolors—they're all virtually unicolor, making them look especially bland and careless. I would rather have something like Tanooki Mario, or at least Fire Mario, than Metal Mario, if you see what i'm getting at. You could sell me on Gooigi since his material is very physically and optically interesting, especially compared to a standard metallic shader, but it's still a shame that he comes shaped exactly like Luigi with a different-letter emblem.

I'm not necessarily asking for this much, but do you think Waluigi would be nearly as beloved if he didn't have his own shape language and proportions? What about if Luigi himself were eternally just a recolor of Mario? So why not give these new characters more to stand out and help potential fans latch onto them? Does this count as another instance of the franchise regurgitating its own most basic imagery with minimal changes for the sake of branding? Congratulations, you have unlocked Gold Mario, he is Mario™ × Metal Mario™ × Fire Mario™ × Coin™ and we made him because humans value gold and shiny and number-go-up.

I'm not really sold on a lot of arguments for the externalities of clones. If they fill a niche that people are interested in, why not expand on it and treat that audience to more unique character choices in the future? Using metal and baby versions of characters game after game doesn't make their stat spreads feel organically justified or realized. And inventing more counterparts for the same archetypes doesn't actually solve my problem with them. I also don't really see how silently introducing a shallow clone of Peach is substantially more appealing to women when the actual, storied original is already there? My perspective is probably incomplete, but like, i'd be far more excited for a diversity of options rather than clones of the same character. In both examples, i feel like there are so many strong choices left untapped. Clones like these feel like a stopgap solution.
 
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 what they're focused on here and what makes Mario Kart stand out to the competition, this is why all Mario Kart DLC has been primarily track-focused and not adding in characters to the game. This is also why they're very insistent on clones, because they clearly do not value these characters the same way we do, thinking their target audience (aka the casuals who know Mario the movie and maybe the merch they see of him on Target), and I think it's a huge shame, really.

Honestly, the clone characters aren't the series major problem. As I said, they're development leftovers. They're budget and time friendly. They're not gonna mention in this in the PR interviews, but someone like Pink Gold Peach has both the development cost benefit + being a familiar character + being a female heavyweight character they want to appeal to the female audience without expending too much time and budget. By the way, this worked, Metal Mario has fans, Pink Gold Peach has fans, and you're talking to someone who prefers the baby characters over the more unique ones, because I'm a person who technically prefers variations of her familiar characters than outright new ones. This is without context that Nintendo treats their IP very bizarrely: they're not gonna add WarioWare, Luigi's Mansion, Mario RPG specific characters because they view those as completely separate IPs. And of course this is without added context that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of the best selling video games of all time and it runs straight to my point: Mario characters feel very lifeless. Team Sonic Racing and Sonic Crossworlds has outright character specific dialogue and interactions, Cars 2 characters make fully voiced character-flavored quips as they race, while CTR racers are very lively and animated, it really shows you that Mario IP holders and that publisher really doesn't give a shit about Mario characters.

And I will criticize the constained roster and the constained IP choices. This is not the clones' fault at all, regardless of what you personally think of them, if they are considered "interesting" picks to you (I'd personally want Gooigi over any Mario RPG character). This is a matter of outright presentation (Mario Kart does not do alternate skins and costumes aside from very few select characters; their vehicles don't even have paintjobs for bloody sake, something CTR did seamlessly) and Nintendo deliberately choosing to limit their roster in spite of the massive, massive, unfathomable success of the Mario Kart franchise. Seriously, I can't stress this enough how ridiculously popular and how much money Mario Kart 8 Deluxe made, racing games with a magnitude far greater budget and time are made (the licensed car games like Forza and Gran Turismo for starters) made only a fraction of what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe makes.
 
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