Let me tell you a story. Long ago, Microsoft made a game called Fusion Frenzy for the Xbox. The game was an attempt to emulate the party fun of the Mario party series. But two things went wrong.

The first was that instead of lovable familiar characters that evoke a sense of fun, the game featured a series of generic "sci fi" dudes with bright coloured hair and no personality whatsoever. This sad collective of focus group spawned losers gave the player no reason to even care who they might pick.

The second problem was that the game monumentally sucked. It featured no overlying gameboard type mechanic, only throwing players from one (once again generic) game to the next, and featured a camera system that would usually pan out so wide it was hard to see who you actually were.


The first problem is obviously attributed to the lack of solid recognizable characters, but the second problem? Well the second problem is quite simple. If I see two games of the similar type; one of which features Mario and co while the other features a bunch of generic dudes, I'm much more inclined to think that the generic dude game will have about as much quality in the gameplay as it will in the character design.

That's why famine "just happens" to be annoyed at the multiple genres that were released here, the two qualifiers that "just happen" to apply to Mario, so this beef can "just happen" to apply to Mario, but not those other game characters. 

The more Mario games there are on the Wii, the more my elbows and wrists will ache. They can be fun, but the Wii-mote and my already worn elbows and wrists aren't the best of friends.

I feel sorry for you and all the kids who play with the Wii-mote, lol. It's Nintendo's wrath upon the world that everybody tear apart their arms playing the Wii. Hey, maybe they can release official Wii pain releif cream, lol I'd buy it. 

So this doesn't cut the butter?: 

"And yes, Sonic and Mega Man are good examples of developers putting them in many games, and I do apologize for being ignorant in a few posts and not mentioning characters such as Mega Man and Sonic, especially when I even mentioned Sonic in an earlier post. They aren't as successful, but the developers are putting them out there."

If they aren't that successful and they are still putting them out there, what do you think that would mean if they were successful?

@Kasz:

What are the name of those games? The only mobile games I was able to find were Mega Man platformers and card based games. I couldn't find that golf game you were talking about, nor the slots game. I even tried "pachinko," if that's what you meant.

Okay. Now answer this. Would all these extra genre games be made if they had a habit of flopping? In other words, would Nintendo make so many kinds of Mario games if they didn't sell so well?

And if the answer is no, why do you have a beef with the games being made, and not the consumers, who clearly want those games?

Please tell me you know what Mega Man was originally called, famine. 

No, I used Rockman to check the games, and I only was getting those NES ports, as well a few puzzle games. I didn't check wikipedia.

WOW! That many games on mobile phones, with 8 in 2003 alone. Also counting the other games that came out on handhelds and consoles, that would bring the number up to 14!

There was a racer, an interactive movie game for the Saturn, and a pinball game as well.

So I was proven wrong, Mega Man is "indeed" the most milked, whore of a character out there.

@LtNK:

No, I knew he's called Rockman (I agreed about the board game that was released in Japan).

There, I was wrong. Maybe this will make you sleep better at night, and perchance give you a stone-cold chubby as well.

I can understand how people get the impression that Mario is a milked franchise, but I also think that Nintendo has the right idea with how they're using it ... I will try to explain from a few perspectives.

When you look at videogames from a developer's perspective you will realize that a major problem is maintaining consistent quality, while releasing the product on time, and not breaking the budget. Even Wii games (if poorly managed) run the risk of being 12 to 18 months behind schedule, and running (up to) $20 Million over budget. The most expensive part of development (by a wide margin) is the cost associated with producing and animating the 3D assets that are used in game; on the Gamecube, PS2 and XBox you had development teams of 40 to 80 people, and the artists made up 75% to 85% of these teams. By producing a 'Mario' game Nintendo has the ability to reuse a massive number of graphical assets, which should (dramatically) lower the number of artists they need to produce a title, keep the number of new assets needed to be created to a minimum, and should enable the artists to focus more on producing high quality reuseable assets. Basically, if you have a really good turtle shell model why would you need to model another one when you create a new mario game?

From a Publisher/Retailer perspective the problem is always convincing retailers to stock games that will sell, and for a retailer to avoid devoting shelf space to games that will not sell. Mario sells ... You put that happy plumber's face on Brussle's Sprouts and they will sell ...

From a (typical) consumer's perspective you're faced with a wall of games to buy at your local store with little knowledge of what any of the games are or what their quailty is. Earlier today I was thinking of buying a racing game for the 360 and went to buy Forza 2 which they didn't have; there must have been 12 different racing games available, and I recognized several based on their title but knew very little about most of them. After decades of Mario games gamers know what to expect from these games, and know that they are typically very high quality and a lot of fun; certainly, you can debate the quality but every Mario game is enjoyable (for what it is) for 20+ hours.

I don't think of this as a victory. It's just about making people see sense. When I was a fanboy, over ten years ago, I was furious at Square for leaving Nintendo, until I learned there was a damn good reason (crappy profit margin for the carts), so I realized sense is a lot better than narrow-mindedness.