theprof00 said:
Ah I see. Rather than responding to my point, you are responding to the posts that other people have made which indluded the word nostalgia. Don't be confused! I'm not saying that nostalgia is what sells Mario. I'm saying that Mario is of such and such a level of mega-icon because of nostalgia. Compared to other headliners, Mario has an added benefit of nostalgia. Of course, if you read my post at all like you should when deciding to insult a post, you would have seen that I wrote that Mario also has the qualities of being personable, likable, and versatile. Those are all important factors as well. Now I don't know how old you are or how old you were when Sonic/Crash bandicoot came out. Both were huge rivals to Mario. They were each about as big in popularity. Sonic, your very own avatar, was quite possibly equal or more popular when it came out. However, Sonic games pretty much died off and he just didn't have the kind of exposure that Mario does. See, that's where one of those qualities fits in: versatility. Mario can appear in anything, he is basically a stick figure as in he has no real key defining ability other than throwing things, jumping, and entering pipes. Sonic has spinning and running. He has no real "relatable" abilities other than running, which is a limited application. You can only use running in so many types of games, whereas throwing things is much more useful. These qualities in turn lead to more varied types of games and higher levels of exposure. It's been proven in psychology that exposure to things as a child results in higher levels of affinity with said objects. So, if nostalgia did not exist at all, any new character would be able to compete on an even measure with Mario.
Character design is only a small piece of the puzzle. Nostalgia is the reason things exceed being well known to becoming pop icons.
EDIT: In fact, Nostalgia is probably one of the main reasons that some people still buy Sonic games. |
"If Sony or MS wanted to make a Mario killer, they'd have to go back in time to when the NES came out, release a console, and put the character in 5 games per year on average.
Nostalgia is what makes Mario such a huge pop icon."
That was what you said, and that is what I responded to. There is no part that says nostalgia is a big part, you clearly said that nostalgia is what makes Mario a huge pop icon. If you say that Nostalgia is helping Mario, then sure that is correct, parents is maybe a little more inclined to buy new Mario games for their kids etc etc, but I do not believe nostalgia is what is selling NSMBW left and right, it's the appeal of the game. The gameplay of 2D Mario has the same broad appeal that Tetris has.
What makes me angry about people saying something has an unfair advantage solely due to nostalgia is the fact that I grew up when the 16-bit consoles were being phazed out by the newer systems. I had an N64, and I thought the SNES was crap because it was old. I rediscovered most old games much later and started seeing their appeal. No nostalgia involved, but now I still prefer most old games to most new games.
Mario is a huge icon, because he starred in games that had a very broad appeal (2D Mario). When the 2D games dissapeared, he still remained in the public consciousness because of the impact he made when he was new. No games other than Sonic tried to have that broad appeal so after Mario went 3D and lost it, and Sonic dissapeared only to emerge in his current form, there was no game to take his place, crash was not as recognized as Mario. If a 3D platformer could beat 2D Mario, 3D Mario would have already done so. Therefore people still thought of Mario when they thought video games, because Mario was the last big mainstream impact game up until recent times.
I know what nostalgia is and how it works. But knowing what something is correctly does not make it applicaple in all situations. Nostalgia may be a small booster to Mario, but there is so many more important factors to be analyzed when trying to explain why Mario is maintaining his icon status. He was declining only to be revitalized quite recently when he got his mass appeal gameplay back.
Mario is a strong establised brand due to the impact that he made before. But nostalgia is not what is maintaining a pop icon, something huge can quicly dissapear and be remembered as a fad, and in that case nostalgia won't help at all. Nostalgia is not as powerful as you think.
Also, nostalgia is the reason why I despise and will never buy the newer Sonic games unless Sega starts doing it right.
I LOVE ICELAND!
