I'm pretty sure I read somewhere once that Nintendo would come up with game play mechanics first, then throw their known characters on top of it then refine the game world to the style of the characters, so they are basically constantly improving or innovating game play, but are reusing characters, which is extremely smart considering that that's what a lot of companies are trying to do these days and is a popular way to grab 100% cash cow income in the United States at least.
Just think about how many numbers games we have these days, at least Nintendo does 90% of their games right lol.








