Would you be a Nintendo fan if Mario had never existed?

[S.Peelman]

I have no idea.

I think the first game I ever played on a Nintendo system was Duck Hunt, but I'm not sure. Could also have been the Soccer game on NES. Going by that you could say I wouldn't have been a Nintendo fan if Mario didn't exist, since most Duck Hunts came with Super Mario Bros. on the same cartridge.

The most vivid of the earliest memories however, are of me playing A Link to Past on SNES rather than a Mario game. I'm pretty sure that was the game that made me a true Nintendo fan though, so I guess it's because of Zelda. I don't really have a lot of early memories of me really playing Mario games.

The only one I know I played a lot was Yoshi's Island on SNES, because I didn't really like Super Mario World (and I still don't). I do have some memories of the NES games, but I don't think I played them a lot. I was born in 1988, started gaming quite early (like age 4 or something), so it's natural NES memories are vague anyway because the system was already old at that time and games I played on it were older than I was. Besides, access to the SNES was more frequent, the NES was stationed at grandma's house.

I think I only became a fan of Mario since Super Mario 64, some time after the 'damage' was already done. So ignoring the fact that Mario made Nintendo what they are and the other games probably wouldn't have existed without it and the Duck Hunt combo cartridge story, I don't think Mario made me a Nintendo fan.