You already pointed out it can't apply anyway, so it's moot, not untrue.

But I'm calling on the insistance that the game wouldn't appeal to the Mario crowd, but I don't see any proof of that, and it can be a positive proof, by showing things that would limit their appeal to the Mario crowd. So far no one has shown that.

Your syntactical mishap does not mean you're not wrong. "Moot" and "untrue" are not mutually exclusive - in this case your statement is both.

That would not be positive proof, sorry. You're asking for s omething that can't be shown.

"Shohw me things that keep it from appealing to the Mario crowd!"

....uh? That's still negative proof! You say the old games appealed to the Mario crowd, so show us how they did. Chop chop!

Why would Zelda appeal to the Mario crowd?  The games are nothing alike.  It would be very easy to like one and not the other.

Okay, I phrased that poorly. Even if it doesn't, that doesn't therefore mean it's limited to the "core" crowd. That's still generalizing an entire segment of gamers.

Ugh, personally I find this entire thread just an exercise in Zelda fanboyism. Throw away all the fancy sales numbers and that's all this thread boils down to, a place where old school Zelda purists can decry the new directions some of the more recent Zelda games have taken and other Zelda fans who like the innovations spring up to defend them. Everything on this thread is based solely on each person's opinion and in the end it just doesn't matter.

But maybe that's just me. I didn't get in to the Zelda series until Wind Waker so I don't have that OoT nogalista to draw upon in regards to difficulty or art style. My family was also fairly strict about how much time I was spending playing video games so I learned to treat every video game I played with reverence looking past the small flaws to find as much enjoyment out of each one as I could. So for my personal opinion I can't find any difference in the perceived difficulty of the overall game between OoT, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and TP on the GameCube, but that may also be simply due to the fact the N64's controller maybe less precise and difficult to work with than the GameCube's.

When the original LoZ was released, it made "non-gamers" into Zelda fans. It DID appeal to the expanded audience like how World of Warcraft makes kids growing up into gamers as well.

The game was damn good, vast, and people wanted to play it. THAT'S the expanded audience. "When its good enough to make people obviously see the quality within it." Not "The game is easy and not that complicated."

In terms of 3D Zelda's, OoT and MM are definitely the best in terms of important exploration. OoT let you do dungeons out of order (even WITHOUT glitches) just like ALttP, and OoT had awesome items that made the game easier, such as biggoron sword, magic spells, fire/ice arrows, powered=up spin attack, increased magic meter bar (which all games except for TP had) and heart pieces felt at least needed "enough" to want to explore for them to increase your health somewhat. Skulltula's were also hidden nicely and the rewards for them were very cool. The world just plain felt more vast and rewarding, life-like. Majora's Mask also had a good amount of this and in some ways (emphasis on "some ways" here), even more than OoT.

However, even OoT and MM seemed to drift compared to previous Zelda games. With Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, it has drifted far more since then. They can't even compare to the first two 3D Zelda games (in the senses I'm talking about. If you like WW and TP more than other Zelda games, then more power to you.), so just think how far they've drifted compared to LoZ and ALttP.

Yeah... I would protest too if this was happening to one of my favorite franchises (Zelda used to be one but I kinda lost connection to it).

Simply put, that's not what we're discussing.  We're discussing difficulty as created by AI, something which applies equally to the FPS genre as anything else.  In fact, considering how devastating team tactics are in online FPS, it applies much more to that genre than many others.

i never played a zelda game. but a reason for its changing is because of the demographic of the wii. nintendo is trieng to make the game more casual in order to sell more copies.

Zelda and Peach keep getting kidnapped. That kind of stuff is getting old. I'm surprised Link and Mario havent gaven up on those bishes.