I only recently figured out why there are such a large number of Mario games on the market currently - and it's only partly about sales.

You see, when someone sees Mario on the cover of a game, they know that it isn't going to be terrible; this allows Nintendo to put him on as many games as possible to show the market that it is worthy of being titled as a "Mario" game. I suppose that this means that he is serving as the new Seal of Quality.

So long as future iterations of Mario Kart etc. prove to be fun, people are going to continue to buy into the name.

Naturally, this means that Nintendo games without Mario on the front cover are inadequate by their standards.

So it means if Mario is not the mascot of the game then the game may or may not have the quality seal?

Wut about Zelda and Okami =(

Dey is great games

Then they really need to rename Mario Party :-/

I'm afraid that Zelda and Okami are simply not holders of the Seal.

This thread reminded my of the satirical Nintendo seal (literally a seal) feature NOM used to run ages ago on the back pages of their issues.  I miss him, he was legendary

I miss NOM so much...

NoO!

Dis is outrage >=(

the nintendo seal of quality never was a certification of the game's "quality". it was there to certify that the game you where buying was licensed by nintendo and not a bootleg or a game made on stolen/unofficial dev kit.

Also that the 3rd parties agreed with Nintendo's game release plan. Only a certain amount of games released per year. Something that help with the shoverlware problem until Sony came, and blew that up. Sony the bringer of The Shoverlware Age.

@OP

I agree with you. Mario is definitely serving as a 'Seal of Quality' for many of Nintendo's games.