You missed a few.

Mario Kart (obvious - you can't really consider Mario Kart to be a Mario Sports title)

Mario Party (obvious)

Puzzle Mario - think Mario vs Donkey Kong, Dr Mario, and Mario's Picross

Needs more genres! :)

I agree.

Nailed it, bro!

FPS for Mario would be awful. It would have to be TPS. A Mario game where you can't actually SEE Mario, except maybe in reflections?

Although, personally, I'd rather see a Mario RTS (or even turn-based) over a Mario shooter of either persuasion. In fact, a Mario game not unlike Warcraft would be really amazing - you can play as either the Mushroom Kingdom or Bowser's Kingdom (or possibly a few others, like Wario and his underlings) - each side has "heros" as well as regular units. So, Mario is a "hero", and then you have various Toads, etc, as units. In a sense, you're actually playing as Peach, and controlling the units.

One thing you cannot validly argue is that Link's Crossbow Training sold as well as it did because it was Zelda. It sold just a touch under 5 million copies. Only three Zelda titles have ever sold over 5 million copies - Ocarina of Time (7.6 million), the original NES game (6.5 million), and Twilight Princess for Wii (6.5 million). Other than this, the only other Zelda title to beat LCT was Phantom Hourglass (4.93 million to 4.91 million).

And please stop using the term "Gimmick" if you don't know what it actually means. It makes you sound like an idiot. Link's Crossbow Training sold well for the same reason as why lightgun games are so popular in arcades, and why Duck Hunt sold so well back in the NES days. People enjoy that kind of gameplay. Indeed, I'd argue that Nintendo's best chance to expand the Zelda franchise would be to make a much more extensive game out of the LCT basic design. Something that allows for a broader range of experiences.

Heck, maybe Miyamoto's original idea was right, and they should have gone FPS with it. Nowadays, I think they'd be best off looking at making it a much more war-like game, where Link has to hold off entire armies using just sword and bow, etc. Keep in mind, I'm talking about best for sales, not best game. Personally, I'd much rather they take one part Majora's Mask, one part Wind Waker, one part Link to the Past, and one part Twilight Princess/Ocarina of Time, and bring it all together to make an incredible game... but I wouldn't expect it to sell better than Ocarina of Time.

yeap hated mario 64... I got lost.... I wasn't used to the game play especially with that pad.... now on today pads like XB or the future WiiU pro it is a different story.... but back then I pretty much stopped playing mario after that..... that and the gamecube "fiasco" killed it for me.... then I was also on sega and that god damn Sony company pushed the dreamcast over.... I then stoped playing video games on console all together until XBox....and then the 360.... and I won't buy a new one until the next XBox and if nintendo finally produces something I care about I might go ack to ninty for the fun factor and MS for the media/online and high end graphics.... but I deffinately hated Mario 64 and it played a big part in me loosing interest for nintendo back then....

although I'm all time F zero fan and if they come back with that game on WiiU and do something crazy with the tablet (ie you use it to shoot people) while using the gyro to control.... I might just get one for that game..... but they'll need to impress me way more than they did with Wii did.... or I'll wait until I find a cheap one on e-bay....

The next Stage of this dream would have to be the Mario MMORPG. I can see it now.

Let your imginations run wild with this idea for a while.

A gimmick is something that is popular purely because it's new. The Zapper (not Blaster) was new, but it was nothing more than a framework.

 Other games did get made that had modes/schemes using it, including all of the Call of Duties (not counting CoD 3, of course), both Resident Evil "Chronicles" games, Dead Space Extraction, The Conduit, both House of the Deads, both 007 games, Sin & Punishment, and Ghost Squad, amongst others. If the Zapper was a gimmick, they wouldn't have still made modes/schemes utilising it in recent Call of Duty titles - most notably, Modern Warfare 3. And expect a mode/scheme using it in Black Ops 2, for both Wii and Wii U. Why? Because it does the job, it's not about "gimmicks".

Of course, none of those sorts of games sold strongly enough to explain 5 million Zappers, especially once you factor in that not everyone that bought those games would have wanted one. The Zapper simply cannot be used to explain how well the game sold. I'm sure there was some influence, but then, if it were a gimmick, you'd actually be proving that people bought the game because they liked that gimmick. But as I pointed out, it's not actually a gimmick - not only are there games prior to it that use Zapper style control, but they've been popular for a long time.

Price is a more reasonable observation. But then it wasn't a full game, either - if it weren't for the fact that it needed the Zapper to work properly, it probably would have been a downloadable title (as they are usually smaller titles).

No, Pokemon is the franchise calling for an MMORPG. It wouldn't suit Mario, because you couldn't have a thousand Marios, controlled by thousands of people, running around doing things - it just wouldn't make sense. And the Mario series depends on Mario... it wouldn't be the same if you could only play as Toads and Koopas. That's why RTS would be such a good choice - RTS games often have "heroes". MMORTS could work, though.