Nope, analogy doesn't work at all.

Fact of the matter is it could be considered Mario is the bible for Platformers, nothing else.

Its funny how the designers at id Software whom made Castle Wolfenstein, learned how to create games by actually copying super mario bros. and submitting it to Nintendo so they could get a job there? They didn't, so they reworked it and made a Mario ripoff for PC. Later, someone at id said: What if this was in first person perspective?

Did you know that the lead designer of Doom states Miyamoto games as his greatest inspiration? Wonder if Mario was one of those games he had in mind.

I would agree with this.  The first Mario game was very important when it comes to platformers.  However, that's just one of many genres.  I would be willing to say that Zelda is much more important in terms of overall influence than Mario.

It would be hard to become a fantasy novelist without reading Tolkien but it certainly isn't a required read for someone who aims to become a writer of mystery novels.

Yes you shouldn't be allowed to drive cars if you haven't driven a model T, or at least taken one apart and put it back together (more important to car design). At least if you're devising consumer cars, anyway. Because if you don't understand why the people of the past succeeded, you will not succeed. If you don't understand why the Model T got millions of skeptical people in town and country alike to take a chance on this mysterious horseless carriage, you are removed from a design that will make your company succeed.

Younger folks can always play these games (type in Super Mario Bros into Google and you too could be playing in the next 15 seconds. If you want to go legal and own a 3DS, Wii, or Wii U, hop onto the Shop Channel, take you 5 minutes to start). The entire problem with the industry is that newer designers *aren't* playing these games. The earliest games are important because these are the games that got people to start gaming in the first place, so they must have done something right. There is this conceit in the development community currently (and your post buys into it as well, with the comment about there being more options today) that people want to play video games so somebody will play what they make because what else are they going to do? This is wrong thinking. Super Mario Bros wasn't so universally popular because nobody had anything else to play at the time. Super Mario Bros was so universally popular because it compelled people to get off their asses, go to a friend's house and play, beg their parents for an NES and start playing. It got people to play because it was that good. Understanding why, understanding what mystical hold this game (and others, i'm just floating it out as an example) had to hook people in, to bring them into a whole new medium, is the very essence of good game design, and if you do not understand how the medium created a space for itself, you are doomed to eternal mediocrity as a game designer, and certainly any hope of growing the medium and making your own mark on it will forever be out of your reach.

Madden 25 is a bad example. There are simply enough people that want to play a real NFL sim and Madden is their only option. EA (the bad new EA, not the good old EA that made Ultima and actually contributed to the industry instead of just leeching off of it and cannibalizing it) has created a monopoly, so their designers get the privelege of existing in a bubble where they can just shit out anything and people will play it because there is nothing else that meets that need.