dear nintendo,

Daisy is the proncess in SuperMario Land

Whoa whoa whoa. Daisy is from Super Mario Land, 1989, buddy. The rest of your story czechs out though.

At least they threw in a new princess for Galaxy, but hey, I'm still waiting for Pauline's comeback.

Damn you Weezy! You're always 2 steps ahead of me. Whoa, a 7 minute difference. I can't believe I hit "reply" and then waited at least 7 minutes before I typed anything.

I feel uncomfortable reading your private letter to Nintendo. And I don't really mind the spin-off characters. They fit in with all of the totally new guys (created since 1991) pretty well, wouldn't you say?

wario and diddy i don't mind so much. to be honest the others just come off as b-sides from a very creative universe.

I let all the babies slide, since they're just the baby versions of the same characters, like in the prequels (Yoshi's Island series) or in the time paradox where they meet up (Partners in Time).

I didn't hear about these girlfriends for Wario and Waluigi. That does seem lame. They could've thrown in Pauline and what's-her-face from Galaxy.

Yeah, the only characters on that list that I like are Diddy, Wario, and Daisy (besides the babies)

But still, you're exaggerating quite a bit. Over the last several years they've introduced plenty of new characters. I'll only list characters from N64 and beyond, since you ended at SNES.
Mario games:

Bowser Junior (different from the Koopa kids)
Kammy Koopa
Petey Pirahna
Princess Rosalina
The lumas
Dark Mario (I know he's baby bowser in disguise, but he's still his own 'character', like Shiek is)
The Piantas
The Penguins (from 64 and Galaxy)
Cackletta and Fawful (Mario and Luigi)
Count Bleck (Super Paper Mario)
Dr. E. Gadd
The ghosts from Luigi's Mansion
All the party members from the SPM games (though they may not count)
FLUDD (I'd say it counts as a character)
Stuffwell the briefcase
ROB (Yes, he was a peripheral 25 years ago, but he only recently became a character in Mario Kart DS and Brawl)

Donkey Kong:
All the evil enemy apes from Jungle Beat (which I haven't played)
Admittedly can't say much here, since DK hasn't had many of his own games lately.

Metroid:
Dark Samus
10 new hunters from Prime 3 and Hunters


Zelda (I'll try to include only characters that were major, since each Zelda has a unique story):
Saria
Navi
Midna
The fairies from Majoras mask and PH
Shiek
Ganondorf (on SNES he was only Ganon, the pig-man)
Wolf Link (debatable)
Young Link, Young Zelda, Young Saria (since baby mario/luigi/etc count)
Toon Link
Tetra
The talking boat
Captain Linebeck
Zant
The main enemy from Four Swords (whose name I can't recall)
(I haven't beaten PH yet, or played Minish Cap)

Star Fox:
Wolf
Pigma
Oikonny
Leon
Dash
The Krazoans
Tricky
Krystal



Still think Nintendo never adds new legitimate characters anymore?

"Still think Nintendo never adds new legitimate characters anymore?"

sorta, yes, haha.

the inclusion of the other characters in your post was nice, but the thread is intended to be mario focused (hence no mention of zelda, star fox, etc)

the characters they really push, the ones that appear in mario party, kart, super smash bros (the nintendo celebration games) are the originals and spin offs of the originals.

I didn't really get the point of your topic. If we are talking about Mario (Donkey Kong) universe, it should be somewhat familiar along with characters.