Fire Emblem
Advance Wars / Battalion Wars
Metroid
Smash Bros.
Zelda

You're getting way too sensitive about this Onyxmeth. Fine, you win. My definition is broken, null, and has 0% truth behind it. You are a genius!

Oh, and I don't need statistics to know that the majority of players who bought TP also played a few of the other games...seeing as how previous games sold MILLIONS. I'll stop now.

The problem is that people have different meanings to what hardcore means. If people in the industry (I'm counting people who play games as well, like us) want to use words like this, and especially if it's used so frequently to classify things, it might be helpful if we try to define things better.

As it is right now, the whole "hardcore" and "casual" bit is laughably pathetic.

The best definition for hardcore that I can think of is 1 of 2 things, it's either:

1. A game that is amazing in quality, but isn't mainstream and rarely talked about from the average gamer and non-gamer.

2. A game that appeals to a lot of people, but the majority of the gamers that like it are of a single fan base.

Mario's hardcore tell me another game that you can step on turtles and get high of mushrooms?!?!

Fire Emblem.