Well every pokemon game since the original has pretty much been a rehash, the improvements in terms of game play have been laughable and most new pokemon (especially in Diamond and Pearl) turn out to be carbon copies of previous pokemon with fancy new names and renamed abilities.

Zelda and Mario on the other hand rehash the same story for every episode and reuse the same gamplay mechanics, and the equipment hasn't changed much either. I remember playing Galaxies and thinking Ohhh wow Mario's got an ability that makes him fly again, didn't see that in Mario 64, Super Mario World or SMB3, and Twilight resulted in Link getting nearly the exact same equipment he's had since the NES days.

Personally I'm dead sick of saving the same damn princesses from the same exact bosses with the same recycled equipment. Throwing a boomerang over a gap to collect a key isn't any more exciting or enjoyable simply because it's now in 3D.

Still unlike pokemon this is far far more forgivable since most games are pretty unoriginal anyhow and hey a lot of gamers haven't 8 marios and 10 zeldas.

Oh and I never played a Kirby game so no comments there.

Agreed to an extent, while to a casual user may see the basic gameplay as the same throughout the series (and it pretty much is), the more advanced player will see many additions that add whole new layers to collect and train all the pokemon.

I'd say the bee suit (i'd assume you don't even know about the superman-like suit) is way more closely linked to the hover feature of F.L.U.D.D. from Super Mario Sunshine than the Flying Cap and Tanooki Suit from Mario 64 and SMB3. But you are right.. the Bee Suit was the only "new" thing Super Mario Galaxy did in terms of gameplay.. it was pretty much only praiseworthy for its automatically adjusting 3d camera

Very true.. i remember how sweet the clawshot was in Legend of Selda (NES) and the upgrade to double clawshot in Adventure of Link (NES). Granted the Ball and Chain didn't arrive until later, in the Link to the Past (SNES), it was still fairly early in the franchise's lifetime. I remember also fishing throughout the overworld in Link's Awakening (Gameboy), and the Dominion Rod was a blast in Ocarina of Time (N64), but let's not forget the Gale Boomerang in Majora's Mask (N64), the Spinner in Oracle of Ages/Seasons (GB Color), or the incredibly useful water bombs in Windwaker (Gamecube). Nothing has changed, but at least they are fantastic items (double clawshot from Adventure of Link was definitely my favourite in both that game and Twilight Princess)

IMO

Mario = Lame
Zelda = Needs to improve, mainly story wise
Kirby = Needs to improve greatly
Pokemon = Fun, but the console games are kinda dull. And a spin off that's actually an action RPG would be kinda cool.

imo

metroid is the only nintendo franchise i think must die.

O_o How can anyone think this? Those games are the reason I became a gamer and I still play them today, both the old and new ones.

just a load of tripe!

Quoting Boris johnson there ^^

Major of London and ex-comedian

We're approaching the lowest point of the waning cycle for genres that were dominant between 1995 and 2005. Around 2010, we will have hit that low point. These waning genres would include RPGs, FPSes, yearly sports games, and so forth. And of course, we're seeing a rise of their anti-genres: the adventure game, the platformer, the simple sports game, etc. A sort of natural reaction to the genre shift is to demand that the shift not happen, that the cycle reverse itself so that the previously dominant genres return to dominance. It didn't work last time this happened, of course, and it's not going to work this time, either.

Don't worry, though. Thanks to the cyclical nature of the industry, we'll see the emerging genres start to wane eventually, and the complex genres re-emerge. Though it'll be about 2015 or so before that even starts to happen in any meaningful way.

It's a shame that most gamers this generation don't know the foundations and the pillars of our beloved industry.

Yeah you can argue with valid points that Zelda, Kirby, Mario, and other old series have reached a point that they just seem rehash after rehash, but that's just doing a shallow analisys of each of the games in each series.

In that way you can say that almost all FPS is just a rehash of Wolfenstein 3D, with just nifty options added and some gameplay alterations, and, likewise it would be totally wrong, because each FPS game needs it's own in-depth analisys.

Zelda and Mario were the games that saved our beloved industry, back in the video game crash of 1985, and at the same time, launched the bases for almost every game to come after them: Fun, Replayability, Difficulty, Objectives within game, Competition, and many more.

Also you can ask around everywhere, and almost everyone knows about mario, heck, even my 90 years old grandma knows about mario, and she thinks that games are what makes our generation dumb :P

mario and zelda are what makes nintendo