I was just syaing that that's not the case with all of Nintendo's games. Radiant Dawn is harder than the last four or five Fire Emblems (though I have not beaten FE6 yet and have yet to so much as touch Thracia 776).

Was Contra really hard or was I playing another game back then....

I remember playing it and finishing it a couple of times back when we used to borrow consoles. :P

Mario on the other hand I really suck at it. XD

I agree I'd enjoy SMG more if it were harder. But I also spent about 50 lives on Luigis purple coins which is something that never happened in SM64, and some of the stages while not costing me nearly that many lives were still pains, which in comparison I never played SM64 to the point where I had all 120 stars (since I used to never go and 100% games) but when I bought it for the DS I ended up getting all 120 stars in less than 2 days, I beat it the first night and finished it up the next day and not once had a similar Luigi's purple coins issue.  I just think there were too few instances of a lot of dying in SMG while SM64 had it a bit more spread out.

In the end they listened with SMG2 which is supposed to be harder.

Really I'm not here trying to defend the newer games, just stating how being more difficult can alienate people, and that there are still instances of the games being hard, but if you were not that seasoned of a gamer and Galaxy was your first Mario game it's likely you'd find it plenty hard, just saying.

My experience on the internet, is that people who blog and write articles are not very good gamers and are not patient.

Remember how you jumped off Yoshi's back in mid-air and letting your ride fell to its doom?

Yes... Yes I do...

What would be epic is a new morality system where if you do that to Yoshi there will be more enemies and maybe other Yoshis will dislike you :P (actually I'm talking out of my ass so ignore me)

Heh, everyone's a little different when it comes to the Mario series, that's what makes them so great and timeless!

I remember back in the day when I first got my NES at 5 years old, I'd get so pissed off because I sucked royally at SMB and my cousins would breeze through it since they had it almost a year before me.  Fast forward a couple of years later, and once I honed my skills at the original, I kicked ass in SMB2 and 3, and anytime I'd go over my cousins' house they'd ask me to help them beat the games or show them some secrets or tricks.  Super Mario World had some tough spots that I still dread playing to this day, like some of the Special Star Road stages... and Yoshi's Island (which alot of people seem to forget about when talking about Mario games) had some INSANELY TOUGH levels that I could barely finish, let alone even coming close to scoring 100% on them!

And compared to most other games out there at the time, Contra really wasn't that bad at all.  Once you learned the enemy and boss patterns, breezing through the game minus the Konami code was a cynch... a personal achievement of mine was beating the game in less than 15 minutes without dying once!  On the other hand, I still to this day suck at Super C, Contra III I'm good at as long as it's not on hard difficulty... and Contra 4... all I gotta say is, HOLY BEJEZUS THAT GAME IS F'N HARD!!!

The problem is in 'the old days' they didn't have to dumb things down in order for people to buy them so I don't see why they feel they have to these days...

I mean, older mario games were much harder than Galaxy AND seemed to sell just as well, if not better (as I recall each gens marios where the biggest selling games of their day...galxy has been big but not the BIGGEST) so I really don't understand nintendo's rationale (these days) unless they figure people have shorter attention spans in the 2000's (which may actually be true!!!)...

Heh I'll still be first in line!!!!

In what way was SMG "dumbed" down from SM64 or the older Mario bros? It's all, jump from platform to platform and jump on enemies heads... also SMG has sold pretty damn well... SMB came with just about every NES just like Wii Sports now, so its sitting pretty at 40mil and won't be toppled, next in line would be SMW which was also heavily bundled, sitting at 20mil, next in line is New Super Mario Bros on the DS, there were a few limited edition bundles but this game hit 10 mil before those bundles hit shelves in the US. 

Next would be SMB3, essentially the Halo 3 of its time, a game so hyped there was a movie made that had people clamoring just to see a clip of the game, the hype machine worked well for that one but it was still outsold by the DS game. Then comes SM64 which was so-so bundled and finally you have SMG.  So basically what you're saying about sales is pretty much moot, each Mario game sells well, the newer ones (NSMB and SMG) are doing quite well and SMG is on track to outsell its N64 counterpart as long as SMG2 doesn't knock the legs out from under it.