Oh haha, I forgot that Mario's popularity today is the same as back in the day. My Bad.

I also edited the post to say Nostalgia is what MAKES Mario such a huge pop icon. Oh wait, I didn't have to change that at all. It already said that.

Nostalgia hasn't saved other franchises that have been big from becoming niche or dissapearing. NSMBW is selling just as well as SMB3 and SMW. It's also amazing how the Mario franchise still makes new fans, but I guess little kids really miss the late 80's.

Just stop using the nostagia argument. It's been proven wrong over and over again, it's just becoming redundant.

I would love for Modnation racers to be the PS3's version of Mario Kart (in terms of success of course) as the game looks awesome

Ah I see. Rather than responding to my point, you are responding to the posts that other people have made which indluded the word nostalgia.

Don't be confused! I'm not saying that nostalgia is what sells Mario. I'm saying that Mario is of such and such a level of mega-icon because of nostalgia. Compared to other headliners, Mario has an added benefit of nostalgia. Of course, if you read my post at all like you should when deciding to insult a post, you would have seen that I wrote that Mario also has the qualities of being personable, likable, and versatile.

Those are all important factors as well.

Now I don't know how old you are or how old you were when Sonic/Crash bandicoot came out. Both were huge rivals to Mario. They were each about as big in popularity. Sonic, your very own avatar, was quite possibly equal or more popular when it came out. However, Sonic games pretty much died off and he just didn't have the kind of exposure that Mario does. See, that's where one of those qualities fits in: versatility. Mario can appear in anything, he is basically a stick figure as in he has no real key defining ability other than throwing things, jumping, and entering pipes.

Sonic has spinning and running. He has no real "relatable" abilities other than running, which is a limited application. You can only use running in so many types of games, whereas throwing things is much more useful.

These qualities in turn lead to more varied types of games and higher levels of exposure. It's been proven in psychology that exposure to things as a child results in higher levels of affinity with said objects. So, if nostalgia did not exist at all, any new character would be able to compete on an even measure with Mario.

Character design is only a small piece of the puzzle. Nostalgia is the reason things exceed being well known to becoming pop icons.

EDIT: In fact, Nostalgia is probably one of the main reasons that some people still buy Sonic games.

Sony has never KEPT a mascot. They had Banjo, and polygon man, but they don't seem content with the same mascot. They always move on.

MS has Masterchief. Who incidentally leads one of the only big franchises they kept from the xbox 1.

"If Sony or MS wanted to make a Mario killer, they'd have to go back in time to when the NES came out, release a console, and put the character in 5 games per year on average.
Nostalgia is what makes Mario such a huge pop icon."

That was what you said, and that is what I responded to. There is no part that says nostalgia is a big part, you clearly said that nostalgia is what makes Mario a huge pop icon. If you say that Nostalgia is helping Mario, then sure that is correct, parents is maybe a little more inclined to buy new Mario games for their kids etc etc, but I do not believe nostalgia is what is selling NSMBW left and right, it's the appeal of the game. The gameplay of 2D Mario has the same broad appeal that Tetris has.

What makes me angry about people saying something has an unfair advantage solely due to nostalgia is the fact that I grew up when the 16-bit consoles were being phazed out by the newer systems. I had an N64, and I thought the SNES was crap because it was old. I rediscovered most old games much later and started seeing their appeal. No nostalgia involved, but now I still prefer most old games to most new games.

Mario is a huge icon, because he starred in games that had a very broad appeal (2D Mario). When the 2D games dissapeared, he still remained in the public consciousness because of the impact he made when he was new. No games other than Sonic tried to have that broad appeal so after Mario went 3D and lost it, and Sonic dissapeared only to emerge in his current form, there was no game to take his place, crash was not as recognized as Mario. If a 3D platformer could beat 2D Mario, 3D Mario would have already done so. Therefore people still thought of Mario when they thought video games, because Mario was the last big mainstream impact game up until recent times.

I know what nostalgia is and how it works. But knowing what something is correctly does not make it applicaple in all situations. Nostalgia may be a small booster to Mario, but there is so many more important factors to be analyzed when trying to explain why Mario is maintaining his icon status. He was declining only to be revitalized quite recently when he got his mass appeal gameplay back.

Mario is a strong establised brand due to the impact  that he made before. But nostalgia is not what is maintaining a pop icon, something huge can quicly dissapear and be remembered as a fad, and in that case nostalgia won't help at all. Nostalgia is not as powerful as you think.

Also, nostalgia is the reason why I despise and will never buy the newer Sonic games unless Sega starts doing it right.

Uh, what game is that?

I remember Baby Mario saving Baby Luigi in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.  When did Baby Luigi do anything?

I've played my fair share of Mario, but nothing beats Mario...I really enjoyed Ratchet & Clank Tools and Crack in Time for the PS3. Fun games, but Mario wins.

Why did you leave out the word "such" when you re-wrote my sentence? That word is a very important key to the interpretation I have given you, which you are ignoring.

Look at the sales. Sales to that extent are only possible when there are additional factors involved. And I *do* believe that nostalgia has a big part of NSMB sales. It's a throwback to the original. SMG was a novel concept as well, but it will sell quite short of NSMB.

Additionally 3D or 2D has nothing to do with anything. Wii sports is the highest selling game of all time, and it's not 2D, and it doesn't even have a mascot. Additionally Mario Kart consistently outsells standalone mario games and it is 3D.

A trend you can see in the games I mentioned, is that they are all multiplayer games. So, maybe it's multiplayer appeal, rather than 2D, that is the strongpoint. However, a lot of games have really good multiplayer and design and just aren't as successful.

There is also a reason why most Nintendo characters have not gotten a redesign.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention that I think I used nostalgia incorrectly. Rather than meaning "this game is popular because older fans want to play a game they played in the past", I meant "the appeal of this Mario rests upon years and years of exposure". In my original post I made mention of what was needed to compete with a Mario-esque mascot. My key point there was that you would need to have as much presence and exposure as what Mario's had. Mario has just about 20 years of brand life so far, and you really need that to compete on such a level. Intertwined with the idea of nostalgia, there are many characters from that period which have strong followings due to exposure at an earlier time. Of course, you need a good popular game to have exposure in the first place, you can't just have any random game character become popular.

For example, Donkey Kong. He has not made a strong appearance since DKC2, yet he's a very popular and well known character. Why? Because of the arcade game and DKC games, and perhaps DKracing/MK.

So, like I said a minute ago, it's not nostalgia in the sense that people want to relive their youth, but rather, "past success increases the strength of reception for future endeavors". Ie, people loved the Mario games, and so belive that Mario=quality.

It's a similar concept, so I'm not surprised I used the wrong word. However, nostalgia is the basis for my point, that of an idealized memory of the past serving as an indication of a judgement.

Marios been around too long to be beaten by a new franchise , the only franchise that ever had a chance at that was sonic.