G4: It’s been a joke for a loooong time. I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that!

Mario: I think Mario has gotten a bad wrap since Nintendo became a “kiddie console”. Most of us on here were playing Mario when we were kids, and when we were kids I would imagine that most of us considered the game fairly difficult until we beat it 30 times in a row using warps, whistle, etc. Mario 64 really changed the gaming industry by introducing the masses to 3D gaming just like Super Mario Bros introduced most of us to gaming period. The 64 was, in my opinion, the start of the downfall of Nintendo as a serious contender in the world of gaming, not because the games were EASIER, but because the target audience (kids now hitting the 10-14 age group) were far more interested in games like Metal Gear Solid. The PS took over as the ‘hardcore’ solution to an aging gaming market simply because it had more mature games. What’s more fun for a teenager, smashing goombas or hunting down a psycho bent on world domination? The fact is Nintendo stayed with what it knew, and still does. It sells games like Mario Galaxy to kids (as it did with us and Mario games on the NES/SNES) and to people who are looking for a more nostalgic game or something that’s just ‘fun’. I don’t think it’s fair to hate on Nintendo simply because it has stuck with what it knows simply because we’ve all grown up beyond the reach of Mario games. Who cares if Mario games are easy to play, isn’t that kind of the point?