Restore the Integrity of the Super Mario Series and Make Mario Super

We, the undersigned, wish to make known our strong desire for the Mario series of games to return to it's roots. Since the late nineties the market has been flooded with Mario games: very few of them platformers, and the majority of them not even being produced by Nintendo directly (or even with the supervision of Shigeru Miyamoto). Mario has been "lent" to Hudson Soft, Namco, Square-Enix and other less deserving corporations, and the wish to put a stop to this overflooding of the market brought on by the overuse and liberal spending of these iconic characters by both Nintendo and the corporations responsible for the endless ammount of sports titles we Super Mario Brothers fans suffer through in order to get a new Mario platforming adventure. We wish to do away with remakes, we wish to do away with the endless spin-offs.

Between 1985 and 1995, there were nine Mario platformers created by Nintendo: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super
Mario World and it's sequel, Super Mario Land and it's sequel, Mario Clash for the Virtual Boy, and Donkey Kong on the Game Boy.

Between 1996 and 2006 there have been four Mario platformers created: Super Mario 64, Luigi's Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine, and New Super Mario Bros. That's a little less than half the Mario platfomers that were released in the first half of the Mario series lifetime! Contrast this to The Legend of Zelda series, where ever since the release of Ocarina of Time, the number of quality entries (r.e. non-spinoffs and sports titles) has doubled. There is simply no reason for you to not take the Mario games as seriously as seriously as you do the Legend of Zelda. Ever since Mario has been loaned to other companies, plot discrepancies have even arisen (the Koopa Kids in Mario Party 5, for instance, are nothing like Koopa Kids from Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario World, and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga). Not to mention absurdities such as Baby Mario & Luigi appearing in titles as playable alongside Adult Mario and Adult Luigi (Mario Kart: Double Dash!, Mario Power Tennis), adult Yoshi having the same voice as baby Yoshi from Yoshi's Story, or even the idea that Peach, Mario, and Donkey Kong all happened to know each other and met up for an adventure as babies. To a hardcore Mario fan, this is all silly. But that's just what we feel Mario has been treated as for nearly a decade: silly. Mario has become a resource, a celebrity icon to be stamped on whatever game anyone feels warrants it's use.

But we remember Mario being more. We remember Mario being super! He wasn't too serious to take a break to drive go-karts on the SNES or play tennis on the Virtual Boy. He even played doctor on the NES. But now he's everywhere at once, even dancing on the Gamecube, and gamers with a modest income can't even keep up with him anymore. His adventures used to something special; they were worth the wait, but it didn't take too long for you guys to make more. Only a year passed between the release of two of the greatest Mario games ever: Yoshi's Island and Super Mario 64! This is because Miyamoto and his team were focused more on Mario than Zelda. Now it's the other way around, and Mario isn't even treated with as much dignity as Zelda was between titles. The character is over-exercised and is in danger of losing his charm, even among the most devoted fans.

We, the undersigned, are pleading with you, Shigeru Miyamoto,
Satoru Iwata, and all of Nintendo to please excercise restraint and respect towards what makes a "Mario game" as you had in the past, as you continue to do with great dilligence when it comes to the Zelda series.

Please, don't make Mario a celebrity.
Make him Super.