Topic: Lack of diversity of Nintendo characters

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/05/mario-kart-8-re... I was reading this review for Mario Kart and all the sudden the reviewer brought up lack of diversity of Mario characters. I've been playing Nintendo games all my life and never once thought of that,I'm just wondering what are your thoughts about it?

I think there's already a thread somewhere on this already, but anyhow:

From the review:
"I found myself disappointed that Nintendo’s stable of characters so painfully fails to reflect the diversity of its audience."

If the player needs diversity that reflect the audience is where the Mii character comes in. Mario's world is not suppose to reflect its audience. You're allowed to use Yoshi as a character in MK8, even if you aren't a green dinosaur.

Designers should be able to have the characters they want, without publishers, critics, media, or players complaining.

Shy Guy represent me pretty well.

It's a load of crap. Before this article I actually used to use it as a retort to critics of the Tomodachi life incident.

Look, it's not racist for a company to focus on a majority, it's just common sense.

This is stupid, it's not a problem and it would be racist to do it for the sake if doing it. The mushroom kingdom might not have a more diverse population ether. You know, kind of like how Japan didn't have Hispanics when they were shut off from everyone else, or Africans didn't have white men before they came over.

To disallow=/= To not include. If pale white were the only possible skin color included for creating Miis, it wouldn't be racist at all. It would mean that in limited development time Nintendo chose to focus on the majority of their demographic, which is just good business. Obviously if Nintendo wanted to cater to more people later on, they would want to patch that.

Unlike a government, a company is dedicated to making profit by providing the most value possible. Now a government cannot selectively cater to a majority, because part of the purpose of a government is to govern equally, not opportunistically (at least in the United States).

It's a very important issue and Nintendo should do something about it. But it's a little misdirected in this case.

The make-up of the cast of characters for Mario games is basically historical. Introducing a black character for example, at this point, would be pure tokenism. Maybe in a new Mario adventure, you've got time to fill out a more diverse set of new characters, but not gonna happen in Mario Kart!

My own feeling is that Nintendo need to bring out some new IP. Then they could redress things like this.

It's a complete bunch of crap if you ask me. First up, they assume that 'looks white' equals 'is white'. Ignoring a Japanese art concept known as Mukokuseuki:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki

The author also doesn't consider that:

Toad and Toadette aren't human at all.

That race as a concept might just not exist in the Mushroom World (why should it? The connotations of it and the physical characteristics that idiots judge people by only came about due to real world physics and culture).

Or that more importantly, it's a game. Those don't need to represent everyone, or be taken as indicative of real life, just as other media doesn't have to. Indeed, isn't it funny how when people online complain about this crap, it's always games they bring up? TV shows, films, cartoons, anime, comics? Eh, let's ignore those and attack games. Probably because games are seen as an easy target.

You may as well attack Wacky Races for not having an 'ethnically diverse' cast:

Honestly, I think Malstrom is right about this. Trying to make games about politics makes you sound like a moron:

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/bringing-politic...

There is plenty of diversity in Nintendo characters, it's just not the forced, politically correct variety that Americans are used to.

Once again, I say we should make Il Piantissimo relevant again.

This is probably cuz of the clone characters in Mario Kart that act the same like the babies or the koopas, but for actual nintendo characters alone, they have quite a bit of diversity.

gee, I wonder why they don't try to put more racial diversity in their games........

Compare Mario to Peach, and I'm pretty sure there are different species of human in Mario games, Toad and Toadette aside.

As a black person, i never noticed or think i would ever care if they added a black character to the cast of Mario. This is a total non-issue.

In the realm of media as a whole, i dont want people making black characters just because they are afraid of being hounded by the public. I want a character who is meant to be that way as part of the creators vision...

So they're complaining about diversity in a game where you can play as turtles & mushrooms..?

Ok.

Let's be friends

Sure, I would like some cool diversity in the Mario cast, but only if it happens naturally. Miis are the perfect example of a step of this natural progression. Any gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation can now be in a Nintendo game

For pete's sake, it was just an observation by a reviewer, and it's not like they're wrong — the humans and humanoids in the Mario series games are all overwhelmingly pale-skinned. The way some of you are reacting to their statement of fact, they must have stomped on a puppy when they said it.

If you'd like to continue kneejerking over one random person's opinion of the MK8 roster, please feel free to do so in our main site article thread here. Thank you!