Topic: Why do the less popular Nintendo games, have the most interesting characters?

Some people complain that Nintendo games have no memorable or interesting characters, yet they only look at the big franchises. Let's look at some less popular examples

WarioWare - I always thought Wario's friends in the WarioWare games were more energetic, zany, interesting, and just plain cooler than Mario's. Think about it, 2 kindergarten Ninja's who love animals, A funky disco dancer with an equally funky family who have an obsession with cell phones, and dance with dogs and cats. A gothic loli witch who is silent, mysterious, and adorable. A dog and cat taxi driver who encounter sci-fi phenomenons. We hardly see characters like these in the mario games outside the RPG's (which I'll get to latter).

Animal Crossing - This is probably the one of main reasons why people play animal crossing a lot, the characters. Now I haven't played an Animal Crossing game, but from what I've seen and head, the characters each have a distinct and likable personalality each with likes, dislikes, passions, and jobs. They make the village feel much more alive than it would be otherwise.

Star Fox - One of the reasons the Star Fox series is so fondly remembered is the interactions between the characters, it's always fun to watch the chemistry between the Star Fox team and their attitudes towards each other, even if Star Fox 64's dialogue was hilariously bad.

Kid Icarus: Uprising - This one is similar to Star Fox, except with a MUCH BETTER script than in Star Fox 64. The characters you encounter in the game are so full of personality, heart, and humor, you can't help but feel attatched to them a long the way. The writing is at it's best when 3-5 characters are on screen at once. They light-hearted way they're written makes them so endearing.

Fire Emblem: Awakening - I chose this particular entry because I felt, it had the most memorable cast. Much like Kid Icarus and Animal Crossing, each of the warriors in your army, are 3 dimensional characters chock full of personality. They start of a bit 1 dimensional when you first meet them, but take advantage of the support conversation system and you get to see the dynamics of how they interact with other characters, what they do in their free time, their other quirks, likes, dislikes, weaknesses, backstories, reasons for fighting, etc. You get so attached to them, that you don't ever want to lose them in battle. You may not like them all, but you're bound to find at least one whose your favorite.

Even less popular entries in Nintendo's biggest franchises have some of the best characters.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - This Dark and Nightmarish entry in the legendary series is perhaps one of the more character driven entries in the series. The groundhog day loop lets you redo the 3 days and find a solution to a characters problems, you get to learn more about them as you do so, and as a result, grow attached to them.

Mario RPG's - There's more to Mario's RPG games than save the princess. The characters you face in these games are full of heart and humor much like Kid Icarus, Fire Emblem, and Animal Crossing. Filled with clever in jokes, references, and adult humor that young children won't get.

I'm sure there are more examples, but I think you get the point. If you really want to apreciate Nintendo, you have to look outside the box.

You do realize most, if not all the games you mentioned are 1M+ sellers.

As of Uprising and Awakening, Kid Icarus and Fire Emblem are much higher in the Nintendo pantheon than they were before. Those games sold a million copies and are very often praised for having a colorful cast full of likeable characters and well-written interactions. Animal Crossing is also insanely popular.

I think the real overlooked one is WarioWare. Such fantastic characters, and the most you'll ever see or hear of them outside of WarioWare is in Smash assist trophies.

I said less popular, meaning it can be successful, but not be as well known as Mario or Zelda.

lol the stupid animal characters in star fox are the number one reason i do NOT want to play those games.

i think the most interesting character by far is samus aran. nintendo could do much more with her.

I find the Nintendo characters to be as equally "interesting". Rosalina or other characters appearing in SMG were of the same interest as the examples given. Every Zelda game has interesting characters, again interesting to the degree of video games, so I think Nintendo has that across the board.

One of Nintendo's most interesting characters is actually Rusty the slugger from Real Deal Baseball. I would like to see that team doing something in the future.

But Zelda must be the best since it has BOTH Groose and Tingle.

Presumably because Nintendo is the king of gameplay-y games so their focus and popularity are based on that, so character driven stuff (let's not pretend anyone cares about Mario for his personality ) is not a priority for the top games because the top people still have the most use of that gameplay-focused philosophy. This sentence was English I guess.

Best example, Fzero. The series has a wide range of fully fleshed out characters. When you interview them after winning the cup(GX), you really get to know them hahaha

I love this game and still play from time to time.

Well, you mentioned Animal Crossing, so no. Randomly generated games have poor stories, that's just the nature of that kind of game thus far in its existence. Tom Nook may have a vaguely interesting backstory, but that's all just exposition; telling not showing.

I've never found Nintendo's characters to be particular spectacular, but their stories can be quite good. In particular I love the journeys you take in the middle 2 Paper Mario games and the first 4 3D Zeldas. The Metroid Primes trilogy has interesting lore and narrative through exploration. Alone Link, Mario, and Samus aren't fantastic characters (which JUST MIGHT be related to their never uttering a word...), but their interactions with their respective worlds can tell fantastic tales.

Even the Last of Us' plot relies on two central characters to tell its story, so isolating individual characters isn't the best way to examine narrative.

Charles Martinet once said in an interview he loved doing the Mario cast, b/c each, or at least a lot of the characters embody a certain human emotion: Mario is all-around happy, & easy-going. Luigi is always cautious, & scared of certain things, but b/c it's the right thing to do, he'll go ahead, & face his fears anyway regardless of the possible dangers. Wario, & Waluigi are grumpy, sometimes complaining, or at least jealous, antagonists. I would agree to some degree w/ all that.

Edit: Luigi, Rosalina, Mario, & Daisy are my favorite Mario characters.

I only find a couple of Mario characters annoying: Peach, Daisy, and Bowser Jr. The rest are fine to me.

Please put this up on NSider2. I mostly agree, mainly based on Metroid, and to me Samus Aran is easily one of Nintendo's more interesting characters because of her ambiguity and how the games have been designed involving her. I'll say there's definitely a reason for explicit fan art of her, but at the same time, there are a multitude of reasons why she's respected as an elite bounty hunter. Pretty much every Metroid game is going to offer a huge range of traits for Samus Aran for those willing to interpret them.

Wind Waker was full of great characters. Its still bmy favourite Zelda