It just seems like eventually, something bad would happen. Something bad happened to Crash, Spyro, Sonic and lots of other mascots. It's hard to make a good video game, just 1 game. Tons of developers out there fail and never even release 1 good game in their entire careers, let alone make man great games and maintain that continuity for decades. Nintendo has consistently released great Mario games for so long, greatness has become expected.
Not only that, Mario is the most popular mascot in the history of video games. Mario doesn't get by through cheap gimmicks and casual appeal. Mario has huge expectations and a lot of hype to live up to, more hype and more expetations than anything else you could easily argue. Despite these huge expectations and steep hype to live up to, Mario always manages to live up to it and sometimes even set the new industry standard like Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario 64 etc.
Mario games never forget their roots and while always advancing and always improving, they still have that original feel. They always have that level of polish with games that you rarely ever find any bugs in. I still can't believe I 100% completed Super Mario 3D Land and didn't run into a single camera issue.
If next gen, some new Uncharted, Halo and Mario game were coming out on the same day, I would bet on the Mario game getting the highest reviews if it were a game in the main series.
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