Super Mario Galaxy 2

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah that's a legitimate point, in the same way some wondered why Terra got the hero role in Dissidia instead of, say Celes. I haven't beaten the Wii game yet though, so I'm just going from the first few chapters where it seems like Ike's the star again. Yeah I admit I'd rather have a unique character instead of a Marth clone too. It's clear that Lyn IS the main character of her game though, but again I'd say that it's more a case of bad timing. Roy's game had just come out so he got stuck in Melee along with Marth, and Ike's second game came along, so he got the spot here. You could make a good argument for Mec, but there's a part of laziness there. It was easier to make a clone.

Actually, Eliwood is the main hero of FE7. Lyn and Hector are the secondary heroes. Lyn wasn't even in FE6, which is set several decades after FE7 (or rather, 7 is a prequel); that game stars Eliwood's son Roy, with Hector's daughter Lilina as the secondary hero. FE6 was the most recent FE game when SSBM came out, so its main hero was put in the game when they decided to put FE characters in SSB. That's why Roy, and always popular original FE1 and 3 hero Marth, were in SSBM. As for Brawl, yeah, "it's much easier to just drop in a clone" is probably one of the major reasons why we got just Ike and Marth... it's definitely disappointing and stupid, though, as I said.

I haven't beaten the Wii game yet though, so I'm just going from the first few chapters where it seems like Ike's the star again.

... You spend like the first eight or ten chapters of Radiant Dawn with Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade, though, so if you've only played "the first few chapters", you haven't even seen Ike yet (the game goes through sections with each of the four or five groups (though as I said, with more missions for Ike and Micaiah than the others, because they are the two main heroes), before finally merging them all later in the game). Unless you mean Path of Radiance for the Gamecube, where he is indeed the sole hero?

Oddly enough, SSBB uses Ike's level 1 PoR costume, not his upgraded PoR costume/RD costume. I'm not sure why. The upgraded costumes are pretty cool in both PoR and RD... RD even has two upgrade tiers for many characters, instead of just one like PoR. :)

I think when it comes to clones, about the only one I'd care to see is Luigi. He deserves to be in there. Also, I'd love to see Ganondorf as something other than a Falcon clone. Again, stick in that black devil looking guy from F-Zero as the "slow but powerful" Falcon clone if you've gotta have that in there. I know Edenmaster loves that.

I agree, it'd be fantastic to see a Ganondorf actually based on his own moveset, and not Captain Falcon's... they definitely are somewhat lazy in character design, SSB has as many clones as a Mortal Kombat game... :)

There was no sexist goal in place I assure you.

... Um, as if the fact that men are usually the heroes isn't one of the fundamental bases of sexism? Of course you can explain it (men hunted and women gathered, etc), but the point is that that structure is unfair. Part of it's because of human nature (the ability of people to get used to and accept unfairness, for instance, or that men are more aggressive and more likely to push for power and prestige -- for instance, in most hunter-gatherer societies the women actually provide more of the total amount of food, but it's just plants and things like that; the men, who provide less, get much more prominence because it's big stuff like large animals.), part of it because of unfair social structures that have developed in societies, some elements perhaps explainable through demography (women used to frequently die in childbirth, so do you then accept the added risk of having some be in greater physical danger?), etc... so yes there are many causes.

I'm not going into depth now, it's really stuff I don't think we fully understand yet, a lot of it, but for this the point is that yes, the fact that the men are the heroes is part of the point. Even if many (though not all) of the causes are old and explainable, that definitely does not make it right!

Lolo and Lala would have been an interesting choice, perhaps as a "clone" of Popo and Nana, but then again they didn't want too many clones. Let's face it, they really didn't have many options there.

Not as many options as there are for male characters? Of course, but there are SOME options. It's certainly not like there were none. Iif they'd wanted to try, they could have found one, some, or whatever. They didn't, though, which was a lot of my point.

You're inventing a reason to be offended where there isn't any.

I think there's reason enough to be a little offended.

... You want another example? I mean, besides "Mario stories are always incredibly sexist with essentially no redeeming value on gender issues, ever, except for SMB2"? How about NSMBWii... I know you agreed with me on this at least in your post, but it's important to say any -- Why, instead of having any female playable characters, did they put in TWO IDENTICAL MALE TOADS? Not even a male and a female Toad or something, much less the Princess or anything, but two male ones. Why... :(

They did the best one could expect, and in the end gameplay had to take priority. If they'd stuck in Lynn as yet another clone of Marth, at the sacrifice of a character that played differently like Solid Snake, that'd be pretty lame, and I think you know that.

Lyn's not identical to Marth/Roy/Ike though, she's a bit more different because she's a Myrmidion-style hero, not a standard Swordfighter. That means flashy speed/dodging based fighting, not swordfighter whacking people.

When it gets right down to it, you seem to want something amazing from a Mario storyline.

Not really, I just want the sexism to stop. I don't expect amazing things from Mario storylines, plot isn't the point of Mario games.

Was the original story, heck the story of Donkey Kong while we're at it, sexist?

YES!!!

It's over, it's done,

... What's over and done? I have no idea what you're referring to here... not Mario games continuing to use sexist storylines, because they do. Not sexism in general, because of course that's still a significant problem. "We shouldn't care because it's harmless" or something? How is continuing to perpetuate negative stereotypes harmless?

I mean, it's not like Peach just gets kidnapped every time. She's also depicted horribly. She seems to rule the kingdom (despite being a princess; yes, this is impossible, but I've complained about THAT little bit of stupid before), but is a worthless ruler who does nothing. She cooks, thanks the great male hero, bakes, sits around looking nice, and, in the one game with her name in the title, uses her extremely stereotyped powers of emotion to win.

... Peach makes Zelda at her worst look like an amazing role model, really.

They put plenty of strong females in there, but it IS the Legend of ZELDA, so she's got to be in there, and she's always got the secret of ulitimate power that forces Ganon to abduct her for various reasons througout the series (or some other force). Don't look a gift Midna in the mouth here. Don't forget that Zelda isn't screaming for help either, she seems pretty eager to help out and is rather stoic about all these abductions.

I think I've commented at length about all of this stuff before, regarding my issues with TP in particular...

Baby steps here. First step, make a Zelda game where the main character isn't Link, doesn't look like him, doesn't have his name, even acts different than most Links. Female, male, don't care, but don't make it Zelda because again that's too blatant.

How about either making Zelda playable more (ST was a good start) or letting you choose Link's gender or something? It's not like that would make too much of a difference for the series really.