K9OK

why is the post so big

an explanation of my reasoning, i guess:
if a character is likely to be on a generic mario t-shirt, they're more likely to be a main character
this does not include standard enemies/species like goombas, but does include specific characters like toad

also wanda from mario & wario because she's the best

Can't wait to see Luigi be rated as more of a main character than Mario (by at least some people).

I don't think I've ever regretted setting bounds this quickly. Most of my answers ended up being 1 just to try to keep a shred of consistency, which I guess means this is an interesting survey!

Not as wild as sorting super mario games, but there's still some pretty interesting edge cases!

i kinda wish there was a space in the form to put in what my general reasoning and criteria were because EDIT i deleted most of this comment because i couldn't find a way to make a big comment here not be a nuisance

but by far the most confusing character on this list was ""paper mario"", because if he's "the protagonist of paper mario" then he's a main character, but if he's "the instance of him in just Paper Jam" as the wiki implies then he's virtually nonexistent
2nd place goes to "big boo (character)" because i did not realize that their JP name is distinct (Boss Boo) and i want to blame the wiki's presentation for this too. honorable mentions to rob and sciencestein, characters i had no reason to suspect were out of place as a kid.
also wart manages to appear less than tatanga despite being the main antagonist of a game called "super mario bros 2"

It'll be extremely interesting to see how folks respond to, say, Bowser and Dry Bowser and Baby Bowser, collectively. Aren't they all the same person? It's like asking if "Super Sonic" is less of a Sonic character than Sonic. Or if Amy Rose is more of a Sonic character than Rosy the Rascal.
But, then, Pink Gold Peach might be a counterargument to that, since we can't be sure she's even the same person. At least a few appearances of Metal Mario are implied to be separate from Mario. Who's to say she's not the same? And from there, is Dr. Mario the same person as Mario? Is the Toad from Mario 64 the same as the one we play as in Mario Kart 64 the same as the one we play as in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, etc? And then there's my headcanon that he's the one who became Captain Toad, who's ALSO on this list, and-
This is about the rabbit hole a few of these questions sent me down.

this is a lot harder than the games, arbitrary number scales are just a pain

what does the bolded/italicised names mean?

oh i need to do a tier list version of this. so i can sort em as i go and its not randomized

we rated most generic mario enemies a 4 because most of them get to be minor characters in games like the baseballs or the mario parties (especially advance) but we rated Spike a 1 because we um. we hate him

shoutouts to every brave soul who rated that doofus mario less than a 7

also shout-out to every dk barrel blast character for having the exact same pose in their key art. it made me laugh every single time i saw one

I put goomba tower as a main character because they MUST be the protagonist of a game someday

I started to think in term of type and not individual. So there are types of Peach, and types of Goomba and so on. The type might have a high value, but the variant is lower (although I still ranked the Rabbids low. I could justify it by saying they are tied to Ubisoft so there is not risk of them reappearing... but I ranked Fawful higher than them, and I can make the same argument. No, if I'm honest with myself, the real reason is that I don't like the Rabbids).

I ranked Cranky at 1. The facts that Cranky is the original Donkey Kong is relevant to the DK series, not the Mario one. From the point of view of the main Mario franchise, there is only Donkey Kong. All other DK characters were put at 1, hence Cranky is put at 1.

I broke this up into three sub-questions
Is ___ main (worth up to two points)
Is ___ a character (worth up to three points)
Is ___ in a Mario game (worth one point and mandatory to receive any points)

My only concern with my answers is that I may have been wrong on point three in several places.
Like, paper mario is a mario game, but I didn't play it, so will have mistakenly disqualified many characters from that game.

i was half expecting mario to not show up as a bit

i ranked monty mole and bumpty 7 because they are the true main characters, to me

kind of sad impostor bowser/bowser's brother/whatever you call him (the off-colored bowsers from smb2/lost levels) weren't in though i was really hoping to vote 4 for him

This is interesting! I'd say Paper Mario is a main character in Paper Jam and the Paper Mario series, but not the overall Mario series. Same with DK, a side character in the Mario series but main character in his own. Dreamy Luigi and Co-Star Luma show that just being playable doesn't make you a main character. Daisy and Nabbit, who have been playable more than once, still don't feel like main characters to me.

I feel like a main character of an entire series can't appear only once or in a few main entries in the series - Wario hasn't appeared in ages except for spinoffs so he doesn't get to be main. Being a character also matters: goombas do appear in many games, but there's so many of them they don't feel like a character but rather an obstacle or generic enemy without much characterization. Maybe my list of main characters is Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Yoshi. Toad... is on the line between character and not character for me because so many toads are indistinguishable.

Yoshi the character feels like an individual separate from Yoshi the species, but I'm not sure why. Toad the character feels less distinct from Toad the species to me. Captain Toad my beloved is a character but not a main character. Maybe that's a sign of some sort of plural rule: if there's multiple of a character, they feel like less of a single character. I'd say Olimar is a main charavter of Pikmin, but not a single pikmin is a main character - instead, the pikmin collectively are main characters? Hm.

When I answered the survey, I associated the main-ness of a character positively with (all in terms of the set of games they could be expected to appear in):
How often they appear • How recently they last appeared or were acknowledged • How long ago was their first appearence. • Plot relevance. The importance and applicability of this depends on the game. • How "canon" their appearance(s) is(are). That is essentially if their being in the game is explained by any "story". I don't consider most of the crossover characters in Mario Kart 8 to be Mario characters at all • "How" ""mainline"" "the" "game(s)" "they" "appear in" is(are). I was particularly prejudiced against characters exclusive to Donkey Kong games and games like Mario Tennis • If they are even a character. I was using a fairly narrow definition of "character", that is a sentient thing who exists. That caused "Goomba Stack" (unless they have a total hivemind) and "Mini Bomb Karts" (probably not sentient) to recieve the score 1 from me.

For characters who are alternate versions of existing ones like Baby Mario, I treated them as distinct characters and judged them seperately in the same way I described above.
I will admit I was inconsistent with characters who appear in many "games series" and for species. Either their "generic" version was judged, or they were scored roughly the mean main-ness of each of their instances.

i felt so bad rating sooo many of the Paper Mario, SMRPG & Donkey Kong characters a 1, because in their own games theyre a major part, but in the context of the whole super mario series, & what it is now, they'd be lucky to get a mention...:(
also why weren't the pixls included on this list? i would have just rated them all a one, but if co star luma is a playable character, then the Pixls totally are too. Or at least the ones you directly control like Carrie.