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Thanks to Amanda Uren
Evolution of Nintendo Characters
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Two of those Links are from the same game (young Link who is third to last and Link in the blue tunic who is second to last). They’re both from Ocarina of Time. It’s been a while, but the only other possibility for that young Link is that he’s from Majora’s Mask, which came after Ocarina of Time, so that would be in the wrong order anyway.
The evolution line would be clearer if you’d kept to in-game sprites, and all in the same scale. I get the impression that the last two Marios, and the last Donkey Kong, are promotional pictures.
I feel this graphic is very misleading in many ways and to be fair it’s hard to get right as different artists worked on different games creating different looks. For instance Link in the CD-i games or Donkey Kong’s 3D rendering in the country SNES games. Best you could do is show the chronology of their looks in games which you haven’t. Completely missing generations like Donkey kong 64 or Link in Windwaker. It would make a much larger image however.
To chip in on John Simpsons point, the last Mario and Donkey Kong seem to me to be from promo shots of the characters in Super Smash bros. Brawl to the same quality as the CGI intro so they can be considered canon at least. Not played it enough to know if they’re from in game.
First of link form zelda 2 came before link of links awakening (GB). Also only Mario is the only one of these that are continously the same characters the Links are from different times and people altogether. Also the Rare Dk is the grandson of OG DK (aka Cranky Kong) . Also the kong on the cart is DK JR.
I would have appreciated it if the chart listed which generation each character was from. I was always more of a fan of Super Mario Bros than Zelda or Donkey Kong, so I was mostly looking at the Marios to see how they had changed. I couldn’t figure out what the first set of characters was from. It looks like the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Marios are from NES Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 2, and Super Mario Bros 3, but what is the first? The 5th Mario should be from the SNES game, and the 6th would be from the N64 game, so I guess the 7th would be from the Wii game? The last does look like a promo picture versus an actual in-game capture.
Man, are we all geeks or what?
First Mario is from original arcade Donkey Kong, I believe. Seventh is Gamecube, though it’s promo not in game. Last one is promo/cutscene from Smash Bros Brawl on Wii. In game isn’t far off, but it’s not that.
the first Mario is from the original Donkey Kong arcade game.