Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
There are a number of characters people would consider 'famous' that I don't recognise all that well, particularly from Nintendo because I've never owned most of their consoles (only recently owned a GBA and DS, and very, very rarely used them). I recognise Yoshi because I've played Mario Kart with my mates and because of sites that make use of them, but if someone showed me a famous character from Metal Gear Solid that isn't Solid Snake then I wouldn't recognise them, and there are a number of characters from other major Nintendo IPs that I doubt I'd recognise (I used to think Link was actually called Zelda, and I have no idea what the actual Zelda looks like to this day, etc etc).

These things can happen, basically. Nintendo isn't as massive as it once was, either, so if this guy only recently got into games and focused all his attention on the likes of Call of Duty and Skyrim then he probably wouldn't have seen much (nor paid attention to) Nintendo stuff.
I agree about games like Call of Duty being more prevalent in media, but not about Nintendo losing its prevalence to that degree. It's still going really strong with a large amount of game releases and sales (both New Super Mario Bros. DS and Wii have sold over 27 million units, the Wii has outsold both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, and the DS and 3DS have outsold the PSP and Vita, respectively). Just because Nintendo isn't as prevalent or get as much publicity as in the past, that doesn't mean it's not as big a player in the gaming industry.

Either way, not knowing Mario or other major characters from the series like Luigi, Yoshi, Peach, Bowser, and Toad is quite rare (even if they don't know their names, most people at least know they're from Mario or at least that they're video game characters). It's one thing to have never played Mario, but not hearing about or seeing him is quite ridiculous, especially if you have enough interest to go into game developing. Even though you think many kids nowadays don't know who Mario is because of Call of Duty getting more publicity, that's actually quite the opposite seeing how most kids and parents I overhear in the general gaming section of stores talk about and check out Mario games (yeah, it turns out that not all kid gamers are behind the mic screaming in Halo and CoD). Yeah, the internet and forums nowadays focuses a lot more on PS3/360/PC when it comes to gaming and gaming media, but that isn't representative of the whole gaming community (otherwise, the Wii wouldn't have been outselling both 7th Gen consoles and the DS would've never beat the PS2 in being the #1 best selling game console/handheld).

Anyways, about thinking Link's name was Zelda, welcome to the club (probably 70% of gamers think that at first. I know I did). But that still goes to show that Link is recognizable and well known among the public, since they at least associate him with the Zelda video game series. As for Solid Snake, people really overrate his iconic status. You could show a picture of him to random people on the street, and less than 1/3 of people would know who he is or where he's from.