>>46233038Anon, Mario was born when the only ones playing video games were teens and adults in arcaes, TLoZ launched when Nintendo's first home console was aiming to net the greatest possible audience for the time (the video game crash of '80 tanking the market, Nintendo themselves not thinking it worthwhile to take it westwards till 1986 (at which stage the popularity of it at home meant they needed something to appeal to just the Mario fans). Enter TLoZ, still made with that aim of being as good for daddy as for little Knenji (though it ended up more popular in the west than Japan).
By the time Pokémon launched, there was a clear shift in the industry, now specifically making games for younger players and older players not to mention Tajiri developing the idea he'd had as a kid's game entirely, even after scrapping 3 years of work to start over. So no, Mario and Zelda don't count, because there was no dedicated split market for Nintendo to pick a side with at the start. Part of what shocked Game Freak staff at the height of Gen I was how many actual adults they'd seen on the subway going to an from work playing their games however. Even they didn't think they'd hook adults with the game, even if it had been a success with kids.
