A hanafuda card mascot would be pretty interesting ngl
That said, these are fair points.
Pro Wrestling doesn't necessarily have the legacy
did and didn't do anything important for their history, at least on their scale. Unless you count the "A winner is you!" quote.
Feel free to check out my support threads for
Daitoryo and
Sheriff, if you're interested.
I guess Diskun can be argued to be important to, but he's not on the same level, honestly.
Other things that are extremely important to Nintendo's history are:
Nintendo branching out from playing cards into other ventures. This was marked by
Hiroshi Yamauchi aquiring a license to use Disney characters in his cards, but good luck using Mickey as a historical character.
Their
Ultra series of toys, which includes the Ultra Hand and Ultra Machine (designed by Gunpei Yokoi), but that doesn't have a character associated strongly with it. I would suggest using a toy-era mascot like one of their two Joker designs from their playing cards to represent the transition, but that's obscure even for me.
Reference, since i'm sure it's necessary. The first one is more common, for sure, but the latter still shows up frequently. Alternatively, there's always the Kangaroo from the
Mini Kangaroo series, even if that is a bit after the
Ultra series of toys. Though there was an Australian Ultra Hand release that used a similar looking Kangaroo, which could arguably be the same thing.
Nintendo trying to use
Popeye characters for arcade games, which failed and led to the creation of Mario, Pauline, and Donkey Kong. Ultimately, Nintendo acquired a license to use
Popeye characters, and NoA actually was in charge of
Popeye products. I suppose Popeye would work as a historical inclusion, but he's also...you know, Popeye, a cartoon character.
Any other ideas?
Personally I see the pattern as a 'hardware' character but you can also argue that it represents a part of Nintendo's history. The Hanafuda idea is pretty solid, but it all depends if that is something Sakurai has even considered. Diskun could be cool too, as would Sherrif but he might not want to take the 'oldest character' away from Game and Watch/Pac.
That's fair. Do we have any official statements on why any of those three were chosen? If there's a statement by Sakurai of why they're included, that would help.
I don't think including a character older than Game and Watch would diminish his legacy, though. His games were the first
major Nintendo success, and that means a lot. By major, I mean that they went from barely breaking a million on certain games to selling 43.4 million Game and Watch units. It depends on how one interprets it, though.