I was watching the Mario marathon at mariomarathon.com and came to a startling realization.
I bought my N64 in Portsmouth, VA in the fall of 1999. The 2 games I bought with it were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. Both games are amazing, to say the least, but one of them started a trend that makes me question how hard core of a gamer I am. Starting with SM64, I have not beaten a console Mario game since Super Mario World on the SNES. The only SMB game I've beaten since the launch of SM64 has been New SMB on the DS. Upon the re-release of all of the early Mario games on the GBA, I've revisited them all and beaten them, but not on a console.
Here's my problem. When it comes to Mario games, I try to be a completionist. I want to collect every star in the game. Because of this, I have not gone on to battle Bowser in any of the games. I spent countless hours on SM64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, but haven't beaten any of them. I pick up galaxy and get 5 or 6 stars at a time, then let the Wii sit for a few weeks or months while I start titles on either the PS3 or 360. As for SMS, I really don't think I'll ever go back to that game. The DS re-release of SM64 is unplayable with touch controls, in my opinion, so I won't be going back to that game.
I would consider myself to be a borderline Nintendo fanboy when it comes to their first party titles, so to know that I have not beaten a console Mario game in over a decade is a slap in the face of my hard core gamer mentality.