Franchise Failure

While I wouldn't describe myself as a Nintendo fanboy, I would say that I think they're a great games company and have enjoyed a variety of their games, I have a confession.  Out of games of their big three franchises, Mario Zelda and Metroid, I have not finished a single game.

Gaming consoles I've had, have all been from the Big N: Gameboy pocket and a N64 from my childhood, and more recently a Wii.  For these I've had LoZ Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, a Metroid game for gameboy, NSMB Wii and Mario Galaxy 2.  I had other games from other franchises though - I completed Yoshi's Story, Lylat Wars, and Super Smash Bros (original and Brawl) among others - but never one from the big 3.

In my defense, I only got my three Mario games recently - Super Mario 64 I found second hand in Chips a bit over 6 months ago, and with University I've not had much time for playing them.  I probably could have got them finished by now, but after getting about half way through them I decided to try to 100% each of them instead of just going to win.  Currently, I've got over 80 stars out of 120 for SM 64, half way through world 8 on NSMB Wii with only a few star coins missing from each of the previous worlds, and about 70 stars in Galaxy 2 out of the 242, but I need to beat the game to go past 120 there.  With the onset of summer, I'm hopeful that I can beat these soon.

However when it comes to the others, I'm afraid I've let Link and Samus down.  I've had these games for years and not beaten them.  Ocarina of Time bested me as a child, and I never got into the Metroid game I had.  That one is completely my fault through a lack of effort - I gave up far too easily on it, and was more willing to put in the hours on Pokemon Red (which I did finish, and filled my pokedex - yay me!), and I feel that now I should either go onto the virtual console and get one of the early Metroids or find one of the newer ones to play and give a fair attempt to.  But Ocarina is my current challenge.  With the release of the 3DS version, I've had a compulsion to go back and play it.  I got lost at the bottom of the well when I was younger, and never got past there, but today I went back to it, got the eye of truth and went onto beat the shadow temple.  With Skyward Sword on its way sometime before the end of the year, I want to be able to say I've beaten Ganondorf at least once before playing that.  I'm not bidding to find everything in it, there are far too many heart pieces and Gold Skulltullas in it for that, but I want to win before the end of the summer.

After those 4 (I'm sorry Samus), who knows?  Nintendo has other franchises I've not even played.  Maybe when I have some more money I may go onto the virtual console and raid it for some classics.  All the classics of the 3 I mentioned before, more Star Fox, some DK for the first time, I've never played Kirby either, and maybe even getting the Pikmin games and a Gamecube controller - I've missed out on games from NES, SNES and GC, and I want to have those experiences.  Who knows, I may even branch out from Nintendo and download the first 3 Sonic games.  Is it time to live the Sonic/Mario Rivalry for myself?