Mr Game & Watch is only in Smash and the G&W gallery games, so this wouldn’t warrant an inclusion.
Well in G&W Gallery he looks like that next to regular Mario
He even acts out the game and watch games in the end credits, like he morphs into the chef and stuff from the classic g&w versions. I know he was made up for smash but I think it's possible they retconned him into Game and Watch canon later on
Licensed can still count.
I suppose, just imo they don't really gel with the rest of the series. I still don't think Earth exists in the Mario universe as Mario's world is basically an "earth" more or less. The Earth seen in games like Mario Kart Tour should just be a parallel Earth or Earth-2 situation they travel to. I already gave my reasoning earlier with the floating Peach's castle thing
There are more sticky-outy games that are undeniably canon. I feel the Tennis games where you play as random humans and there’s nothing Mario-related apart from the very end are less Mario-y, to name a few
Again, I feel portals being the major evidence for alternate universes seems unreasonable. It is very clear that the earlier Mario games intended the Mushroom Kingdom, Sarasaland, etc to be other locations on Earth, since a lot of arcade games were implied to be in New York. Obviously, this was retconned to New Donk, though things like Mario and Luigi living in Brooklyn for some of their life, and there being games set on actual Earth, it seems Nintendo is implying two separate worlds in one universe, connected by a portal. At the very least, the Mushroom World is not meant to be its own version of Earth - that’d be like saying Legend of Zelda takes place on an alternate Earth because there are humans
There actually is evidence Zelda takes place on an alternate earth. You can see IRL Constellations in the sky and they're in the exact location they'd be if you viewed them from Earth. Also Aounuma and Miyamoto said in an interview once that the Zelda planet is called Earth
Yes, this was what I was saying. The other Game & Watch games don’t imply characters look like LCD, and including every G&W game because Mr Game & Watch can become different G&W characters would be unintuitive, especially since other G&W games are already on the timeline. You can’t just pick and choose which games are actual Mario canon, and which are Mr Game & Watch transforming into different things
The modern versions are with Mario, the classic versions are with Mr G&W, simple. You literally can select both styles in the gallery games.
