Much like any multi-billion dollar industry, the world of video gaming has become a cutthroat world of marketing. As more games go multi-platform, business strategy has become increasingly important to the success of industry heavy-hitters. Many economics and business majors have probably read several articles about the ingenuity of Sony and Microsoft’s respective marketing teams, but what about that small foreign firm called Nintendo? How does it target us?

No one is going to question the tactic of targeting a huge unsaturated demographic after the success of the Wii. But remember when we mocked its very name and anticipated the arrival of the juggernaut PlayStation 3? I definitely do. When push came to shove, though, Nintendo proved that it is the leading pioneer in the video game industry. Nintendo’s latest success comes not from technological breakthroughs or an incredible software library, but rather through an ingenious marketing strategy. Even though it has been in the spotlight increasingly often recently, this insight is not a recent trend.

Nintendo has been on the edge of viral marketing since the age of the Nintendo 64. Super Smash Brothers is by far one of the greatest games on this system—it established a gaming legacy comparable to Halo, Metal Gear Solid, or Mario itself. The first in the series was a stunningly well-designed game, but are its sequels anything more than a lineage of amazing fighting games? Yes, they amount to stunningly original advertisements. For example, I am firmly confident that there will be a Nintendo announcement of a new Kid Icarus (a series Nintendo hasn’t touched in nearly 20 years) in the next six months. Why? Because so many people fell in love with its protagonist in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in which he cameoed.

Let’s be honest—when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, we had no idea what Fire Emblem was. But we fell in love with Marth and Roy, and wanted to find out who they were and why they were included as playable characters, mainly because they were so different from the rest, whom we already knew so well. I highly doubt that this was a mere coincidence in the character planning. Everything in Melee pushed Nintendo merchandise. The trophies were there to inspire a new generation to play the classics and advertise sequels. The items themselves are original Nintendo Entertainment System paraphernalia—it’s marketing genius. Nintendo easily pushed their products into the limelight without their consumers even realizing. It happens now in every major game Nintendo releases from Mario Kart to Mario Party—all of them include far-flung Nintendo franchises. In conjunction with their new, younger user base, the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns will only increase.

You might be thinking that all of this marketing will fail on us, the college-age video gamers.

I doubt Nintendo will even bother to target our generation at this point. But that is because they have no need to do so—we will easily be persuaded to have the latest and greatest Nintendo products by the people in our lives who are part of Nintendo’s newer demographic. It is a marketing strategy that pervades our lives in countless ways. When it comes to Nintendo’s stable of adorable, memorable characters, resistance is futile.