Odd don't you think?

Most games go for an attempt at realism as we know. Some retain their focus on being crazy fun, but overall most games do this. After all, it's why we want graphics to be good right? That way we feel as though the world we've stepped into could be real. Metroid, Zelda, even Pokemon all maintain some sort of realism that we all imagine to be part of a living breathing universe. In a game, we want to feel as though we are performing the action done on screen to make us feel like we have a footprint in the world. So, as games strive to be realistic with smooth controls, appropriate worlds, believable characters and graphics, one game that consistently breaks this trend is Mario. There is almost nothing realistic about it! The graphics are cartoonish, the story is beyond simple, the level design looks like a game and not like an actual world, so why is it so fun? I have trouble answering this question myself. Mario is one of my favourite game series and yet it is so strange in how it is made. My only answer is that maybe for the Japanease the stuff that goes down in Mario's world is actually Hyper Realism. Maybe...