289: My Nintendo Shame

[Aura Guardian]

Because when a company is making far more money than its competitors it is clearly dying. You're aware that since Nintendo is appealing to all audiences right? I've been with Nintendo since the SNES days and they are STILL appealing to me, I don't need gritty games or new IPs when the current IPs are colourful and fun! Nintendo may not be making any groundbreaking stories with their new games but in terms of gameplay they are constantly improving, and last I checked gameplay is what matters in a game. Nintendo still cares about all audiences, hence why they make games for all audiences.

Agrees with this. I will even go so far as saying that there are good 3rd party games out there(also a lot of shovelware but so did the ps2 and they get less bitched about that). The problem is because it doesn't use the basic brown/grey colorpallet the "hardcore" fans do not want it. Why do you want the "hardcore" fanbase anyway whatever you do they will never be happy.

edit , the only time there was a real chance of nintendo going down was the n64 era(it made much more stupid mistakes at that time)

Actually...it was more the Gamecube than the N64.

 

[MasterChief892039]

Nintendo's game library has been a tumbleweed infested wasteland for years now. I'm surprised it took so long for this article to come out.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Love the article. Very well written...

From where I'm sitting, Nintendo is like a sick person. A lot of symptoms of a dying company. The source of all these symptoms is the unwillingness to change and adapt to a growing gaming community. It wants to focus attention on younger audiences and keep re-releasing franchises that have been around since the dawn of time. I'm not against keeping the franchises around if they can make the games good. I'm not against attracting a new audience to keep the next generation in gaming. What I am against is the attitude Nintendo seems to have towards the gamers that have been around since the 80's and 90's. Some even longer than that. Almost like the company stopped caring about us, assuming we all jumped shipped when something as shiny and generic as Halo came out. Pretty depressing.

Because when a company is making far more money than its competitors it is clearly dying. You're aware that since Nintendo is appealing to all audiences right? I've been with Nintendo since the SNES days and they are STILL appealing to me, I don't need gritty games or new IPs when the current IPs are colourful and fun! Nintendo may not be making any groundbreaking stories with their new games but in terms of gameplay they are constantly improving, and last I checked gameplay is what matters in a game. Nintendo still cares about all audiences, hence why they make games for all audiences.

Where did the gritty games comment come from? I mentioned that Halo is shiny and generic (the second word not being too appealing). Most of those kinds of games suck anyway.

Maybe I should point out Nintendo is my only system (unless we include PC). But within the past year, from what I've been reading and seeing, Nintendo has made a lot of rather dumb mistakes in a lot of different areas (re-releases, public relations, etc). And how is gameplay constantly improving beyond babysteps? I love Nintendo still, but they've been disappointing me for a while now and the past year has just been depressing. It might be financially successful, but, to me, it's dying in the sense it isn't making the quality games it once produced only a mere console generation ago.

Apologies, most people tend to figure gritty is the only way to have a game be mature. Guess I slipped my tongue there out of fanboy rage or something.

And I don't deny Nintendo has made some bad mistakes, I criticize them a lot too. But I don't see how a re release is a bad thing, most people beg other companies for re released (try counting how many people want a Final fantasy 7 re release) And when you look at the radical gameplay differences between say, Super Mario 64 and Galaxy, they have the core thing there, good platforming and that's hard to change, so they refine it and add some things to enhance it with each new game. Same goes for Zelda games, they have a formula down so all they need to do is improve it, and they do. And I suppose quality varying from player to player but last year they released many top quality games (to me) Super Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Kirby's Epic Yarn, Pokemon HG/SS and the list goes on. I think they are constantly improving especially when you play these new games and compare them to the older ones.

Apology accepted. Least we can agree on that regard.

But as for re-releases, what about Star Wars? they rereleased the original movies and fans hated it. I can't remember all the complaints I heard when they announced GoldenEye was being rereleased for the Wii. I'm not saying re-releases are, in fact, evil. I'm merely saying they seem to represent a stopping point. The last good Star Fox or F-Zero games were out on Cube. The best Mario games are back in the hey-day of NES and SNES. While I'm excited for Pokemon's 5th rebirth, I still think it was at its peak in Generation 2. Improve the looks all you want and add more features until you're out of ideas. Point is that we're still living in the past, as far back as 20 years in some cases. Not the worst thing in the world. But the newest IP is Olimar from Pikmin... how sad is that? Surely there are millions of other ideas Nintendo could throw out there for us.

 

[maiiau]

It seems like if the games you're looking for are ones like Halo, Fallout 3, and Red Dead Redemption, of course you're not going to enjoy the Wii. But I never really associated those sorts of titles with Nintendo at all. It's why I had a PS2 alongside my Gamecube.

 

[mythgraven]

Bravo, I was thinking just the same the other day.
Nintendo is becoming painfully irrelevant, in a society of people who all grew up on it, and desperately want it to wake up and re-storm our imaginations.


Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

 

[jeblucas]

I'm in agreement with the author. The Wii just isn't what it promised to be in my heart of hearts. That they have so butchered the online experience is what ruins it. To exchange ridiculous 16-digit codes per Wii AND THEN per game is just nonsense. I understand they don't want kids called c0ckf4gz!1 right out of the gate, but find a toggle somewhere for me to enable decent friend finding.

I still love it, and if not for SUPER MEAT BOY, Wii would have the title of the year for 2010 (SMG2). When a six year old free-on-PC port is the best storytelling on the platform for the year (CAVE STORY), you are screwing things up for the more mature community. They need to right this ship.

As others have noted, the DS is a remarkable gaming device, and does so much right compared to what the Wii gets wrong.

 

[Rad Party God]

As my motto says, A Wii and a PC is a good match.

I love my Wii, but just like the article says, I was enamored of my memories of what Nintendo was in the past, even my very first game I bought for the 360 was Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, not because it was good (it is), but because it was developed by Rare and I still remembered when they were absolutely brilliant on the N64 era.

Right now, the only current gen console I own is the Wii, but in the past 5 years I started to love PC gaming, so I'm not missing on much of the current gen games, sure, I haven't played God of War 3, Metal Gear 4, Uncharted and what have you, but I've also played Bioshock, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Fallout 3 & New Vegas and many more stapples of this generation.

Although I'm not ashamed of having a Wii and I still enjoy the Marios, Zeldas, Kirbys and Metroids, I still miss looking forward to more than 5 great games per year in a Nintendo console, instead of just 1 or 2 average games at the very least. Of all the games I'm looking forward to this year, and oh boy this year is looking hot, none of them is a Nintendo game.

 

[D Moness]

It is funny there are only a few games i am looking forward too(kirby's epic yarn(not released in europe yet), Mass effect 3 , portal 2.
The thing i am mostly looking forward this year is the 3DS.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Motion Gaming: Nintendo

WRONG! Sorry, I love doing that. ^^

Anyway, TRUE motion gaming, where you use your body to affect the game's environment was the Eyetoy by Sony. Duck Hunt and it's ilk still used, more or less, a controller. Yes, the Eyetoy was bad. It was HORRIBLY bad. But, Sony did it first.

---------

As for the article, while this is old news to me (My household used to be a Nintendo one, but that was lost with the Wii.) and I have been preaching this whenever I could, I still enjoyed it, mainly because lots of people only take their opinions from 'named' sources, instead of figuring out for themselves.

And to those Nintendo Defenders who are saying "Nintendo is just like it was back when it saved the video games crash!", well, THAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM! It has not changed. And while it's nice they pretty much rebooted and revived our favorite hobby, that is an old accomplishment. Let's see Nintendo do something mighty like it used to, and THEN I will put up my crucifix of Mario again.

 

[CitySquirrel]

I'm sure other people have said this, but Nintendo's strength seems to be in its portable systems these days.

I was a huge nintendo fanboy. My best friend and I would play on the SNES, always talking about how awesome our game selection was over Sega. We longed...pined even... for the N64, and we loved it, even while deep down we realized it was a terrible system. Its few good games kept us happy (and we desperately waited for a new metroid games...)

But it just couldn't keep me happy. I have not purchased a nintendo product since the N64. I was given a wii for Christmas... it belonged to my future brother in law, who did not like the system at all. I'm enjoying mario galaxy, and plan to get a few other games. But I would never have purchased it for myself and when I look through the list of games, I actually have a hard time finding something I want. Still, like Ms. Lawrence, I hope for the day I am pleasantly surprised.

 

[marque_pierre]

Hello Briana,

Others share your sentiments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=863GSlfp9Uw&feature=feedlik

 

[CronoDAS]

Forget the Wii. The DS is still awesome.

 

[(=Nemesis=)]

My problem with the article (for anyone who cares) is that the writer complains about the third-party rubbish and then describes them as Nintendo-produced. Nintendo did not make those bad games. Nintendo's only game that falls into this category is Nintendogs. If Nintendo is culpable, it is not for making bad games. On the contrary, they almost never make a bad game. Nintendo is only culpable for allowing their "Seal of Quality" to be undermined by allowing such bad games to be sold - and quite frankly they don't have as much control over that as they did in the N64 days.

 

[Nerdfury]

I know how you feel, Briana. I bought the Wii because I like Nintendo, but the only Wii games I have for me and me alone are Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy. All my other games are divided into two kinds: Games I bought on the cheap (like, ten bucks or so or free via a gift card) without knowing if they were good (and usually aren't), and games that I bought for multiplayer. And even those I don't touch outside of when friends or family come around.

Honestly, it's sad. I skipped the GameCube generation in favour of PS2, and returned to Nintendo to have, since launch date, a total of two games I play for myself.

 

[Electrogecko]

Even Red Dead Redemption (which is great don't get me wrong) is little more than a GTA set in the west that replaces cars with horses.

Maybe, but John Marston IS the first ever character that rockstar created where I actually gave a shit about him and the game itself. He had a personality, he was a family man, sure he killed innocent people but its not like he did it for shits and giggles like in the GTA games. You did it, not him. Plus, how often did we get western games compared to all the other boring FPS or 3rd party crap? It was a breath of fresh air from rockstar and I thank them for it, but it is my opinion of course.

OT: Nintendo's newest first party titles I stopped playing after Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess, it's nothing new, I'm tired of it, haven't bought a game from them since, I'm sticking with Littlebigplanet 2 for a while.

I agree completely. I'm just saying that I observe a double standard when it comes to Nintendo. Everyone says that they doesn't innovate and all their games are the same, but it seems to me that they are among the least deserving of these criticisms. MG2 is my case in point. The game was and is criticized for being too similar to the original when in reality, there were about 10x more original and creative ideas made in the transition than there were between GTA and Red Dead, Halo 3 and Reach, or CoD 4 and BO. People need to realize that there's a difference between re-using characters and re-using games. If people held the other consoles to the same standard they held Nintendo, they would say that CoD, Halo, and Killzone are the exact same game.

I was about to make a point about how your LBP can be viewed as "just another 2d platformer," which, if your sick of Nintendo, you should be sick of, but then I remembered that LBP2 defies all classification.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I'm going to try and go beyond the OT and delve into something that has bothered me ever since I've been old enough to reason. This is also part of the reason why I believe video games, of all stripes (PC, Console, etc.), are one of the best ways of producing and evolving ideas, with comedy and music vying for a close second and third, respectively.

Corporations and such want to keep gaining the highest profit imaginable while keeping costs at a minimum. Such is how it will always be with any gaming company. While this alone doesn't keep games from being their absolute best, it does have one serious setback when combined with another factor.

Religion. And before any of us go debating this aspect of humanity on this thread, let us first see how it impacts this field. At least, according to me. You'll probably have differing views.

Religion, for the most part, has instilled this kind of fear, shame and guilt about the human body and the parts involved with the sex act. These things, that then have names, or words, attached to them, are then supressed. When these suppressions, this religous overlay, are combined with business interests, they generally inhibit anything that might seem infractionary of these suppressions. Then, these names and words, and the ideas that are inherent with them, can't be used because they scare off potential customers. Also, if the corporations' sponsors pull their support, they'll lose whatever support THEY were giving and that could be a hefty chunk of change in some instances. So, they have to not only comform to their sponsors and what their guidelines and standards are, but they have to manage not to offend any of their consumer base at the same time. Reference that one guy from Gamespot who spoke his mind about the Kayne and Lynch game, then promptly got fired for it. That, in my belief, is the nexus that prohibits new ideas and their evolution and causes banality and mediocrity to thrive in its place.

Sony and Microsoft may be advancing more in this field than Nintendo, but they are still in the same boat as Nintendo. Occasionally, you will get some games that break this trend. Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example - religion intertwined with two warring governmental factions with all involved being exposed as some sort of criminal, save you who plays the main character, and the history of events as told by the narrator of the story reveals that the church covered up most of the events of the game after it happened. More often than not you will see dynamics of games change, graphics and the like, and HOW you play them, but the ideas behind them are relatively still the same old crap from 20+ years ago.


Kirby rocks Nintendo. The plumber brothers and the boomerang-toting elf boy have NOTHING on Kirby. Samus might, though. In the end, Kirby still wins.

 

[Electrogecko]

I know how you feel, Briana. I bought the Wii because I like Nintendo, but the only Wii games I have for me and me alone are Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy. All my other games are divided into two kinds: Games I bought on the cheap (like, ten bucks or so or free via a gift card) without knowing if they were good (and usually aren't), and games that I bought for multiplayer. And even those I don't touch outside of when friends or family come around.

Honestly, it's sad. I skipped the GameCube generation in favour of PS2, and returned to Nintendo to have, since launch date, a total of two games I play for myself.

If you truly skipped the Gamecube, then you should have an ass-ton of good games to play on your Wii. (for cheap too if you can find them)

And there are also PLENTY of great Wii games if you do your research and have an open mind.

 

[Danpascooch]

Fallout is new for consoles, it used to be PC only.

Tell me about these new IP's Nintendo has made for the Wii.

And I mean things with actual stories and/or structure, Wii Sports and the like don't count.

Why do they not count? A game does not need an original story to be a game. What makes Wii sports any less of a game than the other games out there? It's just different than them.

consoles need online play whether or not you want to use it, it's something the Wii doesn't have.

Because I use pixie magic to play Brawl with my friends from other countries.

And how many titles does Nintendo have this online play available for?

The ones that matter. I admit a few games like New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Kirby's Epic Yarn could have benefited a tad from online play, that's a small amount.

Games like Mario Kart Wii, Brawl, The Conduit, Monster Hunter Tri and Tatsunoko Versus Capcom, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Goldeneye 007, andRayman Raving Rabbids have online play.

And that's only a small list of the many online supported games.

First off, games like Wii sports don't count, because they are games like Wii sports, which is to say, they are barely even games.

That list you have, let me point out the majority of those titles:

- Mario Kart Wii
- Super Smash Bros Brawl
- Pokemon Battle Revolution
- Goldeneye 007

Do you really not see the problem?

There are no reputable new IP's being born since the Wii launched. IT'S ALL THE SAME STUFF.

I love N64 and Gamecube I really do, but I'd rather use an emulator with an old school controller running through a USB converter than PLAY THE WII I ALREADY OWN.

Seriously, it hasn't been plugged in in over two years, I don't even know where the power cord is anymore.

 

[Danpascooch]

Dpad: Mattel's Intellivision
Analog Stick: Atari 5200
Handheld Gaming: Mattel again
Platformer: Space Panic is sometimes considered the first platformer, but Nintendo did make the first one that satisfies all modern definitions, so sure.
3rd person adventure: Three dimensional third person adventure game is so specific I am having trouble finding out who invented it. There were certainly other 3rd person games before, so it's not exactly a big deal.
Motion Gaming: I don't know who tried it first, but the eyetoy came before the wii, so it wasn't the wii

I think you might be getting "invented" mixed up with "popularized" but even if you mean popularized, many of these are still wrong.

Fine, what I mean by invention is neither actual "invention" nor "popularization" really. What I mean is more like "Pioneered". Like how 50 years from now, no-one but tech nostalgic's will remember Myspace for being the first hit social network site, they'll remember Facebook; OR how Netscape will not be remembered, but Internet explorer will.etc. Nintendo may not have invented those technologies but they sparked the fire; one that is still burning to this day.

Example from my very post? Nintendo experimented with 3D gaming using the abysmal Virtual Boy that will fade into the Annals of history, but Sony will be remembered for their use of 3D in their PS3 games. Sony didn't by any means "invent" 3D gaming. They "pioneered" it. Get what i mean?

I understand, I still don't think they pioneered as much as you think they did, but that view does open it up a bit.

 

[Danpascooch]

That article was annoying to read because you reminded me of those "fans"

Spoiler: you know, the picky ones.

Nintendo isn't to blame.

They made a console with inferior capabilities, almost nonexistant online play, and crappy third party support that leads to things like "Wii Carnival Games" instead of creative IP's

How the hell are they not to blame?

Nintendo doesn't care about that. They are a business. They focus on the crowd that wasn't so damn picky. And the result is...they are successful. Blame the fans. Plus...Nintendo focuses on local and most importantly...fun.

I know they don't care about "that" ("that" being online play, third party support, and creative IP's)

so explain to me, when you yourself just said they don't care, that they aren't to blame for these problems? There is no originality in the titles coming out for the Wii, and your interpretation of "fun" is subjective.

Fun last time I check was having a good time playing a game. With or without friends. With online being implemented in a lot of games, fun is not competition to be the best. Now-a-days, there is no originality in titles coming out for ANY system. And when it does. It flops because of the mainstream titles. This has been going on for a while.

You do know what originality means right? It means doing or trying themes, stories, or gameplay that have not been done before, it means fresh new IPs.

PS3 has things like Little Big Planet which have experimented with user generated content as the driving gameplay force, that's creative

360 has things like the Fallout series experimenting with completely open worlds, and Braid redefining storytelling.

There are new IP's coming out ALL THE TIME for these consoles, but with Nintendo it either features a character that has been around over a decade, or it is DOA. Seriously, think about new franchises that have risen for the PS3 and 360 since they launched, there are more new franchises than I can count.

But with Nintendo, it's the same old stuff, or it sucks, with unacceptably low exceptions.

PS3 has LBP but there has been other games that have user created content.
Fallout isn't a new IP just to let you know.
Nintendo made have a lot of IP give or take about 20, but they can make games. Not just publish

Fallout is new for consoles, it used to be PC only.

Tell me about these new IP's Nintendo has made for the Wii.

And I mean things with actual stories and/or structure, Wii Sports and the like don't count.

Someone never played Fire Emblem,Battalion Wars, Muramasa and Sin and Punishment.

I love Fire Emblem, and it offers absolutely nothing on the Wii that it doesn't offer on the DS which is portable, and which I love.