About Nintendo Sequels

[M Silverthorn]

So I've been chatting a fair bit with my gaming circle of friends about the endless franchising and sequel-izing of Nintendo's characters. You know what I mean: the 50-odd Mario games, Legend(s) of Zelda, etc, etc. I figure that Nintendo won't stop creating newer versions of these stories and characters, and really, they seem to be adequate at what they do.

But then we thought, what IF...

Bam. The Nintendo Sequel Machine breaks down, or all the hired staff in charge of cranking out the sequels all catch terminal cases of Brain-On-Fire Syndrome. Whatever. For some reason, it falls to YOU to salvage ONLY THREE of Nintendo's long-standing franchises and reboot them. The rest, sadly, are lost to the days of the past.

As an open question; what three franchises would you save? And...if you have an idea as to what direction you'd take them, what would you do?

I'd save...

1. Zelda (Mebbe something a little darker?)
2. Metroid (Post Fusion arc)
3. Pokemon (Make a MMO!)

 

[Mr.Mattress]

The Sequel Machine will only break down when people stop buying from the Sequel Machine, and it takes a special amount of sequels to actually make people stop buying, with an actual decline in quality. Of course, it also varies. Guitar Hero, one of the most recent series to suffer from "Sequel Death", took about 24 games. The Ultima series took about 18 games. Since Mario has been around for over 20 years, and has over 150 games, with about 90% of them being good, I highly doubt Mario could suffer.

Still, if I had to pick, I would pick:

1: Mario
2: Pokemon (Even if I've grown bored of it)
3: Stary (Starfy doesn't get enough love 3

 

[Aerosteam]

Pokemon is not a Nintendo game. Nintendo publishes Pokemon, so saying it was them who keep redoing the story is false.

Mario. He is the most iconic video game character in history, it would be really bad if this was the way he died.

Metroid. Still waiting on something like Prime.

Legend of Zelda. Because it's Legend of Zelda.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I'd save:

1. Metroid. I'd publicly denounce Other M as a voodoo curse, or made on a dare and not cannon. I loved Fusion, but I would have to do something so that the fusion suit goes away. Its only slightly less ugly than the PED suit.

The suits in Echos are easily my favorites. My fav games are easily Super and Echos, least being Other M and Corruption.

I think a remake a la Zero mission of Return of Samus would be so sweet. But releasing a new game in the series that is neither a retelling of the BEGINNING or a continuation after Fusion would probably just confuse people. How often to companies remake an interquel?

Well outside of Final Fantasy games anyways.

2. Zelda. Because there are still good games to be made in this series. Unfortunately this seems to be the series that they like to try out all their new motion/touch control gimmicks rather than make the excellent games they used to. Also I'm pretty much over the general direction the series has gone since Ocarina.

You spend way too much time running errands for npcs, not enough time exploring and finding stuff/solving puzzles.

Completely contradictory to my previous statement I love Majora's Mask which is mostly fetch quests, because while there are only 4 major dungeons they are excellent. The npcs are actually interesting unlike pretty much every other game after OoT, and you didn't end up going to the same locations as most Zelda games either.

I mean how many times do we need to climb death mountain, swim around lake hylia, etc.? I originally liked that they created different races like Gorons etc, but then they stopped. I mean the games have just gotten so similar to each other. Swap out the boat for a bird and you turn WW into SS. Or into a train and you have Spirit Tracks. Also how many times are we gonna go back and retcon the origin story of the master sword/gannon.

Demise is interesting but I would rather he just be a new entity like Vaati or that thing in Spirit Tracks and not some arbitrary incarnation of evil that gets reincarnated as Ganon over and over. I mean Ganon's deal used to be that he was just a thief that grabbed the triforce and it broke so he got to keep the Triforce of Power. Pretty much I was totally fine with Link to the Past being the game that established the lore. Unfortunately no one at Nintendo could think of a new plot to happen after that point since you pretty much grab the triforce and wish everything back to happy times. So they proceeded to take the series further back and further back backing away at established canon left and right. I think that in Skyward sword they even did away with Din, Nayru, and Farore in favor of a generic Angel goddess.

One of my favorite games in the series was Link's Awakening. It just had this very different tone from the games previous, and once you learned what was really happening it took on a kind of melancholy undertone that wasn't lost me even as a little kid.

So I'd probably just reboot the series from scratch.

3. Mario. Unlike the main games I actually really like Paper Mario/Mario RPGs. I haven't played Mario Galaxy 2 yet, but liked the first one. Also the only other franchises I could think of were Star Fox/F-Zero/Pikmin and I'm not super fans of those. I like them well enough, but if they got to go then they got to go. I consider Smash/Kart as spin offs. I would have picked Mario Kart as my 3rd choice based on Mario Kart 64 fulling plenty of my highschool free time with friends, but I haven't liked the ones since very much.

I would try to improve the series by making the entries more varied. My favorite games in the series are Yoshi's Island, Thousand Year Door, Super Paper Mario, Mario RPG, and SMB2. Which was just Doki Doki Panic with different player skins. Lately there has been an over saturation of the "New" SMB that frankly I haven't played other than the first one. I wasn't a fan.

 

[FalloutJack]

2. Metroid (Post Fusion arc)

I agree with saving Metroid, first off, but uhh...IS there a post-Fusion arc or is this your project which I would second the motion of instantly?

For my next trick, I would save Wario because the old plumber's out and the quasi-villainesque money-seeking fat bastard is in. Wario Land was good work, dammit.

Also, since Skies of Arcadia was ported to GAMECUBE...it's sequel time!!!

 

[Cheesepower5]

Fire Emblem, Mario and Zelda.

 

[natster43]

Mario, Zelda, and Kirby.

 

[Ruedyn]

Fire Emblem, Kirby, and Pokemanz.

 

[Innegativeion]

Mario, Zelda, and Kirby.

Fire Emblem, Mario and Zelda.

Kirby is Hal Labratory, Fire Emblem is Intelligent Systems, and Pokemon is Game Freak. Are we assuming Nintendo's sequel machine's destruction here also removes their publishing capabilities? xD

Fire Emblem, Kirby, and Pokemanz.

None of those are "made" by nintendo, or at least not the development teams under Nintendo's direct staffing.

 

[burningdragoon]

Star Fox, Zelda, and Mario (and by Mario, I mean Yoshi).

And my first order of business: A crossover between the 3 series. Crossovers, always work. Right? right?

 

[burningdragoon]

Mario, Zelda, and Kirby.

Fire Emblem, Mario and Zelda.

Kirby is Hal Labratory, Fire Emblem is Intelligent Systems, and Pokemon is Game Freak. Are we assuming Nintendo's sequel machine's destruction here also removes their publishing capabilities? xD

Fire Emblem, Kirby, and Pokemanz.

None of those are "made" by nintendo, or at least not the development teams under Nintendo's direct staffing.

Hal Laboratory and Intelligent Systems are Nintendo subsidiaries (according to Wikipedia anyway), so Fire Emblem and Kirby are Nintendo franchises. Game Freak isn't, so even though Pokemon is practically a Nintendo franchise, it technically isn't.

 

[The Goat Tsar]

Mario, Zelda, and F-Zero

Why F-Zero? Because I still have hope. It's been 9 years since F-Zero GX, but I still have hope. At 12 years, I'll give up.

Yes, GX was made by Amusement Vision and published by Nintendo. The earlier ones were made by Nintendo EAD.

 

[shrekfan246]

Kirby is Hal Labratory, Fire Emblem is Intelligent Systems, and Pokemon is Game Freak. Are we assuming Nintendo's sequel machine's destruction here also removes their publishing capabilities? xD

Pokemon is not a Nintendo game. Nintendo publishes Pokemon, so saying it was them who keep redoing the story is false.

HAL Labs and Game Freak are both 'First-Party' developers for Nintendo. They develop exclusively for and are subsidiaries of Nintendo (EDIT: Apparently Game Freak is a private company who just happen to develop solely for Nintendo). Therefore technically, they're 'Nintendo' games. Basically, it's like when people say 'Activision keeps making the same CoD every year.' Yeah, Infinity Ward and Treyarch are the guys developing the games, but they're subsidiaries of Activision.

If you're going to harp on the use of Pokemon EDIT: which has been an exclusively Nintendo franchise for sixteen years :END EDIT, then you can't use Metroid, because (excluding the handheld titles) that hasn't been developed singularly by Nintendo since before Prime was released for the Gamecube.

OT: Eh... I've never been huge about Nintendo franchises, to be honest. The only Zelda game I've ever finished is Wind Waker (which was fantastic), I was a Sonic kid instead of Mario, Metroid Prime was pretty cool but I never got into the 'Metroidvania' style of the side-scroller titles, and the only other 'Nintendo' titles that really register on my radar are Kirby and Super Smash Bros. I used to love Pokemon, but I think I've grown out of it, and Nintendo hasn't owned Rare in ten years so hoping for a decent Banjo-Kazooie is pretty much out.

 

[Phlakes]

Also have to go with Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Have Mario and Zelda just keep doing what they've been doing ([relatively] big steps on main consoles, and more classic Mario on handhelds), and for the love of everything give us an HD 2D Metroid on the Wii U. More Prime or just something Prime-like wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Will no one else save Pikmin?!? Where's the love for such a unique and charming game? Okay, it's not as long running as Nintendo's other franchises, but it's getting ready for its third iteration on the Wii U, and the Wii hosted remakes of both the first and second game.

Anyways, I'd save Pikmin.

After that I'd save Zelda.

And finally I'd save Mario, but gut the franchise and focus it entirely on Luigi's Mansion.

Then I'd sell off all the non-Luigi's Mansion parts of Mario in order to save Pokemon... because I don't play by the OP's rules, and I want all four of these franchises around.

 

[8bitlove2a03]

I'd save Metroid, the only series I ever cared about, and immediately begin collecting every copy and mention of Other M and DESTROYING IT WITH CLEANSING FLAME. Only one copy would be left in a not-burnt-to-cinders state, and that one would be the reminder for all future Metroid devs to never do that again.

Then I'd save Zelda, and I'd tell Irrational Games to take a stab at making a new one, because I'd like to see a western dev's version of it and they're the only ones I can think of who might do something interesting-but-still-Zelda to it.

And then I'd save the Donkey Kong franchise, because my best friend loves those games and would murder me in my sleep if I didn't save it.

 

[The Goat Tsar]

Will no one else save Pikmin?!? Where's the love for such a unique and charming game? Okay, it's not as long running as Nintendo's other franchises, but it's getting ready for its third iteration on the Wii U, and the Wii hosted remakes of both the first and second game.

Damn, I forgot about Pikmin. Hmm.... Okay I'd save Mario, Pikmin, and F-Zero.

Screw it, Nintendo has killed off F-Zero, I'd save Mario, Pikmin and Zelda.

Edit: WAIT I CHANGE MY MIND! I'd save Mario, Pikmin, and F-Zero because I still have hope...A fool's hope. I'm taking this way too seriously.

 

[Lunar Templar]

only Nintendo IPs i care about are

Metriod

and

Pokemon

 

[xPixelatedx]

As an open question; what three franchises would you save? And...if you have an idea as to what direction you'd take them, what would you do?

I would save Mario. I know they keep giving us marios, but honestly I find them a tad too easy to be enjoyable. I just started New Super Mario 2 and I have 100+ lives after 'the first world' D: I don't want it to be impossibly difficult, but man... how am I supposed to get any sense of accomplishment if there is no chance of failure what so ever? I think a lot of fun is to be had in the Mario 3/World level of difficulty. I would also add several nods to other Nintendo games, put in more suits and mechanics. Kind of like what I am trying to do right now:
Infiltration Demo
Sneaking into Bowser's castle from underneath.

Spoiler: More Level Demos

A more traditional style

Lava Lake Demo

Lets Fight Horsehead

Ice flower Mechanics Demo

Zelda
I loved Twilight Princess and Majora's mask both a lot, but MM is very short, and TP has much less content then I would have hoped. Hyrule field was just... barren. That's unacceptable in this day and age. So many interesting things in the over world and levels just turned out to be decoration. If that game only has about %25 more content, it would have been my most favorite game ever.

Metroid
Make Super Metroid-like sequels in HD sprites, like Dust, or in pseudo 3D like Shadow Complex. Hell, it would still be amazing even if it had SNES graphics. Just give me more Super Metroid! Preferably in a game with larger areas and more items.

 

[M Silverthorn]

I agree with saving Metroid, first off, but uhh...IS there a post-Fusion arc or is this your project which I would second the motion of instantly?

For my next trick, I would save Wario because the old plumber's out and the quasi-villainesque money-seeking fat bastard is in. Wario Land was good work, dammit.

Also, since Skies of Arcadia was ported to GAMECUBE...it's sequel time!!!

To the "Metroid After Fusion", no. Not that I'm aware of.

But yeah, given control over that series, I'd go into something after Fusion's events. I think after Other M's disaster they could stand to stop screwing around with recycling Ridley and Samus's "early days" and address the fact that she became a very different creature after Fusion. Maybe all of her upgrades from then on would be very biological or based on natural adaptation to a hostile environment. I'd love to see a Chameleon-like absorption for camouflage, or maybe a Sonar absorption so you can "see" sound (I know they did that in Prime 2 - still loved the idea.)