Whats so great about Nintendo games?

[Doom972]

First of all, you have the core Nintendo fans, who keep playing those games out of nostalgia. Other than that, Nintendo games are as colorful and inoffensive as games can be, which makes them especially appealing to children and the parents who buy games for them.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I'd say that's all they do. There're hundreds of Mario games, let's not pretend like every time they shake up the formula by a modicum of creativity (2D/3D/karting/partying/etc) they're launching a new IP. How different is New Super Mario Bros. Wii from New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World from Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. from New Super Mario Bros. 2 (and so on)?

.....Y'know, if just for sake of variety, can't you bring up something OTHER than Mario? Like Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros., Fire Emblem, Metroid, F-Zero, Star Fox, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, WarioWare, Kid Icarus, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, Nintendogs, Rhythm Heaven, Punch-Out!!, Yoshi, Tomodachi, Xenoblade, Golden Sun, Advance Wars, or any of the OTHER, numerous franchises they have? Seriously, at the very least change it up every now and again.

 

[CaitSeith]

Let's put it this way. You are saying that Nintendo games look almost exactly the same as the old games. Do you consider those old games good? That's the detail: Nintendo usually keep a consistent level of quality in their most popular franchises, and people know what to expect from them. They usually don't change the basic genre of their main franchises like Resident Evil did with 5 and 6 to follow a trend, and rarely they drop the ball as hard as Assassins Creed: Unity did.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'd say that's all they do. There're hundreds of Mario games, let's not pretend like every time they shake up the formula by a modicum of creativity (2D/3D/karting/partying/etc) they're launching a new IP. How different is New Super Mario Bros. Wii from New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World from Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. from New Super Mario Bros. 2 (and so on)?

.....Y'know, if just for sake of variety, can't you bring up something OTHER than Mario?

I don't know, can detractors bring something up OTHER than COD or Assassin's Creed?

 

[vledleR]

Nintendo has a good formula for their games: simple but competent.

Lots of games these days are brimming with a wealth of content, but little of it is done particularly well. When you buy a first party Nintendo game, you're almost guaranteed to get a game that isn't very deep or original, but also a game with a very tight focus and makes the best of its limitations.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I don't know, can detractors bring something up OTHER than COD or Assassin's Creed?

That's not an answer. Come on, it's not that hard to reply to a query.

 

[DrOswald]

I think Nintendo peaked around the SNES era, motion control gimmickry notwithstanding. And they succeeded by doing the same thing any gaming company will succeed: by appealing to the widest common denominator and making games that, while easy to learn and easy to master, you can also make as challenging as you want them to be. Accesible to anyone and fun to everyone.

The whole "they make games from the heart" thing is bullshit though. Any fan can say that about the company they like.

They also do not do their franchises to death, even at peak Nintendo saturation.

I'd say that's all they do. There're hundreds of Mario games, let's not pretend like every time they shake up the formula by a modicum of creativity (2D/3D/karting/partying/etc) they're launching a new IP. How different is New Super Mario Bros. Wii from New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World from Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. from New Super Mario Bros. 2 (and so on)?

I did not say they are launching a new IP, I am saying that it is a different franchise with significantly different gameplay. Yes, it is within the same IP. No they are not the same, anyone can see that Super Mario Galaxy is a completely different game from Mario Kart 7, and that Super Mario Sunshine is completely different from Super Mario World. This is why I said franchise. The 3D Mario games are a different franchise than the Mario Kart games, which is a different franchise to the Donkey Kong vs Mario franchise, etc.

One or two games per franchise per system, averaging out at around 1 game every 3 years for the typical high volume Nintendo franchise split evenly between handheld and console entries. For example, The 3D Marios have only seen 6 releases ever in the 19 year history of 3D mario, averaging just less than one every 3 years.

The sole exception are 2D mario games, which peaked at 3 releases within 4 years in the years 2009-2012. That is, of course, painting the worst possible light on the release pattern of 2D marios. New Super Mario Bros, the 4th most recent game, was released 9 years ago. The 5th most recent 2D Mario was Super Mario Land 2, released 23 years ago. Overall, there have been 11 2D Mario titles over 30 years. Averaging out at around 1 game ever 3 years. Of course, the reality in modern times is closer to 1 game every 2 years, which seems to be a pattern that will hold for the foreseeable future.

Second, yes there is a massive difference between Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World. They both represent a fundamentally different approach to level design, which is where the bulk of a platformer innovation occurs.

The Mario IP and imagery are overused. The franchises and game play elements are not. I would like Nintendo to spice up the Mario imagery, especially in the mainline Mario games. It is a bit stale. Maybe try cell shading, or a psudo drawn look like in Yoshi's island? But seriously criticizing the aesthetic design of the company that created Pikmin 3 and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse seems petty at best.

I don't know, can detractors bring something up OTHER than COD or Assassin's Creed?

I think those things are brought up specifically because everyone says "Mario is over done!" so they (I did this) point to a franchise they think is truly over done. And there really are not too many of those, not for people who really enjoy them. I don't know any Nintendo hardcores that are railing against Uncharted, for example. COD and COD clones, assassins creed, and sports games (which many people foolishly consider not real games) are pretty much it. It is not so much that they jump to their favorite examples, they jump to their only examples.

As for the people who constantly say all Nintendo does is churn out Mario, I really can't say why. If you are any indication, it is some sort of revenge point for Nintendo people always picking on COD.

 

[Ieyke]

EXTREME polish and incredibly good game design.
They don't reinvent the wheel constantly and keep starting from scratch.
Instead they find ways to make the wheel, harder, better, faster, stronger, skid resistant, all-terrain, and indestructible.

They look the same as classic Nintendo games because Nintendo treats their main characters as "actors" and their games as "plays".
They keep using the same actors in different plays.

For every slow, overly huge game bloated with dialogue and mostly meaningless choices, like Skyrim, Nintendo has engineered a game that strips out all the extraneous bullshit and spent all their time making the gameplay itself fun as hell.

Other shooters spend their time with a hundred slightly different ways to shoot bullets at people to kill them, or make them explode to kill them.
Nintendo invents new things to shoot. New things to shoot them at. New things that happen when they get shot instead of just dying.

Other racers spend all their time obsessively making hyper realistic cars that you'll look at for 10 seconds and then forget about.
Nintendo tries to find wacky new things to do while racing. New ways to race. Crazy places to race. Crazy power-ups to turn a race into a battle.

In short, other companies tend to operate on "more is better" and try to add every god damn little extraneous thing, while Nintendo operates on "imaginative and fun is better" and cuts out all the stuff that's not fun.

Also, other companies are REALLY bad about game testing, and rush partially-finished games to release.
Nintendo seems deadly serious about not releasing a game until it's stable and works properly.

 

[Danny Dowling]

they make fairly solid games but the kicker is that they have a huge spout of "forbidden fruit" thing going on. Their home console is a pretty big failure but the only place to get some fairly decent games from the same IPs as the ones that were the holy grail of yester year is on that same shitty console. So yeah mix the fact that Mario games and Zelda games were the shit years back and are still now only available on nintendo consoles which aren't as popular as they used to be sort of made them into this forbidden fruit that can only be played if you buy a shitty console.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Always love these conversations.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I was never a Mario fan, but my Nintendo nostalgia is pretty high. As at some point I've had every Nintendo handheld and console so heres what I get. Most people say the games are family friendly. Metroid kinda begs to differ. I liked all of the Metroid games, Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Kart. It's partly nostalgia, but there are some characters you just learn to love a lot. Most of the younger kids don't get it because they get tossed to the M rated games as their first video games. But the art styles, challenge, and fun factor of the games that keep a lot of long time fans coming back.

Granted I was playing Doom when I was 7, Still I had more constant access to a 386, Commodore 64, Atari 800XL, Gameboy, Sega Gamegear, Sega Nomad, Master System, Genesis, NES, and SNES back in the days when we had a to the 486 Windows 3.1 machine, windows 95 Pentium machine, and later Windows 98SE K6-2 with a GeForce 256 all of which I got as hand-me-downs. I always had more access to consoles and handhelds. Up to my Saturn, PSX, N64, PS2, GameCube, Xbox, and Gameboy advance. Usually getting them a year or two after they came out from one of my uncles due to my family being poor. Though in '04 I got cemented to the PC-Gaming scene when I got the parts to build a killer gaming rig of the era. So you know as a kid to day I feel sorry for what the younger millennial kids are getting for game content.

 

[Fox12]

Eh, Nintendo is kind of like the Pixar of gaming. They're bright and imaginative, and sometime quite clever, but you have to be in a certain mood to play them. They're quite good, especially Zelda, but I personally prefer Sony. Besides, most of the best Nintendo games came out on either the N64 or Game Cube.

Also, I wouldn't say they've won the console war. They're probably in last place, in terms of sales. Not failing, but certainly not winning. They did have the best E3 presentation last year, though, no contest whatsoever.

 

[Ieyke]

Yea. That's a good way to put it. They're the Pixar of video games. Or The Disney.
They're super high quality no matter what, but they only work within a narrow range of styles.

Same way Disney is the king of animated movies, and Pixar's the king of 3D animated movies, Nintendo's the king of "just for fun" video games.

 

[Guffe]

Well now this is a matter of taste, is it not?
Not everyone likes them, just like not everyone likes chocolate ice cream, even if it (to my experience) is the one many like.

I wouldn't say the WiiU is the winner of anything, but then again I don't follow up on sold amounts etc, just play the games I enjoy.

They have good IPs which they recycle for every gen, and what calls back all the fans usually, is that they keep the original feeling of the series, but still evolve it enough to feel new.
Zelda, Metroid and Pikmin are good examples. Then there's also the "everygen sellers" like MarioKart and SmashBros. Then they come out with new stuff that is great every gen too, Xenoblade Chronicles and TheLastStory are good (J)RPG examples of last gen. And even if it hasn't sold much, I really enjoyed ZombiU and the party games of NintendoLand are games I've put several hundreds of hours into with my mates.

Now the Eshop is also a great thing for the WiiU giving players the chance to buy old GBA games and Indie titles easily, quite cheaply.

But as I said at the start of my post, even if I like Nintendo and their stuff, it's a matter of taste.
And I'm not sure were you got the impression that the WiiU is a "winner", since the numbers I've seen show something different :/

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't know, can detractors bring something up OTHER than COD or Assassin's Creed?

That's not an answer. Come on, it's not that hard to reply to a query.

Maybe it's not an answer, but the button at the top right tells me it's a reply.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't know, can detractors bring something up OTHER than COD or Assassin's Creed?

I think those things are brought up specifically because everyone says "Mario is over done!" so they (I did this) point to a franchise they think is truly over done. And there really are not too many of those, not for people who really enjoy them. I don't know any Nintendo hardcores that are railing against Uncharted, for example. COD and COD clones, assassins creed, and sports games (which many people foolishly consider not real games) are pretty much it. It is not so much that they jump to their favorite examples, they jump to their only examples.

As for the people who constantly say all Nintendo does is churn out Mario, I really can't say why. If you are any indication, it is some sort of revenge point for Nintendo people always picking on COD.

I have yet to play a single CoD game (Nazi Zombies mode notwithstanding), so I'll be the last person to "avenge" that series. I'm not a fan of military shooters and not terribly keen on FPS in general, unless there's an angle other than LET'S MAKE THIS AS REALISTIC AS WE CAN. I can however tell you the franchise consists of 13 games that have been released in the last 12 years, and that they're organized in 5 different story arcs, the heftiest of which is comprised of 4 games.

Here's the thing:

No console is based off CoD, or any IP in particular. Take away CoD, Assassin's Creed, God of War, Halo, any of those colossi - whether they're exclusive to a system or not - and Sony/Microsoft are still standing. They haven't based their success or popularity on anything in particular, except the possibility that you can play (most) games on them. Yes, there're exclusives, if only to offer some sort of unique selling point that differentiates them from the competition. But they're not mooching off anything. Or at least, not mooching of One Thing. Take away Mario and/or Zelda from Nintendo, and Pokemon off handhelds, and they have nothing left. I don't care how many C-list IPs you can enumerate, or that Pitt is your favorite character: they lose most of their consumer base in a heartbeat. Their entire marketing is based around Mario. Their big launches are based around Mario. Their success, going back to the 80s, has always been based around Mario. And for reasons involving tradition, conservativism and brand recognition, they have to keep chucking out Mario games even when there's nothing more to say about Mario or do with Mario. Same reason Disney keeps Mickey Mouse alive. You can't lose your head pet.

 

[gigastar]

I suppose there are still some people out there who genuinely enjoy Nintendos games.

Im not one of them. Nintendo just hasnt been very interesting for me.

At this point, the only reason im buying Nintendo is because Capcom refuses to entertain the notion that Monster Hunter can be on more than one system.

 

[Muspelheim]

I haven't owned a single Nintendo product in all my life, I think. Save a Mario-themed pez-dispencer I somehow got while I was drunk once. I'm in a completely different part of the spectrum from Nintendo. I like big, Czech mil-sim shooters where you spend ages crawling through hedges, things like that. I like to wash that down with some Dwarf Fortress or Misery.

I say that to make it clear how much of an outsider I am when it comes to Nintendo. And honestly, I really do get what people see in it. It's damn good craftsmanship.

Nintendo is like Disney in some reguards. Whatever they do, it'll be carefully weighed and polished, and it will connect back to a long, rich heritage of games. Yes, it practically raised a generation, but Nintendo still wouldn't be what it was today on that alone. They've maintained that heritage very well, and have been sticking to what they know best, and been the best at it.

It's a polished, colourful product. Fun, easy and safe, like a bouncy castle, and that has its place in the world.

 

[hybridial]

Used to be they were quite inspired.

But there hasn't been anything special about them for years now.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I think those things are brought up specifically because everyone says "Mario is over done!" so they (I did this) point to a franchise they think is truly over done. And there really are not too many of those, not for people who really enjoy them. I don't know any Nintendo hardcores that are railing against Uncharted, for example. COD and COD clones, assassins creed, and sports games (which many people foolishly consider not real games) are pretty much it. It is not so much that they jump to their favorite examples, they jump to their only examples.

As for the people who constantly say all Nintendo does is churn out Mario, I really can't say why. If you are any indication, it is some sort of revenge point for Nintendo people always picking on COD.

I like to think that people bring up CoD because it's indicative of another problem in gaming that nobody likes to acknowledge: the homogenization and contraction of companies. Seriously, companies are relying on fewer and fewer IPs every year, shrinking their diversity pool to the point where they are risking seriously financial damage. People bring up CoD because that's really all that Activision has anymore aside from Skylanders as a reliable moneymaker; looking at the rest of their portfolio and it's just pathetic. Same thing with EA which has been releasing fewer and fewer IPs. And of course Ubi who only has Assassin's Creed at this point (though with Unity the future of the series is looking shaky) with Far Cry a distant second, their other efforts having been lambasted in one manner or another and thus their IP pool keeps shrinking. And I need not mention Sony or MS who are so first-party deficient they need to bribe 3rd parties to help keep their rosters relevant.

And then we have Nintendo, a company with literally DOZENS of IPs to the point where it can essentially self-sustain systems with no real trouble. There's a reason they got an entire fighting game out of their player roster with only a tiny number of guest characters. Most companies struggle getting a dozen different IPs, Nintendo has dozens with each of them having a broad range of genres. And that's not counting spin-offs.

So, yeah, people keep bringing up CoD because that's really all that's around. Due to inept management and pathetic control more and more companies are reducing themselves to one-trick ponies with their IP pools. Not a good business or creative strategy.

Oh, and a new Direct is tomorrow:

http://www.nintendo.com/nintendo-direct/04-01-2015/