How to Dismantle Nintendo
This is in response to loonyboi's blog post. Take that into consideration. Today I speak of Nintendo and What Went Wrong.
I was a Nintendo kid beginning September 24th, 1985 (my 5th birthday), the day I got my NES complete with The Robot That Never Worked. It came with Gyromite, which supposedly was what the Robot played, but it never did anything that I could tell.
Anyway, I loved Nintendo. I played all of the major titles, I enjoyed each Mario adventure (even the dreadful Super Mario 2), and Zelda was a big fave.
Hell, I even remember making my mother drive around Knoxville one weekend looking for a showing of The Wizard, that Fred Savage movie that showed Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time.
I was ferociously Nintendo-driven, and I despised the Master System and particularly the Genesis. There were two groups, and you belonged in one of them. Plenty of my friends were Sega geeks, but this was largely in part thanks to monetary restrictions. While I wouldn't have a Genesis based on principle alone, I'm sure they would be open to having a SuperNES if the money would allow.
I simply didn't like Sonic. Secretly I enjoyed the feeling of speed, but I hated the 6-button controller, I hated most of the other games (okay, Altered Beast and Golden Axe were fun), and I didn't like how the rivalry forced me into picking sides. I'm nothing if not loyal.
The Playstation, however, is a different beast. It was hyped extensively, and featured Ridge Racer, Battle Arena Toshinden, and the amazing WipeOut. The system was brash, the URnotE was a pretty damn brilliant campaign for the kids out there only used to hearing SEGA! screamed at them, or the soft comforting image of Princess Peach.
It arrived, life changed, I put in so many hours into Ridge Racer it was embarrassing. I still recall the demo disc that came with a bunch of promo songs from Sony label bands like Korn. It had "Blind" on the CD, right before they got big. I can still recall racing against the Black Car (whatever its name was, the hardest competitor) while rocking out to Korn and my own Smashing Pumpkins CDs. I even bought Battle Arena Toshinden, captivated by its graphics and the feeling of 3D, even though it was apparent after a week or two that the game had little to offer. WipeOut was brilliant in its speed, control, and craft. In my nostalgia I remember it as being different, cool, challenging, and spending a lot of time in my PSone. Back before anyone ever saw a PSOne and it was still called the PSX.
This is all leading to why Nintendo sucks. And I hate to say it like that, because I really enjoy my Gamecube (when I get around to playing it), but the Nintendo 64, in its cartridge-based ways, was a step backwards. I've told this story before, but I bought it once (along with Zelda and the Ocarina of Time) and immediately took it back. I hated "Z-targeting", I hated the controller, I hated the cartridges and their silly limitations. Zelda had interesting and in-depth gameplay, but this was not the system for me. A few lies later, and I had my money back.
The Gamecube is a step in the right direction (the Gameboy SP even more so), but the developer support just isn't there. The DS is a novelty as loonyboi correctly notes, and its just so boring after a few minutes of play. Hell, I got more than my fair share in the EB Games setup, let alone having to buy the thing to find out I don't like it. While Advance Wars DS would own, it would be no different than any other RTS on the DS. It would simply be playing Starcraft with a stylus, and while I love the RTS genre, the DS just isn't quite capable of it I don't believe, nor the hardware it would require to do correctly.
This is all leading to "Revolution", the next Nintendo console, which apparently isn't going to have A or B buttons (yeah, right), nor a directional pad (this I can see). The point is, it will be goofy, a novelty, with small discs that can hold little content when compared to the big boys.
The more I hear of Nintendo's future, the more I hear of how they've become the niche's niche, the more I try to understand just what in the hell they're trying to accomplish with their new gaming systems...it makes me sad. For a boy who loved Nintendo, who adored his Gameboy, who lost hours upon hours of his life to Mario and Metroid and Zelda...it is a death kneel, years in the making.
I'll look back on this post someday, maybe the day that Mario debuts on the Playstation. That will be the saddest day, and many moments of silence will be necessary.
I was a Nintendo kid beginning September 24th, 1985 (my 5th birthday), the day I got my NES complete with The Robot That Never Worked. It came with Gyromite, which supposedly was what the Robot played, but it never did anything that I could tell.
Anyway, I loved Nintendo. I played all of the major titles, I enjoyed each Mario adventure (even the dreadful Super Mario 2), and Zelda was a big fave.
Hell, I even remember making my mother drive around Knoxville one weekend looking for a showing of The Wizard, that Fred Savage movie that showed Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time.
I was ferociously Nintendo-driven, and I despised the Master System and particularly the Genesis. There were two groups, and you belonged in one of them. Plenty of my friends were Sega geeks, but this was largely in part thanks to monetary restrictions. While I wouldn't have a Genesis based on principle alone, I'm sure they would be open to having a SuperNES if the money would allow.
I simply didn't like Sonic. Secretly I enjoyed the feeling of speed, but I hated the 6-button controller, I hated most of the other games (okay, Altered Beast and Golden Axe were fun), and I didn't like how the rivalry forced me into picking sides. I'm nothing if not loyal.
The Playstation, however, is a different beast. It was hyped extensively, and featured Ridge Racer, Battle Arena Toshinden, and the amazing WipeOut. The system was brash, the URnotE was a pretty damn brilliant campaign for the kids out there only used to hearing SEGA! screamed at them, or the soft comforting image of Princess Peach.
It arrived, life changed, I put in so many hours into Ridge Racer it was embarrassing. I still recall the demo disc that came with a bunch of promo songs from Sony label bands like Korn. It had "Blind" on the CD, right before they got big. I can still recall racing against the Black Car (whatever its name was, the hardest competitor) while rocking out to Korn and my own Smashing Pumpkins CDs. I even bought Battle Arena Toshinden, captivated by its graphics and the feeling of 3D, even though it was apparent after a week or two that the game had little to offer. WipeOut was brilliant in its speed, control, and craft. In my nostalgia I remember it as being different, cool, challenging, and spending a lot of time in my PSone. Back before anyone ever saw a PSOne and it was still called the PSX.
This is all leading to why Nintendo sucks. And I hate to say it like that, because I really enjoy my Gamecube (when I get around to playing it), but the Nintendo 64, in its cartridge-based ways, was a step backwards. I've told this story before, but I bought it once (along with Zelda and the Ocarina of Time) and immediately took it back. I hated "Z-targeting", I hated the controller, I hated the cartridges and their silly limitations. Zelda had interesting and in-depth gameplay, but this was not the system for me. A few lies later, and I had my money back.
The Gamecube is a step in the right direction (the Gameboy SP even more so), but the developer support just isn't there. The DS is a novelty as loonyboi correctly notes, and its just so boring after a few minutes of play. Hell, I got more than my fair share in the EB Games setup, let alone having to buy the thing to find out I don't like it. While Advance Wars DS would own, it would be no different than any other RTS on the DS. It would simply be playing Starcraft with a stylus, and while I love the RTS genre, the DS just isn't quite capable of it I don't believe, nor the hardware it would require to do correctly.
This is all leading to "Revolution", the next Nintendo console, which apparently isn't going to have A or B buttons (yeah, right), nor a directional pad (this I can see). The point is, it will be goofy, a novelty, with small discs that can hold little content when compared to the big boys.
The more I hear of Nintendo's future, the more I hear of how they've become the niche's niche, the more I try to understand just what in the hell they're trying to accomplish with their new gaming systems...it makes me sad. For a boy who loved Nintendo, who adored his Gameboy, who lost hours upon hours of his life to Mario and Metroid and Zelda...it is a death kneel, years in the making.
I'll look back on this post someday, maybe the day that Mario debuts on the Playstation. That will be the saddest day, and many moments of silence will be necessary.
2 Comments:
Good writeup. I was a Sega kid, but I actually liked my N64.
...for a bit.
Mario64 is one of my favorite games of all-time. The DS can't emulate it well at all (the stylus simply isn't made to work as an analog stick), GoldenEye is great, and WipeOut64 is actually pretty good too (although the lack of licensed music really sucked).
But that love affair was pretty brief. Once Final Fantasy VII came out, there was no going back for me. The last N64 game I ever played was Paper Mario, which was good, but really late in the N64's lifespan. The GameCube has done nothing for me on that level.
I remember the days of the NES. Of course we couldnt afford one for a long time, but finally after the Atari that we had gave up we were going to get either a Sega Master System, (not the Genesis), or a NES. Your wife's and my brother, Jeremy, in his infinite wisdom decided that the Sega was the way to go. What a piece of crap that syatem was. It had a games preloaded on it. It was some sort of motorcycle game. We got another game too called Firefox. I remember the games for it were expensive and we couldnt afford any good ones. We did finally get that NES when the Super Nintendos came out. Oh and that NES had the notorious freezing up problem. You know the one where youtook the game out and blew on the contacts and did your Hail Mary's to get it to work. I was actually thinking of getting the new Nintendo DS but after readin what you wrote here, I might be better off with the Oakley sunglasses.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home