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Lowering the Standard: Why Nintendo’s Hardcore vs. Casual Commitments Aren’t the Problem

Posted by John Constantine

I tend to sound overly pessimistic when talking about the Wii. I happen to love the system. I think the funky little box has quite a lot going for it and it’s given me a handful of unforgettable gaming experiences, with Wii Sports and No More Heroes chief among them. No, I’m not overly pessimistic about the Wii. I’m overly pessimistic about Nintendo. As much as I want to be excited about a new Punch-Out!, I can’t help but look at the facts: Nintendo has released more traditional, hardcore games in the Wii’s first two years than they did in the Gamecube’s first four and all of them, with the exceptions of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, have been below the gold standard of Nintendo’s internally developed software from generations past. Super Paper Mario was a vicious bore of a game, Metroid Prime 3 had none of the creative spirit of the first two, Zelda: Twilight Princess was a bloated retread in dire need of an editor, and games like Fire Emblem and Super Mario Strikers were competent, but were simply more of the same. Even after this passed July’s E3, I wasn’t disturbed by Nintendo’s lack of support for hardcore gamers. I was disturbed by the apparent lowering of standards in their software. There are many Wii games that I am very excited to play, like MadWorld, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, House of the Dead: Overkill, Oboro Muramasa, and Fragile. But none of these titles come from Nintendo.

I hate sounding like the disgruntled misanthrope. But I refuse to ask less of a development house that strove for nothing short of perfection in the past.

Related links:

WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out
Disaster: Day of Crisis Comes Out in October. Right. Sure.
E3 Day Two: Spin, Malaise, Sony’s New Clothes, and Nintendo’s True Disruption
Christmas in Nintendoland: The Tokyo Conference


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Nadia Oxford said:

Problem here is that I know several thousand gamers who are going to disagree with you about Twilight Princess being "bloated," Metroid Prime 3 being "uncreative" and Paper Mario being a "vicious bore"--myself among them. Well, except paper Mario. That could have been a lot better, considering its pedigree.

October 2, 2008 9:20 PM

Roto13 said:

I haven't played Metroid Prime 3 because I just don't like Metroid games, but fans of the series seem to say it's the best of the trilogy. And I loved Twilight Princess, even if it was the least unique game in the series. It managed to feel fresh enough because it was the first game a lot of people played with the Wiimote. That won't be enough to carry it in he next game, but when you think about it, Ocarina of Time didn't have much going for it besides being 3D as far as innovation was concerned.

I liked Super Paper Mario, but it wasn't nearly as good as The Thousand Year Door. I guess they felt they just couldn't improve on such a masterpiece so they went in an entirely new direction. It was fun, but a lot of the time it felt like it was kind of dragging on.

October 2, 2008 11:27 PM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

In fairness, Twilight Princess and Super Paper Mario aren't really Wii titles in the truest sense of the word, given the former was a GameCube title which was added to the Wii roster at the behest of many fans, and Super Paper Mario was similarly booted over when the GameCube's death knell rang.

It's the <em>next</em> Zelda game on the Wii that I think should be viewed as the benchmark for Wii Zelda titles.  Of course, that notwithstanding, I've enjoyed my time with Twilight Princess far more than I did Ocarina.

As for Super Paper Mario, it's competent, but the developer's strength with that property clearly lies with pure RPGs, rather than mish-mashed RPG/platformer hybrids.  I had a lot of fun with it, but the overall world and characters were less endearing to me than those of The Thousand Year Door or PM64.

I only got to play Metroid Prime briefly, but I think I enjoyed it more than the original, or what I played of it.  To me, the Wii remote controls added a lot.

October 3, 2008 2:50 AM

Amber Ahlborn said:

This Metroid fanatic definitely does not put 3 in the top slot  of the trilogy.  Hang out on a Metroid fan thread and you'll see a lot of people still consider the first game the best one.  If you're curious about my detailed opinion of these games, look no further than my retrospective posts from a couple months ago.  In short though, MP3 while having good, quick pacing and benefiting from the pointer, was very Metroid lite, offering the least in the puzzle and exploration departments that it could get away with and still claim to be a Metroid game.  Yeah, it was fun, but not nearly as robust as the two Primes that came before it.  I would not call this a lowering of quality though.  It was just a different direction to take with the series.  I will say there was a fall in the quality of certain aspects of the game (embarrassingly bad human models for example).

On Twilight Princess, I really enjoyed the game but feel Nintendo took way too conservative an approach to it.  Hmm, I feel another retrospective coming on.

Paper Mario WAS a bore.  It did a lot of really interesting things and I think it would have been okay if they'd cut its length down, namely that awful cloud level.  Actually, this is definitely a game suffering from Too Many Crayons.  It's almost like the dev team got so carried away with being artsy they forgot to add the game.

And yet, none of these games are poor.  They didn't live up to the hype (except for Metroid which could have used some hype), but they certainly aren't the worst games Nintendo has put out.  I think it might be a little premature to worry.  Let's see if Nintendo's next batch of games continues the trend.

October 3, 2008 9:45 AM

Roto13 said:

Well I haven't exactly done any extensive studies about the Metroid Prime fanbase, so all I know is what I've seen on the intarweb. :P

So are you excited about the Wii ports of Metroid Prime 1 and 2, then? Because I'd imagine they'll be integrating the control scheme of Metroid Prime 3.

October 3, 2008 4:02 PM

Amber Ahlborn said:

Not really, no.  I own Prime 1 and 2 obviously and they were built around the gamecube control scheme.  Pointing and shooting had a lock-on and didn't need the sort of manual accuracy Prime 3 did.  Fast weapon and visor switching was more important and that, again, was built around the Gamecube controller.  I will probably rent the "Wii-lease" to check it out, but I remain skeptical at this point that the controls will improve in any way. In fact, I'll be curious to see how they avoid making it clunky since there was a lot more going on button wise in Prime 1 and 2.  I am happy to see a rerelease though.  The more exposure for Metroid the better. 

October 3, 2008 10:09 PM

Bob Mackey said:

I thought Twilight princess was a good game that was ultimately forgettable and irrelevant if you've played OoT;  I seriously can't remember anything about that game other than the dungeon with the Yetis.  Chris Kohler once called this game a "grudge-fucking" for Nintendo fans, and ultimately, that's what it felt like.  "You want ANOTHER Ocarina of Time?  WELL HERE YOU GO."

October 4, 2008 10:57 AM

Roto13 said:

Ha ha, yeah. xP People always complained about Majora's Mask and Wind Waker because they weren't Ocarina of Time. (Silly people. That's not how the series works.)

Actually, I STILL saw a few people complaining like that, because Wolf Link wasn't Young Link. *sigh*

October 4, 2008 1:58 PM

Amber Ahlborn said:

Actually, I'll readily admit that TP being an updated OoT is its biggest draw for me.  OoT has not aged well for me.  I still like it but...yeah.  TP freshened up the formula and I enjoyed it.  I just wish the world outside the dungeons didn't echo so much.

October 6, 2008 12:50 AM

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about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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