Nintendo – where are you?
Saturday 17th January 2009
I admit I am a massive Nintendo fan; I have owned pretty much every Nintendo console right back from the NES era and love everything Mario and Zelda. You would think therefore that I love the Wii – I don’t.
Ever since Nintendo fell from grace after the SNES and Sony released the PlayStation I have been hoping Nintendo would regain their rightful place as Number 1. This never looked like a realistic aim, especially considering the comparative sales of the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube. It is fair to say the PS2 massacred the Cube in console sales numbers. It wasn’t all bad though, there was something to be said to be a Nintendo fan during this era. It was like being a member of an elite club: while Sony had all the good 3rd party exclusives, most people who bought the console were “casual gamers” and as such the console was bombarded with 100s of terrible titles. The GameCube meanwhile had some truly excellent games such as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime and Super Smash Bros. Melee that the vast majority of people would never hear of, let alone play.
It was also looking bad on the handheld front: Sony announced the PSP, a device which made the GameBoy Advance seem like something out of the ’80s. They were taking Nintendo on in their strongest market. Many people and industry analysts were calling for Nintendo to give it up: they should jump in with Microsoft and take on Sony together they said. This was a premature call and we can now look back at these ridiculous suggestions knowing as we do the success stories of both Wii and Nintendo DS.
I remember the Revolution (the codename for Wii) being unveiled at E3 in May 2006 and thought straight away Nintendo were on to a winner. Seeing the controller uncovered 6 months later and then the initial software titles confirmed by initial thoughts. I was there on launch day and picked up the console and have enjoyed playing many great games such as Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess on the console. However the console has lost its way… badly.
We are three years into the console’s life and still everyone is talking about Wii Sports. Sure it is good, but it is hardly awe inspiring and due to the fact Wii has become the platform of this generation, it, like the PS2 before it, has countless mind-numbingly bad games on it. Games like: SPOGS Racing, Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed and Boogie all awful.
Nintendo is not helping by releasing so many games for casual gamers, forgetting its core fan base. Fans that helped it survive during the bad times when others like Sega perished. Here we are in January 2009 and I don’t even know of a game coming up that I want to buy on the platform this year. Yet I have to listen to all these new fans talk about how great Wii Fit is or how the latest bowling game is unreal. The worst part is that these people won’t buy titles such as Super Mario Galaxy: a fantastic game, so rich in design and gameplay it puts most others to shame.
I am loving the fact Nintendo is doing so well but for goodness sake Ninty wake up and stop this madness! I long for the old days when Nintendo wasn’t seen to be cool.
