Nintendo: Everything Old is New Again (by Greg A.)

June 18, 2011, by Greg A. - E3 has left all of us, the Nintendo crowd, with great feelings of joy. To be sure, Nintendo has been on a downward slope for some time – one needs only to look at the sales of the 3DS – but has now come back with a vengeance, so I think it's time for a little dose of reality. For my own part, the news of an HD console did not make me stand up and cheer; neither did the new controller. Don't get me wrong, I thought the debut video of the Wii U was pretty slick and I'm looking forward to all the cool things that developers will be able to do with it. Still, what excited me most was seeing Arkham City as an announced game for the Wii U. Finally, I thought, all the types of games that I've never gotten to play will soon be mine. Despite all my fan-boy qualities and the love I carry for Mario, Zelda, MarioKart and other Nintendo franchises, the best thing I have to look forward to with Nintendo's new console doesn't really have anything to do with Nintendo.

So what does it mean when I'm more excited for non-Nintendo games? Maybe it means I'm tired of the same old, same old and I want something completely different that Nintendo hasn't been delivering for me. Nintendo seems to always want to be "true to the franchise," which is why Link will never talk (thank God), Pokémon will never be an MMO and Mario will always beat Bowser after Peach is kidnapped. There are people who love each, new iteration of these games and that's fine because there isn't a game that comes from Nintendo without a large amount of polish. I just don't think that's enough anymore; I want more innovation from games that will surprise and impress me – I'm tired of playing the same game with graphical tweaks. In a recent interview, the boss of EA, John Riccitiello, said "Five years ago, I said that the industry had been making the same five games over and over … Since then we've seen an explosion in quality and creativity…" That's true for a lot of publishers, but not Nintendo. They may have innovative technology, but stray far away from changing characters, plots or any of the gameplay from their franchises. They get away with it.


Nintendo?

Is this what we want, as a community of gamers? Do we want Nintendo to remake Ocarina of Time again so we can buy a fifth or sixth copy just on a different console? Do we want Nintendo to be the next Activision and have a Mario game come out every year with barely-visible changes like so many Call of Duty games? Maybe this is a time where we should stand up and say, "No more, Nintendo. No more games that remind us of games we played on the SNES. No more of your old franchises getting a facelift. No more of the same, old games." I love Nintendo so much, that I would happily give anything new they created a try, no matter what any review said. Instead, we get a Zelda with motion+ (the second game from Nintendo to use the attachment they created?), a Kirby apparently very similar to Super Star and no Metroid in sight. But then again, does it even matter? Aren't we just buying these games to remind us of long-lost feelings from the originals?

I know I buy a Zelda and Mario game always in hopes that they will at least be comparable to Ocarina of Time or Link to the Past or Super Mario World (my favorite one) or Super Mario Brothers 3. What I get instead are easy, over-too-soon versions of games that really gave me a run for my money. It took me ten months, when I was in eighth grade, to beat Ocarina of Time the first play through, four weeks for Wind Waker and about a week and a half for Twilight Princess. Maybe it's not fair compare games from a bygone era of difficulty that is rarely matched today, but it's what we got.

I write this now, not as a rant or to inflame your sense of quality, but to point out something that largely goes ignored. Not unnoticed, mind you, but ignored. We all know Nintendo uses the same games over and over and we all recognize that nostalgia is a large part of it (a couple months ago, someone even wrote about it). We also are all able to accept Nintendo as a company that had a few good ideas over twenty years ago that are still being used today. They have innovative hardware, but rehashed software. When is Nintendo going to make an answer to Skyrim that isn't some cookie-cutter JRPG or an answer to Mass Effect that … wait, does Nintendo even do sequels? I mean I guess there are obscure timelines for a couple series, but is there a continued story in the same way that Mass Effect or Portal continues theirs? Or is it just the same character doing different things with no connection whatsoever to any of the events in the previous game? That would be fantastic to see. Some kind of resemblance of a plot other than "save the princess" would be great to have, too, along with some characters that aren't wholly one-dimensional good guys. Sure, Link breaks into people's houses and steals rupees, but how does that makes him feel?


Dr. Katz is as appalled as Link should be.

At the end of the day, I know the things I want most from Nintendo will never happen. I can spend all my time hoping and wishing for things to be different or even boycott the Nintendo games that don't meet my standards of other games, but it won't change anything. Nintendo has been great to its fans, but less so to its franchises, refusing to take them in anything but a lateral move from console to console. The real problem of course, isn't that Nintendo wants to stay with the tried and true aspects of their franchises; it's that we Nintendo lovers will only buy, en masse, games that are like the games of yester year, which we love so dearly. I'm to blame, too. I buy every Zelda, knowing it won't be as good, and then I think less of the games that really try to take the franchise in a new direction (Majora's Mask, Wind Waker).


Fuzzy Pickles.

I've played these giants of gaming past that everyone thinks are the cream of the crop, games that tower over the other, pitiful attempts of the generation, but nothing ever comes close to Ocarina. Is it Nintendo's fault or our own that we want a game that's completely different but then underrate a game that departs from the norms of the franchise? Is it so much to ask that a game be new and old at the same time? Hell, you know what, at this point, I think I'd be happy if they just remade a different old franchise that they've refused to remake so far, like Earthbound or Super Mario RPG.