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Miyamoto vs. Everyone Else
Ian_Bailey writes "Wired writes Nintendo won't grow up, because of Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator of some of the most popular franchises, and the head of most of Nintendo's creative development, constantly aims his games at children. Many other devloppers admire his creativity, and believe that a mature-themed game would rock the entire industry. A very interesting read, and a bit of insight into the 'God of Games'."
MIYAMOTO RULES. he's the genius behind all of the big n's top games. his track record speaks for it's self.
No mature themed games? What about Conker's Bad Fur Day?
Yeah, okay, some of his games are good. But to call him the God of games? I don't think so.
Miyamoto's games aren't aimed at kids, per se. They're aimed at the young at heart, those that can set aside their preconceived notions and enjoy a game regardless of how "realistic" or "mature" it is.
I've been playing the Japanese import of the GameCube "Legend of Zelda" game, and it's easily the best game ever made, irrespective of it's "toon-shading".
So what's wrong with colorful graphics and cartoonish characters? Do games have to feature gore and ultra-violence to be entertaining? Hell no.
and believe that a mature-themed game would rock the entire industry.
The average demographic for video games is not as badly skewed towards pubescent males as it once was - I think I remember reading somewhere that the median age was between 19-20. If the target audience is growing up, Nintendo will probably alienate people who would prefer more mature themes - and 'mature' does not necessarily have to connote sex - unless they wake up.
That aside, I admire the man for his principles.
Mature as in "This is not for kids, this contains violence", or "this is something that belongs at www.somethingawful.com/hentai" ? If it's 'adult' in the sense of 'hentai' then let's just leave it where it is. If it's adult as in 'not a kids video game' then they should move forward...
Other console companies aiming for the adult market (like most xbox and ps2 titles); Nintendo is a breath of fresh air for those people still buying for their kids.
You can count on the nintendo offerings to be kid friendly and family oriented. I'll admit that's not really my cup of tea, but it's definitely the strong part of the market for Nintendo.
Any deviation from that plan would be a mistake in my opinion.
Devloppers strikes me as a very funny word. Sounds like management, lopping developers heads off.
Maybe someone should devlop Miyamoto.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Italian plumbers?
Last time I checked, Italian plumblers != santa claus.
who knew?
nbfn
That's kind of a fucked up thing to say...can someone mod that down to, say, -1000?
When their numbers dwindled from 50 to 8, the dwarves began to suspect Hungry.
Ñ'
Need I say more?
yeah, he keeps making "kiddy" games, But he makes inovation in design and came up with ,well we all know what hes done. While i do enjoy mature games, i dont see the problem with not making them, he doesnt want to, what would be so much better about a mature game? blood? guns? and there are other people making mature games that are good, so we should all be happy nintendo makes "kiddy" games that ARE good
there was a game on one of the commadore or atari systems (I had both, many versions) called Mario Brothers. Luigi and mario were in a 'joust' style repeating side scroller with pipes, shell turtles, enemies and all before Super Mario Brothers on NES came out. It was by far my fav of the series. He always manages brilliant games.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
I've never really considered "metroid" a kid's game either. Some of the plot is best enjoyed by more audiences, and the animation is more of a dark and sinister at times rather than comical.
I don't understand why the poster believes that if Miyamoto produced a mature-themed game would "rock the world".
In my gaming experience, the level of maturity has very little to do with how well the game plays, it's much more of a "target the audience" marketing tool than a game design choice.
Besides, if Nintendo chose to shift to a more mature audience, they'd be going much more directly head-to-head with PS2 (a suicidal act, if anything.)
It used to be that a game was good if it was fun and innovative. Now the more pixelated gore a game has, the better it sells. Miyamamoaoto(sp?) maybe making games that seem kiddie now, but that's just because they don't meet the gorey standards of what a game needs to have to be 'mature'. Hardcore gamers still know that Miyamoto's are just as fun as they were back in the day. Or maybe it's because I was a kid back in the day...
"Pokemon Stadium 2" is not a mature game?! oh oh ...
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Seamus Blackley of MS says: .... He's reinforcing stereotypes about games, not pushing them to a place where they can become something different and truly awesome."
;) .
"He is not helping things
What? All Miyamoto has done throughout his career is making truly awesome and different games!! The idea of a platform game (the original mario); the epic action adventure (zelda series); bringing videogames into 3D (mario 64). Virtually every project he has made or simply produced has been stellar.
Pikmin is a great example of a 'different' game. Has anyone played the latest Metroid (Prime)- the BEST GAME ever. And the next Zelda will be out in March (Metroid may have a short-lived stay at the top).
I've been a videogamer since 85, so I know what this man has brought to every console generation. Nintendo might have to freeze this guy like Disney froze Walt
I liked the article in general though - this man is truly a GOD. I don't care if his games are cutesy - they are the BEST!
smd4985
This all depends on how you look at it, I suppose - on one hand, the generation of kids who grew up with Nintendo are now in their twenties and thirties, and probably want games that have more mature themes, or that hark back to their favourite game characters from childhood (Notice Nintendo's heavy reliance on characters they created in the 1980's!).
OTOH, parents (hopefully) want a game console where most of the game titles would be "safe" for their children to play - Nintendo delivers.
Looks like Miyamoto wants Nintendo to take the latter.
Illegitimi non Carborundum.
I am a 30 year old gamer, I currently own and enjoy games in all three consoles, and I enjoy playing games like Splinter Cell and Eternal Darkness as I do Ape Escape and Sonic. I enjoy a game because it is addictive, it makes me want to play it more and, sometimes, because I like the story. Not because it has an adult theme, whatever that might be.
To finish of, I will say the following: the current generation of games has been spoilt with stupidly complex, hyper-hyped games with idiotic stories without any real substance (the last three Final Fantasy games being the best example) that they cannot appreciate that a game has to be innovative, simple and addictive to be good. There were no such things as "adult games" ten-fifteen years ago, yet people got by... I am looking forward to Zelda coming out in Europe, as I am sure lots of thirtysomething /.ers are. I am hoping it will maintain the standards set by Ocarina of time and Majora's mask and I do not care in the least whether the graphics are "childish" or not. Play the game, I say, not look at it.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Personally I hope Miyamoto and Nintendo keep making kid oriented games. I am a father of 2.5 kids and my two oldest like playing video games with dad ocassionally. Now I would much rather have a nice and happy light themes of Nintendo's usual fare than the hard core action/destruction that Xbox seems to be focused on. However, I do like the more mature oriented games when the kids have gone to bed, etc, which is why I will prolly end up having both a game cube and Xbox eventually. I bet MS would sell a heck of lot more Xbox's if they made a few more family oriented games.
When you're making a game where you only have a few bytes to describe the character, you have to think up something creative or else the character will be boring or won't make sense. So, he thinks up a plumber who always wears red and his brother who prefers green. Mario gets a few extra pixels around his stomach.
But now, with full 3-D games, they could make whatever characters they wanted to. Your character could look like a relatively normal peson because you could display all kinds of little subtleties that would be impossible when you're working in 4 or 8 bit. But we're seeing the original 8 bit characters like Mario or Donkey Kong translated into full 3D. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's kind of funny if you think about it. I think limitations encourage creativity.
I'm thinking there will be another Video Game crash. Too many systems, way too many games. Just like how Atari went down.
All the games on the market are crappy racing games, crappy first person shooters, or crappy RPG's.
He's working on mariokart for the cube right now right? Seeing that I've been playing the last one for the last 7 years, I havent really had time to read up on when the next one should be due out. Have any of those rumor sites said anything beyond "yeah 2001 sometime"?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
[obscure nintendo ref:]Hey, is Ian Bailey related to Justin?[/obscure nintendo ref]
A rolling stone is worth two in the bush!
It's my personal belief that because the "computer graphics" industry is so young, we're still trying to pack as much realism into our games as possible.
I think as the medium matures, we'll start to see more interesting and abstract art forms immerging from graphics. Games that are based around gameplay, will start to take over again, as graphics become something that you can manipulate the way you want to.
The graphics should become a way to help create an environment for the game. It shouldn't be the reason for creating the game.
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
The target market these days is the twenty-something male. This guy is not a good business man if he is devoting most of Nintendo's resources to children's games.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Super Mario Bros. was the first game to present a world so complex and extensive it had to be mapped to be understood.
Shhh. Don't let Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Andrew Greenberg, Robert Woodhead, or Richard Garriott hear that. They might die laughing.
The musical score - a first in gaming - gave areas within the gamespace a distinct atmosphere, eerie in one place, jaunty in another.
Again, this is just console-developer arrogance at its worst (or more precisely, idiot Wired journalist ignorance at its normal levels). Ultima III had an orchestral score on the Apple ][ in 1983.
Yes, please Mr. Miyamoto, give me a game with sex and drugs and violence. My pathetic mind can't possibly be interested in fantastic gamplay. I need to see a little breast and some ass in order really like a game. Those boring games like Super Mario World just don't interest me. Couldn't I get to see the Princess' goods? How about throwing in a few pimps and whores? Don't you know that I don't play games for the gameplay?.
OK, for one, this article totally glosses over Metroid Prime, which was an excellent game, and definitely had me a little freaked out and scared for Samus' mortality. not really a game aimed at preteens...
second, i kind of take offense at the idea that a game that doesn't drip with gore isn't aimed at adults. maybe i don't go for the garish motif of games like the Quake series. it's not because i'm unprepared to handle it; it's just that i think it's... tacky.
third, if you look at the general population of adults (not just adult gamers), i think kids are more likely to be able to wrap their minds around videogames than adults. it's sort of a stereotype, but it's true.. how many kids do you know that could wipe the floor with their parents and older relatives with any head-to-head game? so saying a game is "just aimed at kids" is sort of misunderstanding the situation a bit, imho.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Miyamoto is doing what he does best. You don't change what you are good at, especially if you hold a strong position in a specific niche of a market or industry. If Nintendo came out with their own gory or sexy video game, I really think it would flop. Just goes to show that you don't need sex and violence to make a great product that will be loved by millions.
devloppers! devloppers! devloppers! devloppers!
Get on your feet!
*does the steve ballmer monkey dance*
I dont think nintendo really had a reputation for developing games aimed at children until Nintendo 64 came out. Up until then you had some amazing titles that, while not full of gore were still not "aimed" at children.
Castlevania, Megman, Metroid . Come on, these games were just amazing. In fact they still are. But Nintendo has ceased to develop quality, wide audience games (w/ the exception of maybe zelda) and has instead mass produced crap for children under age fourteen.
Why cant they do both?
Call me a philistine but I like it loads better than Pikmin. Pikmin is far too hard
come on, shoot some fish!
Go on, shoot some fish!
But they often make mistakes. I mean, I hope things are better with their Gamecube model that's out now.
Back in the N64 days, though, it was often:
1. Take an old SFC/NES title
2. Add "64" to it
3. Take away the plot
4. Make all the gameplay elements shit
5. Give it crappy polygonal gfx
6. Make some silly ads for it
7. Delay it
8. Delay it again
9. Delay it again
10. Delay it again
11. Either repeat from step 8 or release it
Kind of harsh, but kind of true as well. This is why they lost so much ground to the Playstation and X-Box consoles. N64 just didn't cut it, and the kids weren't interested.
I had more of a fancy for nintendo back in the day of NES and even a little of SNES. But lately its been going downhill in my mind, maybe because of the game target audience. I had a Playstation, and we have a PS2 in our apartment now, and I just can't bring myself to buy a game cube (although I'd like to pick up an NES with Mario 3 if I get the chance).
But basically, I can't seem to get into any of the new nintendo games. Give me an xbox with Halo or Splinter Cell, or a PS2 with GT3 or something and I'll be set for weeks. But the new games have lost me... And maybe it's because I'm older, and his targeting is working, I don't know.
but you have to give credit to a guy who did so much for a company and still continues to pump them out, no matter my opinion of them...
So he design more "childish" games, not "mature" ones. I would think that his track record speaks for itself. Mario. Zelda. Donkey Kong. You know, like, all of the biggest titles from Nintendo.
It's not like money is an issue for him or Nintendo. He could try and design anything he wanted, but this is what he want to do. No one can force him to design a "mature" game, and even if they could force him, his heart wouldn't be in it, and the game would suck.
Article summary:
He's built a huge, successful company. It's still doing well. He's always advanced the state of the art. His games are well designed. They get critical praise, and most sell in numbers that other companies would kill for. But, he didn't great GTA, so he sucks.
A.
hentai (noun, Japanese)
:)
1) pervert, perversion
2) metamorphosis
Naturally, I'm speaking about the less-used, second definiton...
Personally I see no reason why Nintendo shouldn't keep on making "kids" games for their systems, especially for the GameBoy, which I'm sure is mostly played by the younger sort.
What really needs to happen is for some more "adult" games to be made for the GameCube. (And here I'm thinking along the lines of GTA3, not BMX XXX...)
It will probably take a handfull of really good games to change the Big N's reputation from being a kiddie console. Which shys away older gamers, which keeps the necessary games from being made for the system, which just reinforces the status quo...
I don't know if they will ever be able to pull it off. Having as much 3rd party support from companies like Capcom and SEGA will help.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
My main problem with this article is with Seamus Blackley opening up his mouth.
I'll be honest - the Xbox has some cool ideas to it - I like the hard drive, I like the speed, and the graphics look nice. That Mr. Blackley can be proud of.
On the other hand, can somebody please tell me what game Mr. Blackley has made that was actually fun? Trespasser? (Lord, God, protect us.)
Mr. Blackley is a very good technical person and programmer - when it comes to things like physics, or making complex systems work, he's somebody to talk to.
The problem is he obviously does not know jack shit about what makes a fun game - him spouting off about how Miyamato is maintaining gaming stereotypes is the stupidest thing I've ever seen.
Miyamato has spent almost 20 years making games that are fun - always different, usually surprising and innovative. What, we're going to critique Miyazaki because he makes Spirited Away instead of "Animated Blood, Gore and Guts II"?
Miyamato has the freedom to make whatever games he likes - and I know this sounds fanboyish, but I like them. I have yet to play one that I didn't enjoy, that didn't give me hours of fun and wild-eyed enjoyment, sometimes fast and frantic (Starfox), sometimes thoughtful (Mario Brothers Sunshine), sometimes just beautiful (Pikmin and Zelda: The Wind Waker), and sometimes epic (Zelda: The Ocarina of Time).
I like a good violent romp as much as the next gamer - but when I want to play a game that does more than push my adrenaline button, you always come home to Miyamato. And I honestly thing that Mr. Blackley is a little bit jealous of that - because when the time comes, Blackley will be a footnote of gaming history, and Miyamato will be an entire book in itself.
Of course, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Look at the SIMS. You don't need blood and gore to have a VERY successful game. Of course having said that, I did write Pocket War a umm, well, er... war game.
Pocket PC Games
"The most important thing is for games to be fun," [Miyamoto] says. "I cannot tell you exactly what that means. It is something you feel, I think."
Ya know, that should be so intuitively obvious, but you look at so many games these days and it seems like this fundamental rule is not followed nearly as often as it should be.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
to Nintendo.
If there wasn't a system aimed at kids, there would be no older gamers! My age group is crazy about video games. PC, XBox, PS2, GC. We eat everything up...but we all got hooked early on and a lot of that credit goes to Nintendo. I personally still prefer Nintendo...maybe its nostalgia, but they still seem much more together than any of the competitors. Rock on NINTENDO!
What kills me, are all these self proclaimed 'advanced' developers making all these crappy games like GTA. What they don't seem to get is that their games aren't selling because they make good games. Their games are selling because the masses don't/can't/won't look beyond surface imagery. It's the same reason why television in North America is so 'blue collar', why books are a dying breed, why movies may as well just be porn for all the quality that exists in them.
Miyamoto's games shed the simple trappings of 'image' and give you substance. THAT's why they're so successful in the longterm. In 10 years, will anyone even remember GTA except as another flash in the pan violent-and-gritty-to-get-publicity games? Not likely. Will they remember Zelda, Mario, etc? Absolutely.
Console markets are cyclic (just like everything). Eventually the kids playing GTA will grow up and see that there's more to life than appearance (whether it be looking cool, glamorous, dark, etc.) and that it's the fun-factor that makes them play games. Of course, then we'll see a flood of cutesy games that suck...
- Z
There's a fine line between genius and stupidity. Genius has limits.
My wife surprised me for Christmas this year and bought me a GameCube. She couldn't hook it up to the TV (*grin*) but there it was. Can't wait for availability of the broadband adapter, and some games next year which are geared for on-line play!
MORTAR COMBAT!
I think this quote by Miyamoto from the article sums it up best-
""People often talk about Grand Theft Auto. But I am not sure whether that sort of extreme subject matter is always appropriate. They also talk about the future of games being a kind of virtual reality. But I am not convinced that being more realistic makes better games."
More power to him. GTA3 is all bloody and "realistic", to be sure, but there's a reason why i've always seemed to have a copy of a Mario Bros. game at hand for the better part of 10 years now. I play games to escape reality, not to simulate it.
I'm 22 years old, and I think there's enough blood, guts, and violence in life already...Give me something bright, intricate, and engaging(and yes, "kiddy") with his name on it above the latest 3D shooter junk any day.
They claim that he's not doing anything unique or fulfilling his potential, and practically in the same breath say that he should conform with the rest of the industry and make "mature" games. Anyone else see the hypocrisy?
Miyamoto has been making the greatest video games of all time since he began. The peon developers think games like GTA are the "future of video games." God, I hope not. Miyamoto, please save the industry!(again!)
A very interesting read, and a bit of insight into the 'God of Games'.
:)
I thought that as a reader of Slashdot, John Carmack was our resident god of games?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
the adult-themed game Miyamoto creates is the fellatory oral gangbang you all seem to want to perpetrate on him. He DESIGNS VIDEO GAMES, people.. he doesn't get you laid or feed your family or buy you things you need to survive..
Mario--Oh, yeah....Who's your daddy?
Toadstool--You are, Mario!!!
Ahem...
/end jerkness
Miyamoto , imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
and
In Soviet Russia
Everyone else vs. Miyamoto
I remember when I was back in high school in the late 1980s (mixed black & white), there were of course always groups of kids small and large who would talk about playing the old 8-bit Nintendo sysetm during study hall, lunch, and after school. Sure, a few of them were black, but most of the
kids in any given group were white.
I was watching TV today, and they were showing a packed school auditorium in a black neighborhood. As the camera panned the auditorium, I noticed that literally every single student was black. No whites whatsoever. And that got me to thinking: I wonder if groups of these kids in this school get together and play Nintendo Gamecube, X-Box, Playstation, etc. or any other console game system? Or, are they just culturally not interested in such things?
Is it the price? Is it a cultural thing (white people prefer games, blacks prefer sports)? Is it a DNA thing?
If you can shed any kind of insight into this, I'd appreciate it.
I also reckon that shying away from the photo-realistic eye-candy approach also means that you have to focus on gameplay which I quite often feel is sadly lacking from a lot of the more "modern adult games"
The only Good System is a Sound System
The need to attract new audiences is transforming gaming from a niche market to mainstream entertainment, and that means more grown-up fare.
Why? They already stated in the article that the gaming industry is huge. Mario has outsold Star Wars, a feat which ANY industry should be thrilled to attain. I believe the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies quite nicely here...nothing appears to be broken, people are still buying Nintendo games left and right. If they made more games like the old Nintendo 8bit games, I'd go out and buy them. Castlevania for the GBA? Total throwback to castlevania 1-3 on the Nintendo...I bought them and am still playing them both. Zelda, rereleased on the GBA? Absolutely, getting it ASAP.
Why should the paradigm started by Miyamoto change while it still has consumers and they aren't complaining?
--trb
...hope he doesn't change his style. It's actually pretty hard to find games these days that don't involve so much violence, gore, or sex, and there are too many people who forget that you don't need that stuff all the time to create great games.
With that in mind, can anyone name a PC game that can appeal to both young children and adults and (obviously) has no violence, gore, or sex? Didn't think so.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
However think about it, most consoles cater to the people who's first system was an atari 2600 or NES. We're all 18-25 (ish). We are growning up so we like mature themed games, however, we are growing up. Families and childeren are comming into the picture for a good portion of us, and disposalable income is on the wane. If they keep targeting us primarily and vewing the younger audience as the red headded stepchild, they may target their way right out of the market. Nintendo, however, has consistently aimed for the ~6-teen gamer while other companies keep trying to grow up with the first gen console gamers. The younger audience either has mommies ear for money,or has that first job with money to burn.
-- Insert wisdom here:
For the first time in my life, I had no idea what a great game for the PC was, for the past 12 months of my life.
That's not to say I haven't been gaming it up. I have all of the newest Nintendo first party titles. Miyamoto is a breath of fresh air. He may not subscribe to the same gameplay as the rest of the designers, but his games which show obvious influence are amazing works, and help me brave this storm of realism, violent and sometimes team-based games inspired by Counterstrike and GTA3.
I do think it's ironic that the major trend in game development is to innovate by moving away from Miyamoto's style. We have a lot of innovation, but it's all heading in the same direction!
He is not helping things," says Seamus Blackley, the former head of Microsoft's Xbox team who now runs the Capital Entertainment Group...[Blackley] speaks for many game designers...who admire the master's work but are desperate for something new.
"At this point," Blackley continues, "Miyamoto is making games for his fans. Granted, there are millions of them, and it's smart business, but most are kids. He's not opening up adult audiences. He's reinforcing stereotypes about games, not pushing them to a place where they can become something different and truly awesome."
Who the FSCK does Blackley think he is? He's a shoddy co-designer of the Xbox who stepped down to head a non-existent software company who has yet to demonstrate they do anything but blow smoke up each others' asses all day about how great the Xbox is. And he's criticizing Shigeru Miyamoto?
Miyamoto created this industry. After the gaming crash of the late 80's (Atari generation) it was the Famicom from Nintendo that reinvigorated the industry, bringing it back from the brink of extinction. And why was the Famicom (NES outside Japan) so successful? It was successful because of Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda, both coming from Shiggy. There was no side-scroller before Super Mario Brothers. There was no top-down adventure/RPG before Zelda. He invented the fscking genre and Seamus FSCKING Blackley is doubting him?
Oh, and my favorite part: "He's reinforcing stereotypes." If that stereotype is "A whole helluva lot of fun" then he's right. But what Blackley is referring to is the "video games are for kids" stereotype. This coming from a guy who openly endorced BMX XXX, the most immature piece of donkey shit ever to be published on a video game console, chock full of hot dog vendors talking about "huge weiners" and dogs humping on the sidewalk. Apparently, Blackley thinks video games are for immature 6th graders who can't get a hold of a porno magazine.
Shigeru Miyamoto is a genius. He continues to develop innovative games, even 22 years after Donkey Kong was first programmed. Anybody who doubts me should look at Pikmin and the latest Zelda. To see a third-rate hack insult him infuriates me.
In computing terms, this is like the man responsible for programming Clippy telling Linus Torvalds that he's washed up and is holding back the computer industry with his old software. Complete bullshit, and I'm not afraid to say it (and subsequently get modded down).
Nintendo is trying desperately to get away from the Kid image.
I'm sure you have all heard of the game BMXXXX. It is a BMX bike game that features strippers and nudity. The PS2 version of the game is censored (no nudity), the Xbox has less nudity. THe only console not to censor the game was Nintendo's.
Also, the sleeper hit of the summer on Gamecube is a game called Eternal Darkness that features characters that slip into dementia.
Also the latest Turok game (FPS) was ported to Gamecube.
Nintend
I expected to see people raving about how much crap Nintendo games are. They're kiddy games etc. Thankfully few people have chimed in with that garbage.
People make fun of me for owning a Gamecube. Why would I play a bunch of goofy little kids games? I say, since when did I need to play video games to feel grown up? I can go down a couple blocks to the bad part of town, or watch the news to see violence and war. I want to get away from that for a little while.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
An AC wrote:
Ooh, I'd love to see you call this guy a "Teletubby". A real pity he is too busy in Japanese movie theatres at the moment to have time to give you the response such an insult would richly deserve. ;)
Why don't you get out from in front of your XBox for a few minutes and check out the GameCube aisle in a local video game store. There are a wide varity of games available for all ages and interests. Not to mention the best Godzilla game ever in his 48 year history!
"His power is unequalled.
His battles are legendary.
His return is near...
Godzilla 2000
If you can't take the heat, RUN!"
From the "Godzilla 2000" trailer.
It is games just like GTA3 which will lead to industry stagnation. Miyamoto continues to find new ways to innovate, particularly with simplified controls and fun game concepts. Super Smash Bros., for example, takes the idea of the fighting game and make it accessable to everyone by removing complex controls while retaining the fun aspects of fighting games like combos and character differences. Games like GTA3 stagnate on providing all of its entertainment through simple violence alone, something even Resident Evil tends to stay away from by putting a focus on puzzle solving as well as bloodshed. GTA3 gets old fast, and face it, you're just plain immature and idiotic if that's all you can understand. People don't play GTA3 to explore a vast world and complete jobs like a mobster, they play it to run over pedestrians and beat the tar out of old ladies. I guess that's a big hit with the Holywood frenzied, television desensetized ignorance of American "culture" though.
industry. They take themselves way too seriously.
emotionally engrossing, visually stunning, socially influential expressions that capture and inform the spirit of the times.
Hey man, it's just a stinkin game. Just like, hey man, it's just a stinkin movie. Not to say that you can't create art or entertainment that has some social significance, but that's not the point of the content. Media servers two primary purposes, to inform or to entertain. Any broader social relevance is few and far between.
Also, why the focus on "adult content"? As a medium to entertain, shouldn't that be the primary goal of the game, to entertain? If he enjoys creating games that happen to be very good and very successful, why would he need to change? Are people having significantly fewer kids so the kid market is not significant anymore? I would think that it is the complete opposite (well not that people are having more kids necessarily), but as adults view consoles and games as commonplace as the tv, more and more kids will be playing more and more games (though not necessarily on consoles), making that market more important.
I for one am glad that he's telling the "establishment" to bugger off. Funny how in a industry that claims to value independance and differentation, that people are trying to make one of it's most creative members conform.
In fall 2001, Nintendo's GameCube became the third entry in a hotly contested console battle that includes Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. Currently, Sony has a commanding lead, with 40 million units sold, while Nintendo and Microsoft struggle for a distant second place with 6 million units each
While I would agree that the XBox and Playstation are in direct competition, it seems like Nintendo diferentiates itself enough to compete. Not only do they target the games differently, but Nintendo prices it's consoles $50 lower and puts them in bright colors. They don't play DVD's like PS2 or XBox. It seems like Nintendo's goal is to offer something a little different, less features for a lower price, and that could be a winning strategy. (Not to mention not using CD's as media cuts down on the mod chipping piracy)
Also, I wouldn't say all their fans are kids. 2 of my former coworkers, ages 22 and 27, were huge fans of Super Monkey Ball 3
I have blog like everyone else
I do not personally feel this way, I was actually paraphrasing Blackley:
There isn't anyone on the planet better at lasering into the lizard brain, that eye-attached-to-your-hand-attached-to-your-brain thing that makes it impossible to stop playing. GTA3 is good, but it's not revolutionary. What Miyamoto could bring to a game like that would be incredible.
I 'copied' the quote from memory, and misleadingly put quote marks around it.
I actually fully support Miyamoto and Nintendo, as I believe they are one of the few companies in the industry innovating anymore. I have recently purchased and been playing Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime. Very neat games.
if all movies were G rated.
Should I be in the mood to watch something a little darker or more emotionally complex there wouldn't be anything out there for me (and no, mature topics doesn't have to contain gore, violence or sex).
I feel the same way about video games.
Unfortunately the game industry is in the phase of trying to make every game appeal to a broad audience ($)... sometimes at the expense of creativity and innovation.
Having played a lot of nintendo as a kid, I kind of expect them to grow up too.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
The gaming industry right now seems to be grinding to a halt in terms of innovation. How many more NFL or run 'n' gun games do we need? Miyamoto at least is strong enough to keep the marketing mooks who are rapidly taking control away from the true creative spirits from dominating Nintendo! And to my way of thinking that's a very very good thing.
Delivering militantly anti-commercial music to all two people who care!
Oooookaaaay. So those of use who used consoles in the 70's don't count? You truly want a pioneer, try Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell or Wally Higginbotham. Miyamoto is a great designer, but he stands on the shoulders of others.
Never mind that Metroid Prime was developed in Austin, Texas and Miyamoto didn't have a whole lot to do with the game let alone the design.
Miyamoto is truly innovative and a great game designer, but his innovations are not all encompassing. He focuses on the one player gaming experience. Nintendo is notably neglecting the online experience reportedly due to Miyamoto's direction.
I believe online has more than proven itself. Nintendo's stubornness to deny its gamers online experience will be seen as akin to their mistake in denying developers the CD medium (which they've finally caught up with in the GameCube with the proprietary mini-disc).
Miyamoto continues to break new ground and innovate but he does not address multiplayer issues. The online experience is open for a new generation of game designers. The PC game designers are likely to migrate to the consoles for a more controlled, reliable gaming platform, and the online gaming experience will eventually become the principal area for gaming and innovation.
Miyamoto trailblazed one player gaming. It'll be fun to see who trailblazes the next generation of games.
You sah, are a 10 year old idiot.
Now go away, your failure to first post is a disgrace
Imagine you as a world renowed pottery master. You make new designs that sell millions of copies, get praises from critics. Because you're really really good at it.
And then crowd starts to scream around you "Now you Mister Potter stop this nonsence this instant! Think how many sculptures of nekkid ladies can you make and how it would advance the business of selling nekkid sculptures! Go ahead, make one right now!".
Strange, isn't it? Yet it's ok to do so to video game developers. If at certain point artist decides to move to another area -- it's his own business. If he keeps making creations of the same kind, nobody should complain.
Hyperom.com
What many people may not realize at first thought is that keeping your game rated G is the best move you can make.
If you start inserting "adult" themes, you are most likely to insert "male fantasy" themes. Not only this alienates the kids, but also most of the potential female players.
But if you stay with the common lowest denominator, a "General" audience, then you are targeting the whole market. Of course this pressuposes that you are not targeting exclusively to kids by inserting repetitive old jokes (barney style), but instead focus on larger storytelling (zelda style) that people of all ages can relate to.
Then if your game is of superior quality, it will prevail. But designing these games are much harder than inserting "male fantasy", and that's why we get things such as BMX-XXX...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Miyamoto's games are always a lot of fun. Who needs "maturity", whatever that means? As long as he keeps making games that are fun, I will keep buying them.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Super Mario Bros. was the first game to present a world so complex and extensive it had to be mapped to be understood.
Pitfall, anyone?
You had to map it to understand the workings of the tunnels well enough to complete the game in the time limit.
In fact, I didn't think SMB needed to be mapped out due to the world structure.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Just a nitpick from a coward, Mario was a carpenter in Donkey Kong.
Publicly Nintendo has said previously that they have nothing against "mature" games but that they themselves have not made any. In light of that, this seems to be a statement that Nintendo won't put out any in the future, not that their platform won't be the target of any such development.
The story as posted seems to frame it as "The Gamecube will never have a mature game on it." which is already untrue. Look at Resident Evil or BMX XXX.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
Just because you played Nitendo games as a kid doesn't mean that they have to suit you. This is like expecting Fisher Price to grow up with you and make sex toys now that you're 22. C'mon, if they want to target kids, let them do so, it's a hell of a profitable market really. Let Playstation 2 be the adult toy.
In Japan, "magic mushrooms" are still legal.
... hi bingo
I don't understand why people can't enjoy games like Mario Sunshine or Pikmin. These games have a universal appeal, that is, they're FUN. When I play a Miyamoto game, I'm not thinking about graphics. That's a great achievement. So many games today you play, and when you think about it, you're not actually having fun, you're just admiring the graphics or some other feature. Nintendo is one of the very few game companies I can count on to create and publish games that are fun.
I used to be a hardcore PC gamer, but I bought a gamecube in July and I haven't even wanted to play any PC games since then. It really makes me wonder why the gamecube is doing so poorly in the USA, it has so many great games in it's first year. But I guess that shows you the video game industry is becoming like the movie industry. Flashy, pretty pieces of garbage with no conent will thrive, while the really great things are appreciated by a caring minority.
Eternal Darkness was no sleeper hit. It actually performed very poorly, barely selling 100,000 in North America (from rough estimates).
*shrugs*
Well, I'm buying it this winter, maybe sales will pick up for Christmas...
Does a game have to feature ultra violence and gore to be entertaining? No, of course not, but it doesn't need to feature ultra violence and gore to be adult. Morrowind wasn't a gory or ultra violent game, per se, however it featured many adult themes (drugs, assassinations, etc). I have to draw the line at playing a game "for the young at heart" when they put too many kiddy themes into it. I don't go see Disney movies in the theatre, nor do I play Disney style games at home. Playing a game with a plumber who squirts things with a fruity watergun is just too childish for me. I like my movies to be witty and thought provoking, and I like my games to feature similar themes. No cutesy bunnies or pokemon style critters for me, thank you very much
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
What's so wrong with making games that aren't "adult"? There are tons of games for mature audiences if you want something bloody or intellectually stimulating, but if you just want to sit around and play, with some familiar characters and a bit of light plot? Sometimes things like Mario and such are a great way to just chill. ^_~
So if Nintendo wants to keep making "childish" games, more power to 'em.
~The Incredible Xan~
"Saying that men can't be lesbians is gender discrimination."
I think that there's a lot of eltism too as the average gamer age continues to go up. Hardcore gamers continue to derride Myst, but the facts stand that it remains one of the best selling games ever. Hardcore gamers make fun of games that don't meet their standard (i.e. not hard enough, not long enough, not innovative), and they make it extremely difficult for new players to belong (i.e. noob killing in coutnerstrike, the ultima online debacle, etc). This elitism is what's bad for the industry too, because you don't grow an industry by excluding people. You grow it by expanding the number of people who love to play games, and that means some of them like easy to access games, which is what Miyamoto does extremely well. So to say Miyamoto is bad for the industry, is just plain dumb.
This is what Market segmentation is alla bout. i.e. separating different types of games to define who they compete against, and try to make their segment grow. I think he used a poor choice of words and an unfortunately poor article to make his point.
One more point - at what point is video game design an art? Miyamoto does what he does, and he does it well. He stays focused on family (not kids) games. He's earned his spot in the industry, and he can do whatever he wants. I'm sure if he wanted to do a niche hardcore game, then he would. He probably won't do it because Seamus told him so.
Miyamoto's games--and Nintendo's games in general--are targeted toward all ages, with the exception of a group from about 15-25 who reject them as being remnants of the childhood they have left behind. The typical pattern is:
:)
Ages 6-14: "These games are great fun!"
Ages 15-25: "Nintendo games are for kids! I want mature games!" [Where "mature" means either dark science fiction or extreme violence.]
Ages 26+: "These games are great fun!"
It's been amusing to watch how often this occurs. You can see kids hit an age where the reject Mario and flock toward stuff like Resident Evil. Then after a while they work through it all and just play what's fun. Most of the time. Some people never give it up
"constantly aims his games at children"
I think it would be great if somebody made games aimed at children. Nintendo has a whopping 2, maybe 3. OK, a couple more if you count the Pokemon stuff...but we don't do Pokemon in our house because some things are too stinking annoying (ie. Barney, Power Rangers, etc).
I seem to always buy a machine when the next generation comes out so that I can get it on the cheap. I bought the N64 because I was silly and assumed that there would be tens of thousands of games suitable for my (young,
So, if this dude is holding Nintendo back in some way (and Nintendo does seem to be the lackluster of the 3) then it's an odd thing. It's as if they're saying "we'll do games for kids", but then don't.
No matter. That stupid little non-DVD format is reason enough I'll ignore the Gamecube and go with PS2 next.
I had to reread the story to grasp what
the hell it was talking about.
The correct conjunction here is BUT, not AND.
Bloody illiterates.
This kind of thinking is already beginning. Recently, Cel-shading has become popular, feature in Jet Set Radio Future, and the upcoming Zelda: The Wind Waker. It really takes the focus off numbers of polygons and places it on pure style.
When did Jon Katz start writing for Wired?
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
The only reason I can think he said that is because when Microsoft went to Nintendo and asked them if they would like to merge to create a console, Miyamato probably looked at what games they wanted to do, and who they wanted to target and said no. Microsoft has the biggest ego in this industry, and it wouldn't surprise me Blackley is still feeling burned that they couldn't buy out a genious like Miyamato. And with all these recent sales losses on the PortBox, it looks like Microsoft may be folding shop next XMas if the platform doesn't take off soon.
I like "kiddie-games". I have a lot of fun playing them even though I'm 34. Furthermore, these are games for the whole family, and for those of you who do have a family, you'll be very appreciative of this. To have the whole family together, having fun with some witty and innocent videogame, it's the best thing after playing together outside, or campling or other such stuff.
I don't believe those shoot-n-kill games (for one example) are really for mature audiences. They are rahter for young teenagers who think that this is the world of the adults, towards which they haplessly rush. Me, I admit I have never been like that, and that kind of game didn't attract me, but nowadays it simply repulses me.
That's why most of the X-box games are totally uninteresting to me. The Playstation has a few funny ones (like Spyro), but the Gamecube (as the NES earlier) is my choice.
Sigged!
Look the only people who are too 'mature' for bright colors and kiddy themed games are 12-14 year old boys.
Truly mature people can appreciate the quality of the game weather it has lots of blood and guts or if it doesn't. Adults can appreciate both Mario and Vice City.
The only truly adult games I can think of (besides porn, I mean) are the hard-core simulations, like Gran Tourismo or to a certain extent counterstrike.
Anyway, Nintendo has plenty of money. They can hire more 'sophisticated' artists if they want to.
I say let Miyamoto do what he wants. Don't try to control a genious.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Will the US version of the GameCube play the import Zelda game? Or do you have an import GameCube as well?
MORTAR COMBAT!
I have nothing but admiration for Nintendo's in-house designed games for kids of all ages, but their strange censorship of other companies' games is another story.
Back in the eighties LucasArts endeavoured to adapt Maniac Mansion (I think) to the Nintendo game console. They had to change one of the puzzles that involved microwaving a hamster (fair enough, kids might try it) and remove all direct references to "death". Bear in mind that the smash hit on the console at the time was Mortal Kombat, a game wherein you pulled your opponent's head off, ripped out their spine, etc. etc..
He HAS been moving forward, and I agree with you. The decision to being GBA games to your TV is where Nintendo will banish all thoughts of Nintendo doing the wrong thing. He has found a way to appeal to classic gamers who prefer amazing 2D based games (GBA Games), and those who like the latest 3D games (Gamecube Games), and has FUSED THEM TOGETHER onto one system, that both types can play on the TV. If this isn't making the impossible possible, then I dont know what is. Castlevania: SoTN was a glimpse into what people really wanted to play, yet they never followed up with more 2D side scrolling games. It looks like Miyamato will have to bring them all to the masses again without losing face by doing it directly on the console. You kill two birds with one stone. Everyone wins. Well, except Sony and Microsoft, but that's not really the topic at hand.
I still prefer getting out my old NES and playing RBI baseball when I want to play a "fun" baseball game. Somewhere along the lines of making it look more realistic and play more realistic, the people making baseball games lost track of simply making it FUN.
Same for the original SEGA NHL Hockey game, although Sega NHL 2K3 for GameCube is a pretty damned fun hockey game, for the first time in like 10 years.
I'm not saying that adding realism and good graphics isn't a good thing. But in general, it seems like game designers add those features to the detriment of actual gameplay.
MORTAR COMBAT!
As far as I can tell, Miyamoto's "Donkey Kong" predates any other platform game, however, Adventure for the Atari2600 predates Legend of Zelda... so... Another interesting first is that BattleZone predates any other first person shooter. So id software didn't invent the FPS.
In fact, nearly all of the main video game genres were created before 1990. So it isn't hard to argue that most games released these days are derivative.
constantly aims his games at children
... from 7 to 77!
I disagree!
Miyamoto aims his games at children
This is silly. Miyamoto is the guy that produced Metroid Prime. Without him, it probably wouldn't have been the same. He was essentially in charge of overseeing that game- and it's far from a child's game.
This whole "kiddy" criticism of Nintendo really needs to stop. Miyamoto's games are usually brilliant. He actually realizes that he can make awesome games without hookers and crack dealers. It shows you that he is in it to make awesome games- not just make a quick buck like the folks at companies like Rockstar Games.
It's too bad that people just don't appreciate it. So what? Pikmin and Mario are cute games. They are still loads of fun. Everyone's knocking the new Zelda game because of its cartonish, cell-shaded look. But they won't be dissing it when it totally blows them away.
The Wayade the Nintendo you are not brought up because of the Shigeru Miyamoto, you write. Most several originators of the privilege which spreads, and most heads of creative development of the Nintendo direct always that gemu to the child. Many other developers praise that creativity, the gemu of the subject which grew shakes entire enterprise, it believes. 'It is interesting being read to the God of the gemu' very and barely insight. "
I think that the funniest part of the article was where Blackley, the XBox guy was like, "he's not helping the industry, he's hurting it," i guess because this genius believes, like someone who had heard about darwin but doesn't really get it, that game development is going somewhere in particular -- in this case, the guy clearly assumes that selling games to people who won't buy something without a lot of blood would mean that games have 'made it'.
What a moron. You've got the guy, the only guy who has like ten multi-million sellers under his belt, the guy who brought the console back and brought us Zelda with it, a guy who has been through two video game recessions and helped see to it that they gross more than hollywood, and he's not helping games. Ahem. Pardon me, Seamus, but how are XBox sales?
I appreciate the fact that lots of people think that games are for kiddies, and surely Miyamoto's not doing a lot in the way of evangelizing to those poeple. And I'm glad, because every minute he spends doing that (for what, by the way?) he's not making the next Pikmin or Mario or Zelda.
god is just pretend.
I think the author (and many a poster) misses the boat on just what an 'adult-oriented' game actually is and could be. Sex, violence and gore really target males aged 13-35 (which, to clarify, includes myself), but this is by no means the only adult market, nor are these the only adult themes available.
I suspect the industry's blindness to other audience's potential is twofold: (1) game development is very much a (young) male-dominated industry and (2) big business tends to go with what is already working (why take huge risks investing in a game that appeals to 50+ women when you can go for 15-35 year-old guys that will almost certainly buy?).
I won't claim any great insight into making games that will appeal to these other audiences. But I am pretty certain innovations to draw them in won't come from developers that can't see beyond the current audiences. I am also certain that traditionalists like the author of the article will sneer at whatever these new games are since they will defy the conventions of what a game 'should be' (until the profits roll in anyways). A quick example of this would be the Sims. The Sims has a pretty strong appeal to certain types of gamers, especially female ones, and is selling in quite solid amounts. Yet, among the hard-core gamers that I know, it is frequently sneered at as being very dull and un-interesting.
So where does this leave us? Mostly with the author parroting the game industry's main strategy: sell to males 15-35. Not exactly a recipe for growth (or innovation).
The game you played was a port of the arcade Mario Brothers game. It kind of stunk; it wasn't nearly as successful as his other games, nor was it even innovative. Funny you mentioned Joust, because MB wasn't going to be a 2-player game until Miyamoto saw Joust and copied it.
They didn't mention Donkey Kong 3 and that horrible NES SMB2 thing which wasn't even a Mario Brothers game in Japan. Those might be the only 3 bad games he did in the 80's though; His good games far outnumber his bad.
One of his really good games not mentioned in the article is Donkey Kong Jr.
...would be a little something like this
I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
What could be more cute than a pair of big-eyed dragons trapping their enemies in bubbles, and popping them to collect a multitude of prizes (french fries, candy canes, potions). The secret to Bubble Bobble was that it was single or team play, there were 100 levels, and it was chock full of easter eggs. The game was full of them. It is a game that I can still play for hours to this day. I can still fire up the SNES and play Mario World. Galaga will always be fun. I enjoy PC games like Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, but I don't play them much after I have gotten all the way through them. But I still play Quake Team Fortress. I have created my own maps, can play online with people across the planet, and the gameplay is pretty dynamic. Sure, it is gory, but the gameplay and variety of TF is what has kept it alive this long.
I don't consider myself a gamer in the least. But IMO someone who derides the brains of Nintendo is a short-sighted fool who would probably give their left arm for 1/10th of the talent of Miyamoto.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Metroid Prime will give me a boner way before anything gratuitous like Eve Adams or GTAnnnnn.
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
As to more mature games, I'm not looking for more sex and/or violence in a game (although the Quakes and the Dooms and similar FSPs are certainly games I enjoy for many reasons). I don't need or want Street Fighting Ninjas #62. I want gameplay, and it can be as stark as Tetris, as simple as Marble Maze, or as cute as Crystal Castles, as long as it's innovative, interesting and challenging and not a rehash of the last ten titles. Does anyone really expect anything new or different from the next 10 mario titles? I sure do't. Sure, they sell, but not for reasons of gameplay. When the Cube first came out there was a title in the franchise that was stated to not be expected to do as well as other similar games for one reason: It featured "Louigi" rather than "Mario"! Clearly game play and innovation are not issues here; it's just marketing of the franchise and selling of a brand to kids who see Mario on morning cartoons and on printed on their cereal boxes and underwear.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"Donkey Kong" (Arcade) was the first platform game, and yes it was Miyamoto's work.
"Adventure" (Atari 2600) was the first action-adventure RPG, and yes it was NOT Miyamoto's work. Adventure is a great game, and I suggest that you check it out. Of course, since it predates the first Zelda, it is extremely primitive... but it is still fun to play! It is also the first game to have a easter egg secret.
However, I still love both Adventure and the Zelda series (except Zelda II), and I agree that Blackley is an idiot. Miyamoto is the Walt Disney of video games. Without Miyamoto, Nintendo will go the way of Disney (corporate greed).
Guess what folks - if it wasn't for Miyamoto, you wouldn't have jobs. If the only games available back when I first got my hands on consoles (and we're talking Atari 2600 and NES) had been as violent or as adult themed as the games referred to in the article (GTA3 and BMX-XXX) my parents wouldn't have bought them for me. NO kids would have gotten games like those in the early 80s. I got Super Mario Bros. and Zelda, however, and they started me on my path. I own GTA3, and play it, but ten years down the road, I won't be playing it - I am still, however playing Super Mario World on my SNES, Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 are in my closet, and get pulled out atleast once a year, and I've got an emulator on my PC for Zelda.
Seriously, if someone were to offer you a N64 with Mario 3D and Ocarina of Time for free, or GTA3 for free which would you take? It's the N64, no questions asked for me.
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. - Christopher Walken
Please stop with the mature game bashing...
Everyone is praising nintendo for the goofy fun factor they have while closing off the rest of the videogame world. Not everyone wants a game that they can play with their kids or a game that provides simple fun that makes you feel happy.
The trend towards "virtual reality" games exists because it allows people to do something they cannot do in real life. Take Halo as an example where one is put inside the shoes of a soldier in a seemingly realistic environment. Would you be content shooting alien creatures and seeing little stars pop out as they lose health or would you prefer your experience provide a certain degree of realism. Granted you are shooting aliens, my point is still made.
My friends and I waste countless hours playing smash bros melee for the gamecube because its fun. But when I want to play as some general in the 18th century or some gangster in an imaginary city, that mature element of tits, blood, guts, or whatever needs to be there to complete that fantasy.
So when you go around praising Miyamoto for his creative skill in making fun games, do so without taking the "/. against MS" mentality against mature games. All games have their place and time.
Myamoto games have great GAMEPLAY. I own all those *adult* games. GTA. Eternal Darkness. Resident Evil. SOCOMM. Unreal. Half-Life. RTCW. Heck, even Leisure Suit Larry... But we keep going back to the Myamoto games - long after we have grown tired of the others - because they are still, and will always be FUN.
Nintendo makes kid-friendly games because happy kids grow up to be happy adults who buy games that remind them of their happy childhoods. I have been playing Nintendo games since DonkeyKong on the ColecoVision. Then the NES changed it all, and I have owned EVERY Nintendo console since. My kids will play and own Nintendo. And the games will always be good, as long as they focus on gameplay instead of *shock value* and marketing.
Agreed. The only "Kiddie-factor" in Nintendo games that I disapprove of, well actually it drives me CRAZY, is the music and sound effects.
E.g. - It's been years and years since I've played Super Mario Bro's, but every time I jump on something I hear that little BOING sound in my mind and that way-too-catchy kiddie-midi-music that WON'T LEAVE MY BRAIN! Aaaaggghhh!
Love the games, but PLEASE leave out the little kiddie-bop tunes. Nintendo, please for the love of aural sanity take your musical cues from 'Bugs Bunny' and the 'Wild Thornberries' NOT 'My Little Pony' and Ronald McDonald. Thanks so much!
Operator, give me the number for 911!
...is Wired's inclusion of the story as part of a "business of games" feature. I wish they'd realize that many of their readers could give a damn about IPOs, profits and whatnot. I'm fascinated by the science and culture of computing and technology. Save that kind of analysis for the Wall Street Journal.
Also. If anybody's interested, check out Pixelized Seduction, an essay I wrote about video games and "maturity" which draws paralels between the current console boom and the heyday of comic books.
It's at www.robotstreetgang.com
According to the IDSA the average age of PC gamers is 28. The average age for console gamers is closer to 20.
Even 3d platformers. They wern't all that great though. SMB64 was really revolutionary though.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Nintendo made their console as a gaming system, nothing more. I really enjoy my Gamecube as it has something for the impatient gamer...a near lack of load time. Xbox and PS2 both have some serious load time but I can pop in a game like Metroid Prime and instant action without the annoyance of waiting five minutes to play. That is the greatest advantage for myself, that and the games are something that most PS2 and XBox games aren't. They are fun.
Donkey Kong
Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros 3
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Mario World 2
StarFox
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario64
Mario Kart 64
Zelda 64
Mario Sunshine
Zelda GC
Quite a resume` there. And i'm sure I'm missing quite a few too. NONE of those games are bad, and nearly all are considered classics or revolutionary. I mean if this was baseball he's pitching a perfect game. Any other developer who thinks Miyamoto is 'just targeting kids' needs to start realising that making a crappy game, and adding b00bz to sell it doesn't cut the mustard.
I had the opportunity to meet Miyamoto-san at this last E3, he was very softspoken and talked to me briefly, and offered me a handshake and an autograph. Shigeru is of a dying breed - he cares about the gamers and how the game plays, not just making sure they meet the Q4 sales quota's.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
The wired article is laughable. Miyamoto (and Nintendo as a whole) have consistently made amazing games. Since when does blood and sex make a "Mature" game. If you want nudity, go rent some porn. If you want blood and gore go rent Hannibal. Nintendo realizes games are about the gameplay, not the shiny graphics or violence. Look what seperates two "mature" games, GTA3 and BMX XXX from smash-hit to lame gimmick. GTA3 has unique and innovative gameplay. It is fun and polished. It has guns and explosions and hookers. Look at BMX XXX. It has even more guns and explosions and hookers. But noone cares, because beneath it all is a poor bicycle game. The only people who think a game needs guns and hookers to be suitable for adults are people too stuck up on their machoism and hormones to realize what fun is. Nintendo is not perfect, but as long as they keep pumping out games that are different from the norm I'll be buying.
Miyamoto should try to tackle the problem
of making a game that is a compelling musical
instrument, simpler to learn than conventional
instruments, but which gives people the same
feeling of personal expression. This would span
the range of kids and adults, be naturally
multi-player, and take the console in a new
direction. And he has the muscle-pixel-sound
intuition to know what this game should be.
One (unofficial) listing is at http://www.planetnintendo.com/nindb/dev.shtml. They are a little out-of-date (they still have Rare listed), but they have nice history's to give you a sense of each team's style.
An interesting thing about console dev houses is that in the 80s, they were not referred to outside of the company (i.e. it was internal only). However, ever since the last generation started up each team wanted its own little signature on their work. Many of Nintendo's and Sega's older teams have recently made up names for themselves (Intelligent Systems, Amusement Design, respectively) to give the group a style, more like 3rd party developpers. New teams are getting names instead of numbers as well.
Oh, and Miyamoto did signifigantly work on Metroid Prime, for the first time in the series.
It may be worth noting that Mario Sunshine has not set any real sales records. In Japan, it has still not even broken a million copies being out for almost a year. In fact, it is only hovering around 700,000 copies, with is rather disappointing considering the hype of the title.
It has fared a bit better in the US, selling about 810,000 so far. But, overall, it is rather lackluster performance from a rather lackluster (in my opinion) game.
Also, I saw one poster say that Miyamoto produced Metroid Prime. This is only half-correct. Miyamoto was a representitive from Nintendo HQ in overseeing the development of Metroid Prime. Retro Studios came up with the concept, and did all the work. They deserve pretty much all the credit, not Miyamoto.
While one can respect Miyamoto for his achivements, many people in the industry only respect him for his reputation and past work. His recent works has fared rather lackluster in the market, and most critisize him for trying to simplify his games too much. (Such as his goal that all games be playable with only two buttons.)
Miyamoto is not "God", as some would put it, but mearly a very talanted game designer. There are many others that are quite talanted (such as Yuji Naka, Hideo Kojima, or Shinji Mikami for instance) but don't get the recognition due to lack of the "star" status.
I realize this is an unpopular view among the Slashdot crowd, but it's more of the view from inside the gaming industry.
Just some friendly perspective... =)
-Jayde
What's a sig?
In order to find out what gamers want, it's important to look at what gamers are buying. And they are buying your Resident Evils and your GTAs. The market has changed from the 8-bit Nintendo days, and gamers want to see more blood, violence, sex, and realism. That's where the smart money is.
Miyamoto will likely go down in history as the Walt Disney of gaming, and he will likely continue to produce excellent titles. But they won't sell all that well in the fast-twitch X-tr33m PlayStation world.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Does he actually write code and design the electronics for the cabinet, or does he just sit around drawing goofy pictures of winged turtles all day?
I am not a game designer myself, obviously, but is the difference between a game designer and a programmer like the difference between a boy band that gets famous without actually playing instruments or writing music and a real, actual, decent musician?
I am still of the opinion people would have to look quite hard to try and beat games such as Jetpac by Ultimate for the 16K Spectrum. Or if you wanted a bit more depth to the game then there was the followup Lunar Jetman which had a massive gameplaying area - but then you had to shell out and get a Spectrum with the somewhat excessive memory of 48K!!! Hmmm. Progress is good. Isn't it???
(quick aside: while trying to verify the name of Lunar Jetman, I came across this site. Nice trip down memory lane for all Spectrum users...
The only Good System is a Sound System
I hate to come up as a me too, but what many of the posters have said is true. A good game is a good game, no matter whether it's considered "adult" or not. Still to this day, some of my favorite games are the original NES platform games like Super Mario Bros. and the Zelda series.
On a side note, I wonder what would happen to the GameCube sales numbers if Nintendo started rereleasing some of their back catalog for the GC? I know I'd gladly pay $5-$10 for some of the greats (Kung Fu, The Legend of Zelda, etc) if they were available for the GC.
This discussion will continue to falter so long as "mature" remains code for "juvenile." In most cases I've seen "mature" game is one with blood, boobs, and base language. But this is not truly mature; it's really juvenile since it is appealing to a person's base instincts. Likewise, "childish" is code for "cartoon." It has little to do with the game story or themes.
An easy example is found in movies: "Toy Story 2" is considered a "kiddie movie" because it's a cartoon. Though it readily appeals to children, it addresses the mature themes of friendship, loss, and death.
Likewise, most "mature" action movies are largely juvenile, appealing to people's desire to see stuff get blowed up real good. They don't actually have any mature themes.
I welcome truly mature games, and there are some out there. But let's make the discussion easier by not mislabeling the juvenile games as "mature" and not calling games "kiddie" just because they have bright colors.
ShoutingMan.com
Famitsu is the for most video game magazine in JPN (and many would say the world). They have four reviews score games on a 1-10 scale and total that for the final score. The perfect score is a 40 in their scale (I really hope you could have figured that out without my telling you). Famitsu has been doing this since 1993 and has only given out FOUR 40's in their time. One of them was to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time....another was given in just the last week to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Miyamato has 50% of the perfect scores given out by them. Every title he has even fully produced has always gotten their highest esteem. Why is this? Because he greats games that are epic. He creates games that are revolutionary. But most imporantly he creates games that are just plain fun to play. Doesn't matter if you are 10 years old or if you are 100 years old. I am a 21 year old gamer and bought my Cube mostly because of him. Glad I did because there are so many great games not by him as well ;)
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"The creator of some of the most popular franchises, and the head of most of Nintendo's creative development, constantly aims his games at children."
Spoken like someone who's never played a Miyamoto game. Miyamoto games aren't aimed at children, XXX BMX and the like are aimed at children (yes, prepubescent boys and those that think like them are children). Miyamoto makes games for everyone. I dare anybody who says otherwise to sit down and play Majora's Mask and try saying that again.
I mean, seriously, the article contradicts itself. To wit:
"His path to Olympus has been paved with games that appeal unabashedly, if not exclusively, to children."
Two sentences later:
"Devise controls that are intuitively engaging, puzzles that make players feel as though they're discovering solutions rather than being led to them, and characters that are disarmingly cute."
Intuitive controls cater exclusively to children? I've seen some crappy interfaces on T and M games, so the converse must be true?
Puzzles that allow the players to freely explore the situation on their own? What, adults only go for games that are on rails? All FMV glitz, no game?
Oh, and I see that all "disarmingly cute" character designs are aimed only at children. I guess I shouldn't be watching anything by Tartakovsky, either. Why the heck do we have Sasami as the anime icon on Slashdot?
"Yet his cartoonish aesthetic has nothing to do with the darker, more complex and ambiguous flavor of contemporary existence."
Majora's Mask plot: Link, while on a personal quest to find something he lost in years gone by, gets attacked and mugged by Skull Kid, who (it turns out) is also trying to destroy the world. Why is he so bad? Any other game would have the excuse of "The script says so" (think Final Fantasy). Miyamoto, on the other hand, takes you on a quest that explores aspects of the nature vs. nurture debate. Does Link ever find what he's looking for? Yes and no.
Yeah, nothing like real life at all. We all know that real life is that watered-down, over-simplified stuff that MTV puts out. Hell, Skull Kid is a heck of a lot more of a believable character than Anakin Skywalker has turned out to be.
Anybody who says Miyamoto games are aimed at children are people attempting to cover up their own childeshness. They have an overwhelming need to feel "mature" and "sophisticated." In many ways their words and deeds remind me of homophobes.
Miyamoto is to video games as Mozart is to music. That's all there is to it. Anybody who tries to pigeonhole him beyond that doesn't know what they're talking about.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to play some Super Smash Bros and get my daily quota of cartoon violence.
I hate these games. I can't believe that nobody else has said this, but I really, really do hate all of those Japanimation kiddie fucking games. They're just "beep beep beep, boop, boop, boop". They make me feel like a hamster reacting to stimuli. They offer no intelligent interaction. They're for nothing than to train reflexes in small mammals. I hate kids. I hate those fucking Nintendo games. I love Vice City. Thank you.
I've been a fan of Conker's BFD since I bought it for less than ten bucks at a K-Mart that was going out of business. But I think the pile of BFD's on the ruins of the department store's electronics counter shows the problem: people (that is, the mindless herd, not we the enlightened) can't handle cognitive dissonance.
Conker, the main character, is terribly cute. He curses and fights with a singing monster named the Great Mighty Poo.
Begin mental meltdown...
The game is cute and gameplay is intuitive and fun. One scene involves enticing a big breasted sunflower into intimate relations with a drunken king bee.
TILT!
Faced with this situation, Nintendo took what I suppose was the only logical path: they sold one of their hottest developer groups to rival Microsoft.
It was interesting to me that BFD was one of the last N-64 games... one review I read described it as "the last must-have N-64 game." I saw a kid-friendly Game Boy game featuring Conker the Squirrel at Blockbuster, but didn't rent it... what would be the point? That character is indelibly linked, in my mind, to the Song of the Great Mighty Poo.
So it wasn't too huge a surprise to me when I read the news that Microsoft had bought Rare from Nintendo. I don't know how Rare managed to get Conker out Nintendo's door, but I'm guessing that someone wasn't too happy about it.
I sure wouldn't want to buy anything from the Redmond Empire... but if BFD-2 comes out for X-Box, I may have to put my moral compass back in the box. That said, I like the idea that I can turn to Nintendo for kid-friendly games that -- hopefully -- won't put the adults to sleep.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You are picking up on a bad translation.
In japanese fooNoKami means foo of exceptional quality. Shure it looks like it says God of Foo, and bablefish may translate it that way, but it just isn't what the guy meant.
I also tell them to think about the results of their actions, to not do things like throw a cigarette out the window.
Hehehe, ok, so apparently his kids smoking is ok with him? "don't liter, but if you want to kill yourself, thats fine.". Hehe.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
I can't believe game designers are holding up games for comparison, ie. games that they essentially want Miyamoto to update. Geez... if he wants to come up with such a game, he'll do it in his own time and it won't be like any other game ever released. And to do and refine the very concept of something like that, you need plenty of time to think - you can't just pull it out of your arse.
People confusing the aesthetic with the content of a game is the exact same reason I saw parents taking their 8-year-olds to the South Park movie. Those so-called "children's games" aren't that easy, either... I'm stuck on about sixty shines in Super Mario Sunshine...
" Seamus Blackley of MS says: .... He's reinforcing stereotypes about games, not pushing them to a place where they can become something different and truly awesome.""
"He is not helping things
And that right there is the huge difference between Miyamoto and Sony and Microsoft. Miyamoto has never "pushed" in his life. He doesn't make games to "push the technological envelope" (but they usually end up doing so). He doesn't make games to "push to a new demographic" (which he doesn't need to do, he hits everybody).
Miyamoto writes games! Miyamoto games are the perfect example of ars gratia artis. He doesn't make these games for the money or the fame, he writes them for himself. Which is exactly why he gets all the money and the fame.
It's just a shame so many people refuse to understand this one simple concept.
topic at beyond3d's forums
He designs games that transcends not only age groups, as others have pointed out, but cultures and genders as well. His philosophy has always been to create games that sell well around the world, versus just selling to 18-25 year old white American males, for instance.
This is always what guides his designs, along with the de-emphasis on mere "kill as many living things as possible" that seems to pervade most of the current action genre games for other platforms. There is always an element of thinking involved and puzzle solving as well, not just reflexes.
I should note that Nintendo has dropped most of its previous censorship policies, and there is nothing to prevent a developer from making a Quake, Doom, GTA-type game on Gamecube. It just won't be from Miyamoto, and those that say he should make a more "mature" game haven't got the picture. It would be like saying author Stephen King is very talented, and that he should use his talents to write a children's book.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Those are real game designers, and they did their own coding, too. None of this cowardly "art direction" and "marketing" and whatnot. Just jumped in and started writing the game.
Had their game "Rogue" never been written, we would never have Windows, space travel, or penicillin.
To this day, it is still one of the most copied games ever written. The fact that there is no port of Rogue to the Playstation 2, Nintendo or any other children's computing device shows how complex it is to emulate.
Miyamoto who? Let's see HIS port of Rogue.
Hardly. The man has made many games, and true most of them are kind of childish in design. What I can't understand is why people are bitching about it NOW. The entire Zelda series has always been relatively childish in design from the very first one on. Even on the Nintendo 64 Link looked more like a cartoon than a real person. And how does one man's decision in game design not give gamers a choice on the Game Cube? I've seen the Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat series on it so where are they stopping people from making violent games? If you don't like a game, don't buy it; but don't complain about it either.
...we should wait until the man makes, say, a single misstep, before we wonder what he could be doing better.
On top of that - who here wanted to play Doom and Quake because of the "mature content"? I've always been drawn to the FPS games because of the gameplay, not the gore. I'd suspect there are others who'd say the same.
(Though I guess I do have to admit to a certain affection for the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D...)
but with other aspects. I for one haven't been interested in playing nintendo games since I was 7. The reason is simply they are not mature. Sure they boast gameplay which may be somewhat enjoyable, and yes they may not be graphically complex. Do either of those factor into why I choose not to play them, not really.
What really gets me is the games are targeted for children, and thus have stories targeted for 7 year olds. When I look for a game I look for something with an interesting plot, just like a movie. Do I go watch cinimea soley for special effects? Not really, they help but without a good plot I am not interested.
Some fanatics will argue that the complex story line of a firebreathing godzilla stealing our princess and sending his squad of mushroom men to stop a plumber from saving her is compelling. I personally enjoy something with a little more depth.
-Rubix
Personally, I take some degree of offense to the implication in the article that the puzzles in Miyamoto's games are simplistic. How many people here have found every secret in a Mario game without the help of a hint guide? I'm sure a few of you have, but how long did it take? Sure, the main goal of beating Bowzer is pretty easy, but that's one of the geniuses of these games, there are different goals, of varying difficulty, so that all ages can enjoy the game.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Miyamoto does not earn royalties on the games he designs... He's a salary man, just like all good Japanese people should aspire to be.
A salary man for god's sake! He works his ass off for less than fair compensation! His only motivation HAS to be creating good games, who here would honestly think he's trying to hold the game industry back on purpose?! WTF! Slow news day @ Wired, need to sell some ad banners?
[o]_O
What Miyamoto sees that the rest of the gaming industry does not see is that it isn't gore that makes a good game. Plenty of games with lots of gore (like American McGee's "ALICE", as mentioned in the article) didn't sell for shit no matter how much blood was slopped on them. The true test of a good game is how FUN it is to play... how LONG you can play it and still be having FUN after you've resolved yourself to sit down and try it out. On the other hand, Miyamoto is missing (or perhaps just refusing to support, on principle) the fact that many of the *consumers* in broader age groups will initially be drawn to gore over gameplay quality simply because that's what they *think* makes a good game. The ultimate trick that Miyamoto needs to discover in order to put his mark on the industry of the next century is a way to *attract* players of all ages *before* having played the game. Most 18+ gamers won't give a second thought about a game that features a race of sentient carrots unless said carrots are eating kittens and burning down villages.
What I personally think Miyamoto needs to find is a way to put deeper levels of *all* emotions (not just disgust) into his work... then people who are too 'grown up' for his whimsical style will be receptive to it again.
Personally I'd love to pick up a Gamecube to play with but this arbitrary restriction to the kind of games that Nintendo will licence mean I won't bother
That's funny. I won't pick up a PS2 because I am concerned about the games that they do license.
I guess it is a matter of taste for you. For me, it is a matter of trust.
It's no good being the cheapest if all your games suck.
I agree. You are quoting the Nintendo corporate mantra by saying that you are only interested in the games. Keep that in mind.
A lot of us love Nintendo still, and are not fanboys. Why? Because we still buy Nintendo after we have tried the other consoles at friends homes.
Just for the record, everyone in the games industry (including myself) should remember that they owe their living to Miyamoto-sensei. I'd love to see Samus Blackly strapped to a chair forced to play BMX-XXX for eternity...
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
The XBox is on equal (or superior) footing as the Gamecube only in the US and the UK. Elsewhere, it's getting quite trounced in the fight for the 2nd place (with PS2 clearly far away in the 1st). The US is the biggest video game market in the World, but not by far the only one...
Adult games huh?
I Gotta Get Back To My Roots:
After giving it a lot of thought, I finally decided to get the Nintendo Game Cube. My Super Nintendo did all right by me, so I figured a Super Super Nintendo would probably do even better. Anyway, what the Game Cube lacks in race games it more than makes up for in zombie games. Not only does it have Resident Evil, but there's also Eternal Darkness. I took a hard look at the cash I'd socked away and decided I had enough for a Game Cube plus one game. I got Eternal Darkness because, unlike Resident Evil, you can only get that for the Game Cube. You see, Jim Anchower enjoys the finer things in life, and there's not much finer than a video game that's exclusive to the very system that you happen to own.
producer of Adventures in Klu Klu land. I mean, either he's also responsible for an incredibly crappy game or the title producer has little bearing of the quality on a game. Never mind that it takes increasing amounts of skilled people years to create a game which the media and often players attribute to a single person.
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Open Source Sysadmin
Miyamoto's touch is golden. Has the man ever made a bad game? He seems like he would be an IBM "Fellow" to me: "Hey Miyamoto, go do whatever you want. We'll pay you for it because it's bound to be good." If he's steering the company to make great games, though maybe fewer of them, let him. I mean would two crappy versions of Lord Of The Rings movies bring in as much as one really good one? I personally don't think so not being a LOTR fan but being completely sucked into the Two Towers release. My $.02
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I appreciate the fact the Miyamoto still brings this aspect to video games. To my mind, there's a healthy mix out there of blood/guts and colorful characters on ALL consoles. If there's more "kiddie" stuff on Nintendo's consoles, good. I think that's a nice choice for the marketplace.
Besides, what is "mature"? Is it the ability to print "death" on a screen? To splatter blood? What is inherently less mature about killing a turtle by jumping on it versus pumping it full of lead and splattering guts all over the screen?
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
This article reminds me a lot of the old American football saying, about how fans give their coach too much blame when the team loses and too much credit when the team wins. American McGee's comment is a great example of this:
"Grand Theft Auto is basically a rip-off of Zelda, because Zelda invented massive-world games that let players explore freely, rather than following a linear path. Miyamoto innovates, so he's pushing the form. End of story."
I'm sorry, but Ultima III and the Wizardry series were doing massive-world free-exploration games long before the NES even existed. And even those had predecessors. And from the way this article sounds, you'd think Miyamoto was the first to ever use 3D or a camera in a game.
This seems to be an underlying theme in the article -- that the video game industry is looking to Miyamoto for guidance, blaming him for not guiding them in the right way, and giving him way too much credit for its current state. It's as if Miyamoto is successful due to some magic he alone possesses, rather than because he was able to build on lessons of the past in the right ways.
It seems ridiculous to me.
And do you know what happens to systems that fail in Japan? Oh, you don't know any? How about the Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar, 3D0, Atari 2600, and TurboGrafix 16? That's right! They go extinct!
You may be right about the Atari products, but AFAIK, the NEC PC Engine (Japanese TG16) was at least as popular in Japan as the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES). The Sega Mega Drive (Japanese Genesis) came in at a distant third in Japan.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I personally think Nintendo has done, and is continuing with doing a great job on making games and releasing its systems. Honestly, I enjoy a good Quake 3 round in a Deathmatch and I find GTA3 to be a very well designed game, but Nintendo has always been the best at what they do, making good, innovative games. While the Gamecube may be getting flac about it being a "kiddie" console, I hardly find such games as Eternal Darkness, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil, and TimeSplitters 2 to be "kiddie" by your definition. Nintendo is doing well with their plans, being a first-party developer, or just devoting more of their R&D to these so-called "kiddie" games is a great thing, their games have provided good gameplay and great innovation to the whole market. Miyamoto will always be young at heart, and as shown by the game Animal Crossing, he is still showing his creativity time and time again.
What's going on here?
An earlier post already mentioned the obvious relation to flower power symbology and hippie behaviour in these games.
I wonder: It seems a bit as if this hair musical has gone absolutely wild and rises now an army of drones in cyberspace to fullfill its purpose finaly.
Did ya know the purpose of electronic media? Me not, but it is a bit overwhelmig to see current mass-media eating up millions of minds.
Hmmmm pop-corn: heated up by emotional content, far off topic to the actual physical environments of the individual; it just did not know how to handle its own feelings and popped.
In the middle-ages there were the huge scale desease that killed whole towns, they tell. Some bacillus came as add-on to rats.
Today the carriage of the deadly viruses are all this technological equipment, that kills the time you should use to live your life, instead of getting sedated into apathy by anticipating the misconduct of dishonourable people.
What use is it to believe, that somebody else does worse than you do?
Note: this comment is not directly aimed at you so please don't take offense.
GTA is not in the least bit 'realistic' it is designed from the ground up to look like a gangster/mobster movie. The things that you do in the game are not at like what would happen in real life, they have as many holes as the movies it tries to be. Spraypaint your car and the cops ignore you? Get caught and pay a fine? Die and appear at some random hospital?
The only realistic thing about the world of GTA3 is the physics engine. It tries to mimic reality, but even that fails.
GTA was designed as all good games are designed, to mimic the real world just enough so that it's fun. Nothing more, nothing less. It's fun because it indluges the pubescent male fantasy of being a bad guy in an indifferent world. Eliminating all consequences of your actions from your conscience, it allows you to murder and pillage without have to worry that the cops will beat down your door tommorow. It's just a better looking Adventure (remember the 2600) with a different theme.
The reason that people think it's so damm innovative is because they cannot tell the difference between polish and actual creativity. GTA3 is polished, but anyone who has studied video games realizes that it is a combonation of different 'mems' in video gaming.
This is a smart move. Find a niche market and stick to it. Nintendo has been around since forever, and not even Microsoft and Sony combined can crush it because they are not interested in a marketing grab-all frenzy.
I love my xbox to death, but I would definitely buy a game cube just to play pikmini (sp?) and Metroid Prime. The one thing I won't get is a ps/2/3/whatever.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Dont care about the "mature" rating of a game is. They care about fun. Bloodrayne and BMX-XXX sucked!
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it.
Correct. I believe your kids have already asked Santa Clause for BMX XXX. Unlike the PS2 version, the GameCube (and XBox version) is uncensored.
P.S. If you hear them yelling "SCORES!" from the game room while playing BMX XXX, they are probably not referring to points earned...
"And like that
I don't completely agree with that. It depends on the game. Some games on the gamecube have a lot of loadtime, and some on the ps2 have very little.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Those poor metroids getting experimented on and exterminated...
Nobody is thinking other their well being all we hear about is how we are not being crewl enough.
Mushrooms will make you big and strong...
Naked turtles who you stripped of their shells...
Drive by shootings from go-karts...
All the drug induced graphics and characters in the mario series...
Hey! That banker on Majora's Mask was on speed! And a few characters were SOOO gay--you know which guys I mean...
Women are only good for saving from big monsters.
Unless they have a frying pan or can hit people with their butt or transform into men like in smash bros.
Violence solves problems; like when space "pirates" start conquering new teritories you simply kill everything in sight until ultimatly you kill the head brain the planet blows up. oh, we better not kill bin ladin without a good space ship..
It's GOOD that he won't waste our time with a "mature" themed game. In the games industry, mainstream sci-fi and fantasy, comic books etc., etc., all "mature" means is that Batman says Fuck and Catwoman's nipples stick out two inches. I say keep the kiddie games coming - they're brilliant.
Fuck you.. Thanks.
Perhaps you've heard of the volume control? Just because a game has sound doesn't mean you HAVE to listen to it.
But I love the mario sunshine music that gets stuck in my head. Especially that "old-school mini-level" music.
Doo doo doo do do DOOO waaah!
First use of the term 'Fanboy' on Slashdot
When Nintendo buys Capcom they can make the exclusive mature games for them.
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His long list of timeless classics should speak for itself. This strikes me like something out of an Ayn Rand novel, with second-handers trying to drag the geniuses down to their level.
- Suzuki Yu
I don't want to ruin this Nintendo "love-in", but the PS2 has been quickly gaining ground in the kids games dept. Take for instance the new critically acclaimed Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper and the thievius raccoonus (which my daughters love), not to mention the Rayman series blah blah blah fishcakes. I'm not saying the PS2 owns or anything, I'll leave that nonsence to those pimply-faced freaks that have nothing but texture-mapped polygons on the brain. What i am saying is that although Miyamoto is unquestionably the best childrens game designer [ever], most children would not be able to differentiate between a Nintendo specific game and one of the other many game developers out there.
Miyamoto is no longer the advantage he may have been in the past, but will always be an icon to all others in his profession.
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comment. Not that it made Zelda any less fun but the story was merely by-product for the running and jumping, just like any other nintendo game.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Gumpei Yokoi, who is one of the most uncredited men in history, was the genius behind Metroid. Sadly, he died in a car crash, but Nintendo would not be where it is today without him.
Seamus was in charge of the XBox developement and launch, then jumped ship when the sales were tanking. He is responsible for the terrible initial controller, the horrible original store displays, etc etc.
The guy is a nobody just looking to get in some digs.
Anyway you are 100% correct. A guy like Seamus has done nothing compared to Miyamoto, or Sega's Suzuki.
More importantly to all of this we understood that a very corrupt, erroneous and backwards lesson was being taught. War was not only cooler than it ever had been, even more than during the two World Wars, but now it had absolutely no consequence! WOOOOOHOOOOO!
Yet it would have been considered "mature" had they introduced some mindless sexual situations, cussing and/or death even given the illogical and "childish" approach at the entire series.
Mature to me is not limited to adding boobs, sexual innuendo or a dead body or two. "Mature" are situations that are considered too deep or "uncool" to most kids and require more analytical, critical, logical and reflective (experience) thought than the average child is willing or able to put forth.
I only say this because too many are confusing the issue, and usually in an attempt to "help." (the kind of help like someone angrily throwing a rock at a cop that just pulled a buddy over, thus escalating it to everyone being arrested... all for nothing. Hmmm, that would be childish behavior in an adult-ish body) Please don't help unless you are willing to think out the consequences of your actions.
On the issue specific to Nintendo and Miyamoto, I would like to say that like many here (I am guessing) I consider many of his works to be some of the best games if only from a perspective of them setting the standards we use now and being ahead of his time. I think that Zelda for example was fantastic and I really enjoyed some of the later installments of that. However, like with FF it bacame rather old when the exact same plot was hatched over and over again. Plus the simplistic, requiring no thought and absolutely non-linear gameplay just did not grow with the times. Instead we had better graphics and sound... all things that to gamer and not an exhobitionist is just superficial candy coating. I sincerely hope that one day I will see a Zelda game that is not some kiddy hack... that would be great.
really, really Sucks. Damn homo.
I'm so very tired of the "Nintendo is teh kiddy!" argument. I'm happy the way things are. While Nintendo's kid-friendly reputation may keep it nipping at the heels of the Xbox and PS2, the bazillions of copies of Pokemon and Gameboys that are sold every year will keep them afloat to make more games like Metroid Prime and Zelda.
is a games quality judged by the killing and blood in the game. yes i enjoy "mature games" (fallout) but i also enjoy a number of games that are viewed as childrens. so i don't see why everyone makes such a big deal about this issue. how good a game is should be based on it's gameply rather then if it's mature or not.
Is probably the day he runs out of imagination.
There really is no need for blood and gore. In fact the "real world" stuff is far more constrained.
Think about it: Mario, Pacman, Tetris, Loderunner. vs Counterstrike, Quake, Max Payne, GTA3 etc. Which has more sameness? Some games can be just distilled to tiny essentials and people will still play them (e.g. snake).
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy 3D FPSes and games like GTA3. But I don't see why Miyamoto should be told how to use his obviously vast imagination and creativity.
There are INFINITE possibilities in the general direction he is heading. So why turn around and head in another direction? Let others explore the infinite possibilities in those directions. Does everyone have to head in the blood and gore directions? Doh.
Miyamoto vs Everyone Else? It'll be a very sad day if the combined imaginations of everyone else isn't good enough to explore blood and gore, and they need Miyamoto there as well.
Something is really wrong with people who keep thinking: "adult themes".
Despite Hollywood's attempts I hope adults still have broader minds than that.
Those parameters are important to parents and children as a buying guide, however the are meaningless to me, an adult with no children. I go into my local games store and pick up Bio-hazard and Pikmin together, go home, and play and enjoy both games. Eternal Darkness, Metroid, are great games, but it's to games such as "Pikmin" that I return to time and time again to re-discover my love of gaming.
It's plainly wrong to label "Pikmin" a "children's" game.It is simply a game that can be purchased, played and enjoyed regardless of age. People who believe differently are missing out on a lot.
1. Take Marios' Pants off
2. Pierce his nipples
3. Call it "Super Mario XXX"
4. ?????
5. Profit!!!!
GTA 3 is in the same family of games as Mario. Both developer believes in Gameplay. Both believes in polishing their games. Both believes in well designed world.
It's "games" like BMX XXX that betrays the fine artform that is video gaming. People like the Big N and Rockstar are on the same side of the camp!
I completely agree. I like this quote: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -- C.S. Lewis If you feel the need to prove that you are mature, then you probably aren't. I found this bit about Pikmin from the article interesting: "It was an amazing game," says Lorne Lanning, creator of the Oddworld series. "But it was about cute little carrots." He's quick to add that he finds Miyamoto's games inspiring as a designer. "But I don't play them for the same reason I don't watch Powerpuff Girls." This from the guy who made games where farting was a form of communication?
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
Are there enough mod points left to mark me as -1, Troll to kill the presence of a dissenting opinoin?
It seems today's par for the coarse is "you don't need blood/violence/etc. to make a game fun, despite what everyone thinks" I agree entirely, however nearly every tired post in this discussion has carried the implication that it has NO place in gaming, which I contest.
To crudely break down the spectrum of games, for the purpose of my argument, you have games which function as toys on the tv screen/monitor and what the suggestive masses have referred to as "mature" or "realistic." To summerise simply, its everything else.
Miyomoto-esque games are toys. Just that. At a conceptual level, they are playtime with a controller.
The "other" games find their base in conflict in some form. Violence easily serves as a vehicle for the conflict the game is based around and just that; and it can be done extremely well. To cite an example, I point towards Half-Life where the player is dropped into a brutally hostile environment with a group of other bystanders where the goal is to survive to live another day (which boasts familiarities with some other aspects of life... heh) or any of the Marathon Trilogy in a universe where the player is kicked around and manipulated by entities with more power and insight into the larger situation than he.
Yes, games don't HAVE to be violent to be fun, but they CAN use those elements to make it so, and I think that's a fair conclusion.
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
dont pay attention to him, he is a faggot fruity nintendo fanboy that cannot realize that gamecube is a kiddie system and xbox and dreamcast are the best systems ever made. Go fuck yourself asshole.
Dev kits arent the problem where developing independent console titles are concerned. There are enough code geeks out there who enjoy doing that sort of thing, and enough open source rendering engines (Quake, Crystal Space) that getting something on screen is not the real problem.
The problem is the art assets. Take a look at the credits for most modern 3d games. You will see a programming team of 5 to 10 people, and an art team of about 20. It takes a huge amount of work to actually create all of the textures and models for a complicated 3d game. And debugging an animation is not as easy as running a debugger. That sort of work is much more manual.
While the software takes more skill to do properly, the art takes more time, and often more people. If you want a large game, you need alot of artists. Metroid Prime, GTA 3, and Halo are all very large games.
END COMMUNICATION
Anyone who's actually played the GameCube's Legend of Zelda "The Wind Waker" will tell you that your comments are so off-base that they're laughable. There is a great deal of "adult" anime in the world, movies like Princess Mononoke. Are these just for kids? No. Same with Zelda. Just because the art style is cartoon animation doesn't immediately make the game something of the Saturday Morning variety.
Maybe you should try playing it before you make snap judgements.
For me, Mario64, particularly viewed in the context of its time, is still the high-water mark. I wish he would move it to the GameCube- same story & setting, but with upgraded graphics. I'd spend a few dozen more hours on it, without a doubt.
...comes a trade off.
There was a time when books were a difficult thing to get ahold of, and so only the best were published, and only a few who truly appreciated them would buy them. A few centuries later we have people like Stephen King pumping out novel after rehashed novel.
The same thing is true of music, which once consisted of greats like Bach and Motzart, but fast forward a century or two, and now we have music industry manufactred stars like Britney Spears and N*Suck.
Movie are the same thing, sure there are very good independent films, but the box offices tend to be ruled by what movie has the highest ratio of explosions and boobs to words spoken.
We must come to accept that Games are slowly joining this mass-media group, and good games are slowly going to become niche, created by idealistic college students, and the box-offices of the next generation (be it download on demand, or the local blockbuster) will sadly be filled with empty games who's only real feat is managing to create a physics engine capable of realistically portraing the bouncing of size 36DD breasts.
looks like we just have to accept that society on a whole will tend to ruin any sufficiently entrenched form of entertainment, so geeks of the world, I challange you, create a new form of entertainment so complicated, that only the purest of geek can enjoy it, so that it may never be tainted by the likes of those people in the rest of society.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
It's just not mature enough. I mean, no blood or b00bies?!
This might have been said before, but ah well.
Does anyone else notice how this article seems to think that sex/violence == a mature game == a good game? I mean, sure, the content could probably rate it an NC-17 rating, but does that necessarily mean the game is worth the money you pay for it?
What about a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, and how it portrayed the brutality of social rank, among other issues (eh, that might be a bad example)? Or what about a series like Arc the Lad, a trilogy of games that asks the question: How far will humanity go in their pursuit of power and knowledge?
I suppose I could pose the question of the maturity of these games, given the fact that they don't portray "mature content" in a way that GTA does, but a better question would be what will happen to the production of games like these if the industry hops on the GTA Bandwagon?
Err, have you seen this playing? I imagine that the sound effects are of a 5 year old sputtering 'battle sounds'
... as far as N64 goes, Conker's bad fur day had an interesting Chicago campaign - they spraypainted the logo all over the sidewalks. Sorry, rented it and 'poo poo jokes' don't make good gaming for more than 3 seconds.
"pchewww! BOOF! PSHOO PSHOO POW!"
Yawn!
Metroid Prime & Resident Evils are what's keeping the gamecube in the mind of the mature ones. Zelda looks like a new playmobil set animated in flash.
Mario Sunshine, and hey - all of their games, are technically impressive but nothin' new.
The only games that made the N64 worth it to the mature folks were Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. I believe both by Rare (not sure about Goldeneye)...
but, yeah, monsters going "pow" is for the kids, Splinter Cell & GTA3 are not.
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
2. When the hell did 'Adult themed' come to mean "Killing and Sex-For-Morons"??? I'm an adult, and this is certainly not the theme of my existence. I wish instead they'd say it something like, "This film contains subject matter best suited for horney, blood-thirsty savages. Enjoy your popcorn."
-Fantastic Lad
I think something that hasn't been properly defined here is exactly what we mean by "adult" or "mature" gaming. Let's look at the parallels in the film world, shall we?
Given that the term "adult" tends to bring to mind movies like "Shaving Ryan's Privates" or "Jurassic Pork 7", I'll deal with "mature" in this post.
So, what constitutes a "mature" film? Generally, I would consider it to mean anything that is not suitable for children.. so, to name a couple of examples: Hellraiser (horror/gore), Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas (drugs/language), and.... 2001: A Space Oddysea.
Whaaat?
This is my point. While I can't see anyone having any reasonable objections to letting a kid watch 2001, it is not a film targetted at kids. It won't harm them, and they won't see anything offensive, upsetting, or disturbing. Chances are they just won't fully understand the film either.
My point in all this is basically that "mature" doesn't have to mean gore-fest or pornographic. It can also mean that it's aimed at a level of understanding that would go over the heads of many kids.
OTOH that's likely to also mean it'll go right over a large number of adults heads, too, but there you go.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
are the hard-core simulations, like Gran Tourismo
LOL, GT a hard-core sim? Try something like Grand Prix Legends or even the DC version of F355.
...we would loose games that let us be childs again :-) And, BTW, what's wrong about targeting children and never-grown-ups ? As long as they are able to pay (or let pay) for Nintendo's consoles and games, everything is OK.
Without Miyamoto Nintendo would be toast already, I guess. And I wouldn't love Nintendo as much as I do without him. Except for the GameCube which I have yet to buy I own every console Nintendo has released in Europe and the charm of Mario and Zelda is... unique. And they managed to make a cult out of it.
One strength of Miyamoto's games is simple gameplay. They are easy to learn and understand but yet get challenging lateron in the game, without getting boring. And this is something very special that is not often found in games, unfortunately. And I guess focussing on children helps him keeping this concept of easy to use/learn games that get challenging (but seldom unfair).
That, as others have said, is a view of those wanting to be mature (such as the under-18's).
Nintendo games do not fall into the basic PC/Box/PS2 format of being a clone of three major genres:
1) 3d Shoot them up.
2) Resource harvest, build, send them to war.
3) Sword. Orc. Better Sword. Orgre. Better Sword. Dragon.
Even within each genre a slightly original tweak of gameplay as heralded as revolutionary.
Miyamoto develops games which are outside this stereotype. So he's stylistic and makes them brightly coloured. They are games for people who _love_ games.
The critics who level the maturity thing at Nintendo are the same type of people who would call themselves critics, based on the facts they go and see all the top blockbuster movies.
When in reality none of the three main PC genres would exist today with their level of innovation. We'd all be debating the latest incarnation of Solitaire or The Sims...
Whoops...
Head loppers, eh? Now we know what games Miyamoto takes his inspiration from!
;)
Get a hold of yourself, JD. Nobody's going to get the KillerQuake/Headlopper reference.
They don't play DVD's like PS2 or XBox
Expanding on the comment above, most people I know that have the other consoles also have a DVD player to play DVD's, and do not utilise the Console to play DVD's they only play games.
Most games come on CD's not DVD's, so why did they need this. Nintendo has the right idea, small high capacity disks that are harder to reproduce - less pirate friendly.
I enjoyed (and still enjoy) games such as Mario Kart and Star Fox, but they've gone too far with this.
Did anyone else read this and immediatley try to interpret it as an "IN SOVIET RUSSIA" post? Or is it just me?
Anyone who's actually played the GameCube's Legend of Zelda "The Wind Waker" will tell you that your comments are so off-base that they're laughable. There is a great deal of "adult" anime in the world, movies like Princess Mononoke. Are these just for kids? No. Same with Zelda. Just because the art style is cartoon animation doesn't immediately make the game something of the Saturday Morning variety.
Maybe you should try playing it before you make snap judgements.
And perhaps you should actually look at my post and read what it said -- the cartoon animation is not necessarily what makes the game so kiddy, it's the content. Try not to act so obtuse.
Princess Mononoke is one of my favorite movies, BTW. You're just looking for somebody to flame.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
pilotwings.. great game.. the 64 version is simply awesome.. snes version was hella fun for it's day too.. which reminds me of a ps1 game that came on the 'demo' cd that was out when there were about 3 games for playstation total.. 'jump and flash'.. really cutesy lame kids game with a sort of an egg thing with really springy legs where you jump all over and bounce around and just generally have fun.. played the demo for days, and that only had 1 level iirc..
IMO, the only way that MGS2 has any sort of challenge or stragety to it is when you play it on the harder levels. They made it much too easy on the lower levels. So you don't have to use any tactics on the lower levels to win, you just have to run through and shoot everyone. There's no hanging, or sneaking involved really.
Just look at the puzzles that they did include, they are so friggin easy even for the stupid. You don't have to do anything at all to solve them, they solve them selves if you just call up your superiors enough times. This is because I think they are going for the lowest common denominator. They want to make sure that no matter how bad you are at video games, that you can still beat it.
Back in the old days.... games were harder, much much harder. Now that everyonle plays, if you want to have a hit game you have to make sure that everyone can play it.
Look at a game like Devil May Cry, they have an easy easy mode and a insane hard mode. That's what most games are doing these days to make sure that everyone can play the games and get their 'moneys worth'.
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for
every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss
is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
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