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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'."
Conker's Bad Fur Day was NOT by Miyamoto. CBFD was put out by Rare, not Nintendo.
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.
When I buy a game for my kid's Gamecube, I don't have to worry to much about it. I don't need to worry about GTA-3 showing up in Nintendo land. I haven't yet (NOTE: I said YET) seen a game with obvious gore. (No, I don't have Perfect Dark, or games like that, so I don't know what the gore factor is there).
Just don't buy your kids Eternal Darkness, if you're worried about gore. There are plenty of zombies that can be hacked up, so it does get a bit gory.
However, the gore is second to the fact that this game is very successful at creating a scary, creepy environment. I had a few moments freaking out in the dark after playing it for a while - and I'm in my late 20's. I would play it in the dark, and have to stop every few hours, turn on the lights, and relax, to avoid getting too creeped out by it.
It would give younger kids nightmares, no doubt.
So much for everything being kid-friendly.
(BTW, it is an incredibly good game, and not just about shock value)
"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.
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...
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.
You can either import a GC (expensive, as you might imagine).. or you can go the eas(y/ier) route and find plans online that allow you to mod your GC to where you can play Jap and US games at the flick of a switch. If soldering and taking apart your GC is not something you're interested in, there are places around that you can ship your GameCube to in order for them to make such a modification. (It's just two contact points that either need to be soldered together, or burned apart - I forget which)
I know that colorconsoles.com will do it, and I'm sure there are many other trusted companies that will do such a thing... look around.
--Morgon
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Conker's Bad Fur Day was developed by then Nintendo 2nd party developer Rare (now with Microsoft). Miyamoto had nothing to do with it (Thank god).
Actually, backwards compatability doesn't nessicarily ensure anything. There's been other consoles offering such, one being the Atari 5600 (via an expensive adapter, released being too late) , the Atari 7800 and more importantly, the NEC PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 line.
With the NEC PC Engine line you had the core system, which out of the box could crush the competition (i.e. NES and SMS). Then you could add on a CD drive. It came with a system card, you popped it in and you were ready to go. They later made a system called the Duo, released as the Turbo Duo here in the States. It intergrated the core, the CD drive and an upgrade to the system that allowed it to surpass other competitions at the time (i.e. the Sega Genesis).
Not only did it do that, it also allowed backwards compatability to all your previous games... and something no other system I'm aware of has really toyed with, other than Sega and it's failed 32x, you could purchase a System 3.0 card and pop it in your core/CD combo and upgrade it to a Duo. So, you didn't need to buy the new hardware at all and could still keep up.
Also in the middle of all this, they released a handheld system, the PC Engine GT/Turbo Express, which used the same game cards the console systems themselves used and (at the time) quite an impressive color screen that has only been surpassed in quality by the Sega Nomad, which also did the same sort of idea, using the Genesis carts as its games. The unit even offered a TV Tuner upgrade, which was quite insane back in '89-90. Unfortunately the thing ate batteries like they were going out of style.
The only system NEC had that was a complete flop (in Japan, anyway, the only area the PC Engine line was strong at all) was known as the SuperGrafx. It was a rather unusual system that added a good number of graphical features in order to combat the Super Famicom (SNES) before its release. Previous owners had no upgrade path and it required an adapter to attach a CD-ROM drive and a System 3.0 card, or a more expensive CD-ROM drive which featured an intergrated System 3.0 card that still sells for high prices to this day. When the SNES was released, it turned out to be not as much of a killer hardware platform as feared and NEC pretty much shot the mark. Most people hung onto their older platforms and the SuperGrafx died having only six games produced for it, although it's still perfectly capable of running every previous card based game and CD (provided you buy and attach the drive).
The last upgrade was offered in a card alone, known as the Arcade Card. It came in two versions, Arcade Pro and Arcade Duo, if your system had an intergraded 3.0 card, either in the system itself or the drive attached, then you grabbed the Duo. The Arcade Pro was for everything else. It allowed primitive polygonal effects and the ability to port a lot of SNK's Neo-Geo fighting titles to the system rather impresively. There were quite a handful of Arcade CDs released before the system's eventual demise. New games are unearthed for this platform even to this day, although admittedly they are quite rare, far, few and between.
In the end, the system had a very long extended life (in Japan.. it failed in the US), a rabid fanbase to this day and in every version of the system, a 6502 processor as its CPU. Yep, it was technically an 8-bit system offering the first CD-ROM attachment, graphics on par with the Genesis and SNES (although I'd never claim it could outnumbercrunch the Genesis with its 68k CPU which was beefiest of the bunch, despite the system's weaker graphics support) when fully upgraded and even one of the best Castlevania games ever, Dracula X, which the very popular PSX game Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to and the GBA games also in the same Dracula X series.
However, none of this meant a thing in the US. It's a feature, admittedly a very useful feature, but one that doesn't ensure the livlihood of any popular system. The Atari platforms mentioned were failures, despite offering support for the blazingly successful 2600/VCS. The NEC system bombed in the United States and never kept its hold even in Japan, which resulted them in developing the PC-FX, totally not compatable with the others and also a terrible failure other than its mass of IF/Hentai games which still appeal to many, like the FM Towns Marty, which was compatable with the FM Towns II computer's CD-ROM software in most cases.
What definately matters for the success of a system is a signature. Something they are known for. Sony isn't known for anything in particular, as they're always changing their lineup and what to expect from them. Diversity isn't nessicarily a bad thing, but I knew when I bought my GameCube I'd (eventually) have a killer game featuring Mario that was a blast to play, at the very minimum. A counter point would be when I bought the Dreamcast (probably the closest spiritual successor to the PC Engine, especially in fanbase), I knew I would have a speed-frenzied Sonic platformer and AM2 titles. Unfortunately, despite not only having an amazing 1st gen lineup of games and graphical prowless that surpassed PS2's initial 1st and 2nd generation of games as developers eventually decyphered the workings of Sony's kludge-job of a devkit and system, it died due to most people holding out to see what else would be surfacing.
The X-Box and Sony's consoles haven't really scored anything other than hits of the moment and not even really in first party. Sure, Microsoft has Rare, but Rare hasn't really done anything other than file off the serial numbers of Miyamoto's work and attach an annoying set of characters to it. I'd have to go back pretty far before I'd see a game from them I really was crazy over, like maybe Pin-Bot or RC Pro Am.
Anyway, this is getting rather long. I should stop here. Sounds like a great idea.
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?
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Super Mario Bros - released in 1985 (Nintendo)
Defender - released in 1980 (Williams). The *first* sideways-scrolling game.
Scramble - released in 1981 (Konami) - sideways scrolling shoot-em-up.
(http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=S&g
Or of course, there's Choplifter from 1982 (Broderbund). Or Defender (1983).
Or Splat (4 way scroller, 1983, Incentive Software Ltd)
Or heck, for 1984 there's Tir Na Nog from Gargoyle Games -- and a game which had much more depth than Super Mario Bros.
http://www.luny.co.uk/sinclair/gargoyle/tirm.ht
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Yes, it was a funny game. It was a great game. It was for mature audiences. It's not a Miyomoto game.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
On the contrary. Nintendo loved Conker's BFD--they were well aware of their kiddie image at the time, and were quite eager to get some mature titles out to market. However, extraordinary steps were taken to make sure no one under 18 could purchase the game, and because of this, little advertising money was spent. While Conker's BFD garnered critical acclaim from pretty much everyone who played it, sales of the game were terrible.
The same seemed to happen for all of Rare's games. Most, if not all, were critical successes. None after Goldeneye were commercially successful, however. Everything from the heavily Nintendo-pushed Banjo-Kazooie to the excellent shooter Perfect Dark sold well below expectations. Rare's operating cost is most likely huge. Judging by Microsoft's current buy-everthing-that-breathes philosophy, they probably made Rare an offer that it couldn't refuse, especially in the face of inevitable downsizing.
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.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
IIRC, Nintendo wouldn't even mention it in Nintendo Power, and had absolutely zero promotion on their own website.
I would not call being named the top company in japan falling behind a console that is losing 177m a quarter. Check the numbers, the Gamecube is selling decently, and the xbox is not doing well at all.