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Nintendo's Crackrock Revealed
Press the Buttons has linkage to and commentary on an N-Sider story explaining some of the wacky decisions that Nintendo has made over the years. From the post: "There are a lot of unanswered questions out there in Nintendoland: Why was there never a Metroid 64? Why did cliche villain Wario become a major character, and then only for the Game Boy? What was the Virtual Boy supposed to accomplish? Why was there only a Game Boy follow-up to Kid Icarus? The short answer is 'politics'."
It's a rather sad story, Gunpei Yoko died in a car crasha ayear after being disgraced into leaving nintendo.
I beg to differ. Mario/Zelda/Metroid on the the SNES were the pinnacle of Nintendo gaming. It all went downhill with the N64, and has only made a slight comback with the Gamecube, IMHO. I was a huge fan of these games, but the 3D versions just ruined it for me. I still think there's room for 2D games, but almost no one seems to want to try it.
I'll probably buy a DS just for New Super Mario Bros., though. It looks like a step in the right direction.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Too bad this game never had a sequel. It may not have been 100% innovative, or 100% polished, or anything else, but it WAS a lot of fun.
One thing the article missed though is about Metroid, specifically how Retro got into it and produced Metroid Prime (possibly one of the best games ever made)? R&D1 made Fusion, which came out around the same time, but the Retro question remains unanswered.
What kind of killed it, in my opinion, was that you had to sit at the kitchen table and stick your head in a pair of goggles to play. That kind of sucked after a while.
Maybe it would have been more of a success had come out a few years later? Imagine a pair of lightweight goggles that you wear on your head and full color games!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Best. Title. Ever.
Why did cliche villain Wario become a major character, and then only for the Game Boy?
It may not have been the greatest game made, but Wario was the star of Wario World for the GCN.
e2 | LJ
What was the point to linking to Press the Buttons at all? It seems superfluous. Anyway, that was a very interesting read. I'm a long-time Nintendo fan, and I was already pretty familiar with the structure of the company's development teams, but I never knew the rivalry and politics between them was such a big deal. It was very interesting to learn about the shake-up by the new president. Perhaps it will prevent future game development from being hindered by favoritism, but since there are now multiple teams within EAD there's a possibility that the same old rivalries will reappear in a new form.
I also fear that Miyamoto may be getting stretched too thin now that he's in charge of all software development. Certainly, any game that gets his input is better for it, but he was already being pulled in too many directions at once.
Neither of the articles mentioned the term "crackrock" anyhwere, or any other drugs that I noticed. It mentions the oddball devlopment teams behind Nintendogs and Wario Ware, such awesomely odd titles, and I'm wondering why you would call them a crackrock. It's possible that hiphop slang has already left me behind, just two months out of high school, but 'crackrock' is probably not a compliment. The question is, then, why does Zonk hate Nintendo? First the "OMGZ Nintendo loses 80% profit NINTENDO IS TEH D00med" and then calling their best dev team a crackrock? What's your beef with Nintendo, Zonk?
SAILING MISHAP
...Treasure. No wonder you can't find the dept at Nintendo that develops it.
I devised a way to play the Virtual Boy lying down. I'd simply rest the contraption so that the foot prongs at poking me in the chest, and the goggles are mostly resting on my forhead.
Not as uncomfortable as it sounds.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Imagine a pair of lightweight goggles that you wear on your head and full color games!
Yes, if only SomEone had thouGht of thAt.
I'm tired of people passing off the gamecube as a kids toy, without having played some of the titles on it. Ikaruga comes to mind, if you think that a 7 year old could rock that game, you're wrong. Is Hitman 2: Silent Assassin a childs game? Nope. The number of excellent adult titles on Gamecube are substantial, more games than I can afford anyway. And even without these less well known games, the Metroid Prime series are excellent games.
If you think that Gamecube is a platform for kiddie titles, go blow someones head off and shred their body with an SMG in Hitman 2, and come back and apologize.
Also, someone in this thread said that Nintendo should stick with what their good at, handhelds. This is ridiculous. Might I remind you that the NES and Super NES are still excellent consoles, especially the Super NES.
That having been said, I also own a PSX and a Dreamcast, and will definitely be buying a Revolution.
That having been said, I really with a metal slug collection would come out for gamecube or revolution with all the games included.
I own to VirtualBoys. They're great machines, and I love to play them, but I can see why most people didn't want them.
I think there are several reasons why they never became more successfull:
Still, it's an awesome system, and it's a pity it didn't turn out just a little bit better, just good enough to become more successfull.
The original Metroid didn't have much backtracking, because it is fundamentally different from the new games in terms of freedom and branching (mainly because it had less 'keys' you needed to find). MZM (GBA) was a huge disappointment for me. It basically ignored the whole exploration deal and replaced it with big arrows pointing you around. Conveniently locked doors were abundant. I felt herded like a sheep.
In the original Metroid is just linear in the beginning and end. In the begining you have to get the morph ball, then the missiles in the golden corridor close to the Norfair elevator. After that you got some choices, but I either go for the Longshot or Bombs. Then I run through the blue waver corridor to the Bombs, then bomb down to get the Ice, then ice my way up to the green corridor, bomb up to the Varia, then I get the Longshot. That way I won't have to run through the same corridors much.
After that the game really opens up since you have most of the 'keys' already (20 mins into the game). Occasionally you do use the same corridors, but you never feel you're backtracking because there's so many branches. If you do backtrack, it's because you decided to go back the same way, not cuz the game decided to. What limits your progress is your skill and your character's skill (missiles and energy), not keys or linear map design.
Tourian (5 corridors in the end) is completely linear though, and you do need to defeat the two minibosses to get there (unless you manage to bomb up from the lava, but I never managed to do that).
The Zelda series were similarly ruined. The reason I liked Zelda was because of the freedom, and it's just not there anymore. I'd say if Zelda and Metroid are 6/8 on the 'freedom scale', then most new games in the series are 2/8... or less. It's like day and night.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Then what was Activision?
Technology is still not at the point where you can have good, cheap 3D headsets. Even today's $1000+ glasses cause eyestrain and weight quite a bit.
This artical is nothing but a long drawn-out explination as to why nintendo is going downhill, I can sum it up in a sentence:
"Nintendo had to be different and in being so dug it's own grave."
How is this a Troll? This is a completely legitimate point, my VB gave me a splitting headache after 10-15 minutes consistently. It was a bad idea and no sob story is going to change that...Doom 3 looks way more "3D" than Mario Tennis ever did.
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!