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Nintendo's Crackrock Revealed

Posted by Zonk on from the why-they-so-crazy dept.

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'."

16 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Actually he's dead by Winckle · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a rather sad story, Gunpei Yoko died in a car crasha ayear after being disgraced into leaving nintendo.

  2. N64 by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "When the Nintendo 64 came into fruition, the only thing Nintendo fans seemed to want were 3D sequels to the great games Nintendo created on the Super 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.
    1. Re:N64 by Txiasaeia · · Score: 4, Insightful
      " I still think there's room for 2D games, but almost no one seems to want to try it."

      Have you tried Metroid Fusion & Zero for the GBA? How about Ninja Five-O for the same platform, or any of the Castlevania GBA games? Alien Hominid for the big three? All fantastic games, all 2d sidescrollers.

      I do disagree with your comments on 3d gaming, though. Metroid Prime 1 & 2 are *excellent* games that perfectly capture the feel of their 2d bretheren. It's a pity you can't get past the interface; as a PC gamer, I'm amazed that MP1 & 2 are just as playable as any PC FPS with keyboard/mouse.

      --
      Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
    2. Re:N64 by grumbel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ### Mario/Zelda/Metroid on the the SNES were the pinnacle of Nintendo gaming. It all went downhill with the N64

      Thats a bit of a stretch, ZeldaOoT is hailed as one of the best games ever, Mario64 basically invented a whole new genre and simply is still one of the best 3D jump'n runs around. Ok, Metroid went nowhere since there wasn't a N64 version of it, but thats not really downhill either. With Gamecube on the other side you have Sunshine which is frustrating and boring where Mario64 was just pure fun. WindWaker also has its pledora of problems and neither of them really brought anything really new to the table, just more of the same. Metroid Prime also seems to be liked by many, even so I like the 2d ones much more.

      Overall it didn't went downhill, it more went sideways, a different direction, different gameplay, but the basic quality is still there.

      That said, yes, I don't like the trent to 'everything has to be 3d' either. I would love to see a 2d Mario or Metroid which uses all the power a Gamecube has to offer, there are just lots and lots of cool things you could do on the Gamecube in 2D. Sadly the only 2d games you seem to get these days are remakes of older series (Gradius, Contra) and none of the pick titles gets anywhere close to 2D gameplay. So for the moment the handheld sector is the only domain left where you will continue to see 2d games, but even that trend is going to fade away sooner or later, the DS doesn't have that much 3d power so 2d is still a good option, with the PSP on the other side everything seems to follow the 3d trend.

    3. Re:N64 by Linus+Torvaalds · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mario/Zelda/Metroid on the the SNES were the pinnacle of Nintendo gaming. It all went downhill with the N64

      I agree. The SNES was the last Nintendo hardware I owned. When the N64 came out, I remember being distinctly unimpressed with Mario 3D or whatever it was called. The graphics might have been better (and in fact, I think they were worse; big, blocky 3D is worse than small, pixellated 2D), but platformers as a genre are far more playable in 2D.

      From my perspective, it wasn't so much "the only thing Nintendo fans seemed to want were 3D sequels", but "the only thing Nintendo fans were given were 3D sequels". If the N64 had come out with Marioworld 2 that was 2D, then I would have gladly bought it. But that wouldn't have shown off the 3D hardware, would it?

    4. Re:N64 by qurk · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I agree with you. While I was completely into Quake for a period of like 5 years (after giving up console gaming for the most part in 1994), the N64 almost completely turned me off. For one thing, the 3d was ok, but Quake blew it away. A friend loaned me a N64 and some games about a month ago, so I'm starting to discover some of the fun of Mario Kart, and Mario 64, but at the time the selling point of 3d games was a complete downer for me, as Quake had completely taken over my gaming life. Also, where the heck were the RPG's? The SNES had literally dozens of rpg's. Other than Zelda, you could probably count the rpg's for N64 with 1 hand's fingers. If Nintendo had encouraged developers to make more 2d games and push the 2d gaming experience to new levels, as well as encourage more RPG's, then I _may_ have had some interest.

      Having previously been a NES and SNES fanboy (I'll admit it), my friends who were N64 Fanboys didn't help me much with my perception of N64 much either :) "Quake sucks! James Bond on N64 kicks it's ass! RPG's suck! Blah" :) Everyone is entitled to their opinion :)

  3. Well that explains Startropics... by Erioll · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Well that explains Startropics... by badasscat · · Score: 4, Informative

      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)?

      There are probably articles you can Google about this if you want to read up. The long and the short of the whole Metroid thing is that this game does not sell in Japan. At all. That's why there was no Metroid 64, that's why Nintendo outsourced Metroid Prime. It is just not a franchise they really believe in personally, and besides, being that it's always appealed more to western tastes than Japanese, who better to develop the GameCube update than a western developer?

      They got Retro because they were cheap, and had done some decent work that Nintendo liked in the past (not enough to get them noticed by many people, though, so they stayed cheap). But still, there were apparently major problems with the development of Metroid Prime that forced Shigeru Miyamoto to get personally involved in the project - while most of the grunt work was done by Retro, it was Miyamoto that whipped the game into shape. It was supposedly in such a sad state about a year before release that Nintendo considered killing it altogether. Miyamoto just thought Retro was too inexperienced - talented, but inexperienced - and that all they needed was some guidance. He was right.

      The game still didn't sell in Japan, though. It is completely a western phenomenon, which makes it completely different from everything else Nintendo does. They are still firmly rooted in Japan, and the rest of the world is secondary.

      I wish I could give you some sources for all this, but it's nothing I didn't read online as the whole thing was going on so you should still be able to find articles at places like GameSpot and IGN.

    2. Re:Well that explains Startropics... by HAKdragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Metroid IS backtracking. It's always been in the series.

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
  4. Re:What? by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 2
    My brother bought a Virtual Boy when it came out. He got some Wario game, a Mario Tennis game, and Red Alarm (think 3D, polygon Zaxxon). All three games were great! We both thought it was a lot of fun, and the depth made for some interesting effects in the games.

    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.
  5. Wario only on GB? by jclast · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  6. No where... by focitrixilous+P · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:No where... by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I believe in this case the "crackrock" aspect was meant to apply to the oddly stupid buisness decisions, not the oddly fun games. Why were there so few Kid Icarus and Metroid games, and what prompted the development of the Virtual Boy? R&D1 getting the shaft due to politics.

      --
      This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  7. Re:And the Mysterious Wario Ware Team is... by LKM · · Score: 2, Interesting
    And the Mysterious Wario Ware Team is... Treasure.

    You're wrong. Wario Ware wasn't developed by Treasure, it was developed by Nintendo, as the article states. The mediocre Wario World Jump-N-Run for the Gamecube was developed by Treasure, though.

  8. Re:woah by Guppy06 · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, in my opinion that title is still held by "Lance Bass Continues to Plague Surface of Earth" (which Google isn't giving me, for some reason).

  9. Kids games my butt. by theapodan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.