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Visionary Nintendo President Yamauchi Dies
First time accepted submitter trickstyhobbit writes "Former Nintendo president and majority stockholder Hiroshi Yamauchi has died. He was president of the company for over 50 years and saw the development of the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube among other devices." His career at Nintendo is worth reading about.
This guy had a lot of intuition. He didn't like to play video games, tried a couple but was annoyed and frustrated. Yet he still had sole approval whether or not a game should be licensed on the Famicom/NES. Someone would sit down and demo the game and he'd say yes or no based on that! Coming from the Atari crash, quality was important and this guy had an eye for that. Not to take away from Yamauchi but I must say RIP Gunpei Yokoi who sadly committed suicide, but was incredibly important in Nintendo's success as well. I recommend reading Game Over and 1UP - How Video Games got an Extra Life.
Twinstiq, game news
game over
My heart goes out to his friends and family.
The world will miss Hiroshi, and I'm concerned that this might be enough for Shigeru Miyamoto to leave the company.
This is a truly sad day.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Too soon?
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Why does everyone badmouth that system? It wasn't the Playstation, but it wasn't that bad either. If you *really* want something to forget, the Virtual Boy and Power Glove are much better candidates.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Yeah, don't get it either. Best Zelda they ever did was on the N64. And Mario 64 kicks ass too. N64 rocks.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Did the N64 bleed red ink or something? My memory of its reception is that (while there were some limitations in terms of things like video cutscenes compared to much, much, cheaper storage in Sony's disk-based competition), a lot of N64 titles were very well regarded at the time, and the whole system has retained a real nostalgic glow (in a way that, say, the gamecube, arguably a more economically rational system) hasn't.
An actually-successful 3D Mario release, fairly canonical releases of Mario Kart and Smash Bros, a good Zelda, Goldeneye (Christ, has that not aged well at all; but a console shooter that didn't totally blow was pretty serious business at the time)...
The N64 had some downright amazing games, and this is the first time I've seen any real hate/badmouthing for it. It's hard to dislike the console that brought us Mario 64, LoZ: Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros, and... well, the list just goes on.
That being said, this is sad, sad news. This is one of the men to whom I owe a large part of my childhood, and can blame part of my adulthood on as well.
Funnily it was a superior platform for playing FPS games, Goldeneye was the apex of FPS gaming on a console. You could aim, and there was some nice difficulty, environment, mission based rather than a movie-like rail and cutscene game from start to finish.
But people love the Power Glove, it's so bad. Hollywood even told me so.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Before someone else posts it:
He clearly should have used the UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START to pick up a few more lives.
ba dum, bum
Loading...
No power glove, no love.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
That's Konami. This is Nintendo. Hold A and press Start to continue from where you were with a new set of lives.
If you *really* want something to forget, the Virtual Boy and Power Glove are much better candidates.
The Power Glove is unforgettable. My steady stream of curse words (like when it didn't punch when/how I wanted in Punch Out) is still resonating all over the universe like the Big Bang.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
rooms rented by the hour
sounds kinda like a whore house to me
LMAO
What about that fricken robot??
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I actually prefered the 64 over the playstation at the time. it was gamecube when I switched systems
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The Power Glove was Mattel's fault.
Why does everyone badmouth that system? It wasn't the Playstation, but it wasn't that bad either. If you *really* want something to forget, the Virtual Boy and Power Glove are much better candidates.
The construction and EMI protection of the console was also pretty good.
It made them money and it was a critical success. Unfortunately it was the machine that came out in the period in which they lost market dominance so it's tainted by that.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Yeah, PlayStation got a lot of attention for using discs, because it meant they could have actual recorded audio tracks and lots of shiny looking cutscenes. But those characteristics really don't make a game that enjoyable. I still miss the fast load times of cartridges. Haven't played Wii U, but it seems that Nintendo has always put good load times ahead of "ooooh shiny". The Gamecube used smaller disks, and many games had almost no noticeable load times. Meanwhile, everyone was waiting minutes for things to load on PS2 and XBox. The first party titles for Wii also had great load times. It's not impossible to have quick load times on a disc based system. I don't know why so many developers don't pay attention to this aspect.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The leadership at Nintendo really won't commit to gaming? Because they're throwing so much money into making potatoes, and automobiles right now?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Article mentions the TV consoles, but isn't the Game Boy far more relevant? I mean, we're talking about the birth of handheld game consoles (and yes, I know there were handheld video games before the Gameboy, but that's like pointing out that there were smart phones before the iPhone).
It's been so long that I forgot there ever was a Sega Saturn. For me it always sort of jumped from Genesis to Dreamcast.
Ugh, Nintendo Potatoes are so casual.
innovative = high performance GPUs and always-on internet DRM
And I don't think anybody has forgotten Goldeneye 007 on the 64.
Yes, yes it did.
And I don't think anybody has forgotten Goldeneye 007 on the 64.
Yup!
N64 may not have had the numbers, but some of the games were among the most played of all time among my group of friends. We had the most fun with the N64 and that is really what counts.
Diddy Kong Racing was freakin' awesome.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is one of the best ever horror themed titles to hit the shelves.
Peace,
Andy.
People will never forget how they had Final Fantasy VII and threw it away. Everything the Playstation did, they could've done instead, but they decided not to. And as successful as the Nintendo 64 was, the Playstation was massively more successful.
Yeah, don't get it either. Best Zelda they ever did was on the N64. And Mario 64 kicks ass too. N64 rocks.
Hell yes; Best wrestling games ever made were for the N64, and even that shitty Star Wars: Podracer game was pretty damn fun.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
SNES Zelda was superior. Filthy younglings.
Did anyone try blowing on him?
The Power Glove was made by Mattel, not Nintendo.
I also happen to agree, the N64 was garbage. The Virtual Boy was kind of neat with a couple of good games, but obviously was never going to be successful due to red.
I have a Wii U. I haven't really noticed a huge difference between load times on disk versus the external USB2 hdd. From what I've read, the transfer rate is comparable and most game data is sequential. For most first party games (Nintendo land, NSMBU, Pikmin 3) the loading times been fantastic. Third party games have been good as well (such as Rayman Legends), with the possible exception of Lego City Undercover (off the hdd) where the load times are noticeably bad.
Podracer was a great game, it just happened to based off a horrible movie.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If a Starfox reboot had been done by the Saints row team and not farmed out to a crap jap developer like namco it would be ten times the game Starfox assault ended up being.
I was going to write a full reply to you until I saw this line. Just... wow, man.
True words indeed. I think a bit of a mis-step was made with the Wii U, releasing it essentially gameless, but I feel like the same thing happened with the DS and 3DS as well, both of which turned out fantastically (though, of course, those are handhelds and this isn't.)
Nintendo's first party titles are completely secure, and even the supposed "rehashes" are good enough for me to come back and want to play again several times (Hopping on Windwaker HD tomorrow, and looking forward to it!) Plus with Monolithsoft... well, I'd buy a Wii U just to play "X" alone, if it's anything like Xenoblade was. Simply incredible.
Oops, correction: Eternal Darkness was originally planned for the N64 but actually released for the Gamecube.
Then please tell me what innovation you have seen from other consoles,
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They're not doing *good* games but you could hardly argue that they aren't focussed on them. It's literally all they do. It's all they expend their resources on.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
(Not doing good games is a heck of an overstatement, but let's assume it for the sake of argument.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Maybe now they'll develop a console not designed for children and grandparents and stop making kid games with bright colors.
...yes, because real is brown.
Well, let's see... Oh! The X-box has this camera thing that you can control with your motion. Oh, and the Playstation 3 has had two different controllers now that you could control by moving around too!
...hey, wait a second...
Have you checked out the LttP sequel coming out? It runs on an almost exact replica of LttP's map, but has added some interesting mechanics. No clue about the story though so far.
> As a bittersweet Saturn fan,
One word: Guardian Heroes.
Load times are there, but usually hidden very well. If you ever watch someone play Metroid Prime 3 on a hacked Wii, and are using a hard drive to load the game you'll notice that they can do things that the Load times with many doors prevents. For example, speed boosting though a long chain of doors.
Huh, you mean like Warioware, Eternal Darkness, Golden Sun, Pikmin, Xenoblade, Wii sports, Luigi's Mansion, Baten Kaitos, and more?
someone insert another quarter before his ten seconds run out
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
"Yeah, don't get it either. Best Zelda they ever did was on the N64. And Mario 64 kicks ass too. N64 rocks."
The problem wasn't FIRST PARTY games, the problem was the LACK of games and franchises from the super nintendo and their non-existence on the N64 because of nintendo's bone headed move to stick with cartridges. The storage size of a CD allowed games like Final fantasy 7. JRPG's like FF, Xenogears, Fighting games like street fighter and derivatives totally skipped the N64. THAT IS A HUGE DEAL. Only an idiot that didn't play any third party franchises would say the N64 was wonderful. It was the key event in Nintendo's history that lead to Nintendo's long deflation and decline as a game company with much intelligence.
They became more about selling console hardware and not enough about supporting game developers. They are a technically illiterate bone headed game company. Why would you not go with DVD standard for the gamecube and make porting games from other platforms a huge chore/time sink for everyone? Another total idiot move. They make totally idiot technological moves every console generation. This is what caused me to stop buying their consoles. They don't grasp game development from a third party developer perspective. Not to mention how bad they screwed up Metroid with Other M and then the huge clusterfuck with the Starfox franchise, SF assault was just a travesty.
That is why the N64 was the worst decision in Nintendo's history they went from #1 game company with the super nintendo with all the popular franchises and they lost ALL the third parties that were pushing the gaming envelope OVERNIGHT to a brand new competitor with no track record. Nintendo didn't grasp their also ran status because they never took third party developers that make you successful seriously.
Many of us old timers fondly remember the super nintendo era and we hate what those dumbasses running nintendo did with the N64, the gamecube, and just anti-developer practices in general did to videogaming.
So, you mean that because they have long running franchises still making up a decent portion of their catalog, they aren't innovative, regardless of the other newer titles they have?
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Actually, I thought the combat in Skyward Sword was perfect --- I'd give my interest in hell to have a motion-controlled RPG and was quite disappointed that none of the Operation Rainfall games used motion controls beyond Pandora's Towers use of IR pointing and swinging and pulling the chain (which switched between the Nunchuk and the Wii Remote if memory serves).
Ideal game:
- motion controls from Skyward Sword / Red Steel 2
- huge explorable overworld from Xenoblade Chronicles
- on-line interaction and lovely fluid anti-aliased on-screen appearance from The Last Story
- an option or alternate gameplay mode for precise IR pointing as used in Goldeneye / Pandora's Tower
and an extensible, on-going story provided as downloadable content.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I remember wishing for more customization of the racers... Of course, this is before I understood things like system requirements.
Kids can be so unreasonable sometimes.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
How are you doing? Becaues I'm a potato.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
As someone who played LttP when it first came out on the SNES, I must disagree.
It is close, but the music, for me, pushes OoT ahead.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Anyone associated with that company should have been in prison for crooked business practices that illegally destroyed Atari.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I still consider The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to be the best video game ever created.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
one of my favorite games ever
No kidding, wasted many hours on that one with friends.
I also remember Conker's Bad Fur Day. Was laughing so hard at that one.
No. This is SPARTA!
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Lego City Undercover loads the entire city at one shot. It's a lot of data, but once the city loads there aren't any more loading screens until you leave the city map entirely.
The Playstation controller did not have move/strafe - change view sticks.
It didn't have any sticks AT ALL.
It had a D-pad and some buttons. No analog sticks.
Compared to that, the N64 pad's analog stick was a godsend.
Sony didn't come out with the Dual Analog controller until after the N64's pad was out.
That's not a ridiculous request, but it may have been beyond what was feasible in-game.with the technology of the time.
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Anything you did back then was fun because you were at a point in your life where you could enjoy it the most.
No doubt that was a factor, but we had access to Play Station and yet we always returned to the N64 games I mentioned above. ;-)
Hey, listen: I can think of one big reason why OoT was not as good as LttP...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Plus, if I'm not mistaken Podracer came out close to the end of the N64's lifecycle.
WCW vs NWO has to be my all-time favorite N64 title, and I generally don't like 'rasslin' games.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Which is why Nintendo (and every other Japanese game developer) needs an American standing right by Miyamoto (and every other Japanese designer) to say "NO!" when they get some crazy hairbrained idea that "Will Not Go Over Well"
Navi? No!
Tingle? No!
Issun's Voice in Okami? No!
Suda51 in general? No!
Akitoshi Kawazu in General? NO! BAD! BAD!
There's no way that you could have played all those games to know they were "pure shit", so you're just blowing smoke.
While perhaps 80 percent of anything is trash, but that VAST PSone library meant that there were a LOT of good games that outnumbered the good ones on the N64. More good games than one could ever play.
Besides by 1995 even the mediocre games had pretty good production values, enough that even the worst PSone games were more playable than the worst SNES, NES or 2600 games.
The PC ports alone put the PSone way ahead of the N64, not even throwing in all the RPG's. The PSone even has better character platformers than the N64 does, any of the Spyro games are better games than Mario 64.
The PSone did have something at launch have the N64 didn't....the PSone mouse. Which is the best way to play FPS games on the PSone if you have it. Surprised they never implemented USB mouse emulation of the PSone mouse on the PS3.
The N64 had some downright amazing games, and this is the first time I've seen any real hate/badmouthing for it. It's hard to dislike the console that brought us Mario 64, LoZ: Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye 007, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros, and... well, the list just goes on.
The list goes on? Does it include any titles not by Nintendo or the company it owned 49% of, Rare?
I mean, I had a Nintendo 64 back in the day, but even I'll admit that the PlayStation had more of what we would refer to today as AAA titles.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
"Hey! Listen!" is my alarm clock in the morning... there's just no sleeping through it.
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
On the internet everything has to be a love / hate thing and you have voice your opinion no matter how little people care.
The N64 was an excellent system if only for the experience of Mario 64 and Goldeneye. But fortunately it had many more great games.
I don't think FFVII was that good and the series got much worse since then. I think the reason FFVII doesn't get remade nearly as much (if ever) as the FF games is because it doesn't age well at all. It's very much a game of its time. It's far too cinematic. That was cool when it was new but it's a bad thing now.
So if I write a crappy application it's MS's fault? interesting.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The Nintendo that Mr. Yamauchi built has has such a entertaining and positive influence on my life that I just couldn't let this story go by without saying: Thank, farewell, and your legacy lives on.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Eternal Darkness, Golden Sun, Xenoblade, and Baten Kaitos are all non-Nintendo titles. They were developed by Silicon Knights, Camelot, Monolith Soft, and tri-Crescendo/Monolith Soft respectively. You really need to stop confusing games published by Nintendo with games produced by Nintendo.
Heck, Baten Kaitos wasn't even published by Nintendo anywhere but Australia... Namco published it everywhere else.
Of the remaining ones, only one of them is less than a decade old (Wii Sports).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
No, the original concept was fine, the problem was that almost none of those games were released outside of Japan, thereby turning the Saturn into an expensive and disappointing paperweight. Radiant Silvergun, Soukyugurentai (Terra Diver), Virtual On, Cotton, Battle Garegga, etc. All fantastic titles, we Americans just never saw them.
Yep. I still have friends who play that system almost on the daily. It's mainly a Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64 machine for them, but the tournaments they hold are as intense as ever.
Godwin is worse than Hitler.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
This is slashdot. Everything is MS's fault.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Speak for yourself. FF7 would be awesome if remade with a modern game engine. They could even redo all of the FMV as realtime game engine cinematics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Furs535ly94
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
Let's see...
Silicon Knights: Point. I'll give you that one.
Camelot: Their parent company is Nintendo, who took them from Sega back in 1999. They've programmed exclusively for Nintendo and are even the creators of Waluigi. Thankfully, since they made the Golden Sun series, I can forgive them for that. Link.
Monolith Soft: Monolith Soft was formerly owned by Namco, who sold all 96% of their shares to Nintendo, meaning Monolith Soft is wholly owned by Nintendo and thus for all intents and purposes considered first-party. Link.
Tri-Crescendo: Their developed titles are almost exclusively Nintendo, though you have somewhat of a point since they've done work for other consoles.
Are you going to tell me that Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Country returns aren't first party because they were developed by Nintendo's Retro studios? As far as I'm concerned if Nintendo owns the studio, it's first party. Beyond that, the original poster suggested that they hadn't done anything new in the past 30 or so years- which is an obvious falsehood since 30 years ago is when the original Mario Bros came out in the arcade. So, unless the poster was receiving arcade cabinets for Christmas...
Not to mention of course all the innovation done within its more well known titles, even if the stories themselves are often "rehashes", they've kept the gameplay fresh.
Actually that was pretty damn fun too, come to think of it. It just fell short due to the requirement for GBA connections to play multiplayer.
Yes, but do you have a WLL? No load times at all!
Supposedly Wind Waker HD is going to load the whole world-map into memory. I hope it's either not a lot of data (most of it is ocean) or is loaded piece by piece. Otherwise there is gonna be a problem. I'll get it in either case, but it would be a shame if it was slower than the GC version.
Console war.
Console war never changes.
Super Mario Bros...you kids....some of us cut our teeth on Joust and Frogger for the Atari 2600...
Only an idiot that didn't play any third party franchises would say the N64 was wonderful.
Or a kid that was having too much fun with the system and games that they had to care that someone else was having fun with different games on a different system. Only an idiot fanboy asshole would begrudge someone else their opinion of a wonderful console.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Reusing the same sprites and other art assets != reusing maps.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I guess I wasn't a bad enough dude to save the President.
I think I'll go read Game Over (Press Start to Continue) again.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"Only an idiot that didn't play any third party franchises would say the N64 was wonderful."
Only a total moron would judge a system by the bad games that were on it, instead of the good ones. Regardless of whether those games were third or first party.
Although honestly? Some of my favorite games on the system were third party, such as Turok, Star Wars Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Ep1 racer, or Doom 64 (completely original and exclusive game for those that don't know, and IMO the best Doom ever). Just off the top of my head. Who cares about ports? Back then exclusives were much more prevalent anyway, multiplatform ports were a minority.
Anyway. Screw doing the same thing as everyone else, seriously. Other companies are always thinking "what can we do that's the same but better?" but Nintendo is the only one who's constantly thinking "what can we do that's different?" Even though it doesn't always work out, when it does, they revolutionize and everyone else follows their lead, as we've seen time and time again.
And thank god for that. Thank god for Nintendo not making it their life's mission to simply outdo everyone else at their own game. And screw every drooling asshole who's always bashing Nintendo for it.
Not much seemed to support the mouse. I picked up the mouse much later, when it was very cheap, and the only game I had that worked with it was Discworld.
Alas, I had the initial release of Discworld. Which had a bug: You couldn't save the game. At all. How in hell did THAT ever get past QA?
Wait, there was a PSone Discworld game? Well, I'll be....
My condolences on the save game bug.
.
I'm saving that sentiment for when Hef passes.
I come here for the love
I am not, Spyro controls better, has a better camera, has better music, better graphics, and plays better than Mario 64. Mario 64 has some of those Miyamoto quirks that may sound good at first glance, but don't work well in practice. And it has the usual discoverability issues Miyamoto games have. It's a good game, but it's no Spyro.
And unlike Mario 64 there were two more PSone Spyro's with additional gameplay features and improvements.
Course the PS2 Spyro games aren't as good, but there's Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank games for that.
FF7 was a perfectly sound spin on FF6's style and mechanics. That FFX - one of the most cinematic and dull instalments - is being remade rather undermines your argument.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I respectfully disagree. While I'm a Playstation fanboy myself, I'm always looking to play the 2D Zeldas(Link to the past, Oracle of Time/Season and Link's Awakening). I'm buying a 3DS exclusively for the LttP sequel it's getting. That is how good I consider them. The 3D zeldas(and marios BTW) just bore the crap out of me. I understand why some people like and I respect that but I can't help but to find the 3D titles over-rated.
Yamauchi-san: good night sweet prince. Thanks to YOU playstation exists today. My childhood will be forever in debt.
The problem is that by the 90s, no-one in the West gave a fuck about Japanese arcade games. It was all about Tomb Raider, GTA, Gran Turismo etc.
Another large reason companies dropped Nintendo--and one that seems not well known--is that early on Nintendo had a requirement that if you wanted to develop for the N64 you also had to develop for the Virtual Boy. (Obviously this requirement dropped when the Virtual Boy was, but that didn't fix the lack of space and now-sour taste.)
Can't find the source to back this up ATM, but I did a report on this in college (I think it was a "choose your own history topic" in a writing class or something) and this was part of Nintendo's downfall with the N64. Their stranglehold on third parties made it exceedingly easy when Sony approached them with this new-fangled console they were going to put out called the "Playstation"... which, haha!, was the result of a failed partnership with Nintendo.
I will be forever amused that Nintendo's shortsightedness is what gave rise to their largest competitor and own downfall. (Nintendo stopped working with Sony and worked with Phillips instead--Sony didn't know this until it was announced publicly--before dropping their partnership with Phillips as well. But, hey, that agreement led to the CD-i Zelda games...)