Miyamoto said a discussion going on inside Nintendo is how to get new games to be as cool as the classic games. I earlier wrote a post on the gameplay aspects such as concerning Zelda. Here, I wish to address the content angle or the ‘everything not gameplay related’.
Things that are not gameplay related are extremely important to a game. Music can make or break a game. So can sound effects. And art style. All this matters.
The word I would describe Modern Nintendo is tasteless. Another would be insipid. The games are so tasteless. This is what people are complaining about with NSMB series. They keep saying it seems ‘stale’ and all. They are saying it feels tasteless. It is as if Nintendo is trying so hard to be neutral that it neuters itself. The game lacks a pizazz that you saw in the classic 2d Mario games.
Nintendo games tend to have palatable gameplay. But the content is so tasteless. The Zelda experience is today one of tastelessness. Everything feels so lame. And also, everything feels bloated. The worse example is Metroid: Other M where the story and all just reeked as tasteless.
Now why is this happening? Why was Classic Nintendo games different? I can only offer theories. I have two of them, and I think they are very good.
1) Increased disk space diluted the ‘concentrated coolness’.
When games used to be made, there was not as much room for art, sound, and music. Because of that, all the art, sound, and music had a ‘concentrated coolness’ to it. If your game only has four songs in it, you better make damn sure they are awesome songs or the game will sink fast.
When Miyamoto said how he was making Donkey Kong, he had to work within limited memory restraints to make Mario. Mario had to look cool and interesting as did Donkey Kong. The fireballs (when the barrels reach the end) look very interesting because they have those cute little eyes and seem alive.
Social awareness is another way of being tasteless. Nintendo Land is mocked because it sounds lame. “So did the Wii name, Malstrom. How about that!?” The Wii brand was tastefully done. Only the hardcore gamers didn’t understand it because… as we know… they understand very little how gaming works. Sony’s PS3 ads like the crying baby or the PSP ad with the ‘White is coming!’ are tasteless ads.
People still love Mega Man 2. It has gone beyond any nostalgia. It has so much concentrated coolness in it. The more memory and data the developers had, the less they had to concentrate the content. And thus, Mega Man just got tasteless. (shudders at Mega Man 8’s voice acting)
Metroid has always been an example of concentrated coolness. Metroid Prime performed so well because the game was just so cool. There was nothing tasteless in it. The art was not tasteless. The sound was not tasteless. The music was not tasteless. Unlike Metroid: Other M.
Above: Tastefullly done. It’s cool!
One very big concern may be that Nintendo developers cannot tell the difference between tasteful and tasteless on a global level.
Above: Tasteless. The trains, the chibi Link, it looks awful. But there are people inside Nintendo who thinks this looks amazing. These people are not in sync with the rest of the population.
What about the most recent Nintendo game that feels like a classic?
Why does this game feel like Classic Nintendo?
“Durrr, Malstrom, DURRR. It feels like Classic Nintendo because it uses so much sound and imagery of Classic Nintendo. You ask such a stupid question.”
I’d say that is a shallow analysis. Smash Brothers doesn’t use *all* of Classic Nintendo. It only uses the cool stuff. The Starfox level as arwings shooting laser beams and big explosions in the sky. The Metroid level has a giant monster Kraid wheeling the world around. Smash Brothers cherry picks all the cool stuff from past games. What Smash Brothers doesn’t do is use the uncool stuff. You don’t see World 5-1 from Super Mario Brothers. You don’t see a plains battle from Zelda 2 (no, you see the palace level with the ultra cool music.)
Above: Ultra cool music.
Smash Brothers is proof that coolness is not confined to a generation. The coolness of the classic games transcends nostalgia. The kids who got into Smash Brothers didn’t grow up with the NES or SNES. This is also why Sony’s copycat game will fail. Sony’s franchises lack the coolness of Classic Nintendo.
One reason why so much of the bread and butter of gaming in the pre-N64 eras was shmups was because shmups were so freaking cool. Just look at this. Coolness overload!
Above: Coolness overload
Remember when Nintendo used to be cool?
Above: So cool! But just inserting this song in the Zelda mini-game will not make it cool.
My biggest problem with Modern Nintendo games is that realizing they are unable to be cool, they act as a parasite off of the coolness of Classic Nintendo. They keep attaching tentacles to Classic Nintendo and try to connect to the coolness of the past. Why not make new coolness? Whenever Nintendo does this, they are saying, “We are unable to make cool stuff in this day in age so we must keep acting as a parasite off of the coolness of the 80s and 90s.”
You know, I’ve never thought Donkey Kong Country was a ‘good game’, but it was always a ‘cool game’.
Good games do not sell because they are good. Good games sell only because they are cool. There are tons of terrible games that are cool that sell very well.
Be cool or die.
2) Stimulate the imagination
This sounds simple and people will not understand it. This is much harder to do than people think.
What is the title of the original Star Wars movie?
“Star Wars, Malstrom. DUH.”
No. It is Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
This is a very interesting technique. Viewers imagined there were three other movies taking place before it with a ton of story already happening. It made people IMAGINE. In a way, it worked against Star Wars was that when the first three movies were eventually made, they could not match the expectations that were in people’s minds.
My point is that the ‘Classic’ video game feel always hints at a larger universe. In Metroid, you are not given details about the Federation or the Space Pirates. The player uses his imagination. Most famously, Zelda’s timeline was left to the player’s imagination. And Zelda fans had a blast conjuring up timelines. Shame on Nintendo for spoiling the fun by putting out an ‘official’ timeline. How lame. How tasteless.
Let me communicate this in a language even the hardcore gamer understands. A beautiful woman is beautiful in large part because the man’s imagination is stimulated. This is why a woman in clothes will look more interesting than a naked woman because the former stimulates imagination. It is also why the latter turns the lights out.
Look at this! Do you see the title? Star Control: Famous Batttles of the Ur-quan Conflict Volume IV. They were copying Star Wars in how they did their title!
“What is relevant here?” asks the reader.
What is relevant is that the sequel to the above game is considered a classic and one of the best video game stories made. Why was it so good? It is because not much happened inside the game. It was good because nearly every conversation hints and paints events going on off-screen. You don’t see Brown Ur-Quans. You don’t see the Sentient Milieu. You don’t see the Precursors. You don’t even see the end of the first war.
Above: You don’t get to witness the Yehat Civil War. It is only witnessed in your imagination. The concentrated coolness, such as this music, jogs those imagination muscles.
Shakespeare was a huge believer in the art of imagination. His plays are like laboratory tests on the proper uses of imagination (comedies) and the improper uses (tragedies). Iago makes Othello imagine his faithful wife is cheating on him so Othello kills her. Beatrice and Benedick are tricked into imagining the other have the hots for them so the two fall in love.
Imagination is very powerful. But it is only the player’s imagination that matters. The skilled entertainer will understand how to seduce the player’s imagination. I believe Classic Nintendo had that focus. Today, it is clear Modern Nintendo thinks everything revolves around the developer’s imagination and the player’s role is only to enter the world they created.
Shigeru Miyamoto did not create the Mushroom World. I did! And so did all the players who experienced Super Mario Brothers. Zelda was designed like a garden. So where did the world of Hyrule come from? It come from the players’ imagination… just like all the endless timelines.
Games of the past had to leverage imagination more because graphics and data were limited. But increased graphics and data are now removing the imagination.
Video games are being made to stimulate hardware, not players’ imaginations. It is time for that to change.
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