Miyamoto needs to make more disappointing games

Then we would have more awesome games like Zelda 2.

Hell yes! Zelda 2 is probably the best Zelda game of all of them. You had to be a man to beat the game.

Zelda 2 was a SMASH HIT. People loved playing it. I believe Zelda 2’s success contributed to the great cartridge shortage of 1988 (as cartridges kept going to Nintendo’s best selling games like Super Mario Brothers 2 and Zelda 2 instead of third parties).

Have you noticed Miyamoto no longer takes the context of the gamer? What gamers think or react doesn’t matter. All that matters is what His Majesty, Mr. Miyamoto, of what he thinks.

It is not a coincidence that Miyamoto bad mouths Zelda 2 as opposed to actually terrible games (any of the Pikmin games, Wii Music, the disappointing Wii Sports Resort with that crappy Wuhu Island, that Pac-man clone game Miyamoto is damn well making sure no one hears about, or any others). Remember when Miyamoto bad mouthed Super Mario Brothers 3 by saying of the levels, “That’s it!?” Yes, that’s it. We don’t need these long ass levels or puzzle stuffed “level design”.

What I would like for someone from Nintendo tell me why anyone there is qualified to explain the popular entertainment phenomena of the first games in the game franchises or certain consoles? How can Miyamoto understand something like Super Mario Brothers 3 when he played the role of developer and wasn’t on the outside?

What connection does he have to The Common Gamer?

I contend that Nintendo developers lost touch with The Common Gamer around the 16-bit era and have remained ‘out of touch’. “But what about the Wii?” The Wii shows that Nintendo can get in touch if they choose to. With the Wii U, Nintendo is choosing not to be in touch.

Nintendo has been operating under the assumption that the game developer(s) involved in the prior game understand why it is successful. Yet, with Nintendo’s track record, we know this not to be true. And when we look at the success of games like Metroid Prime or revivals of various third party games, it is clear that not having the original developers or their insight doesn’t prevent the game from being more successful than the prior ones. In other words, just because someone worked on Mario doesn’t mean he would understand why Mario is successful in the market. Most entertainers have no idea why their entertainment is successful. The rare ones who do are able to recreate the phenomena again and again. Miyamoto is an entertainer who has no idea how to recreate the phenonenon. And since he can’t do it, he declares no one else can either. Iwata is then dragged out to shareholders to explain that no one should expect Nintendo to place lightning in bottles every single time due to the nature of entertainment. Yet, other entertainers can. Nintendo can’t even make their customers ‘sticky’ as they all flee the platform despite all the heavy use of ‘sequels’.

If Miyamoto understood gamers so much, why is the Wii U such a failure? Why was the Gamecube such a failure? Why did Nintendo have to sell the 3DS at a loss in order to create an install base? Miyamoto was the hardware designer of the 3DS after all.

I am reminded of that Aonuma interview where he asks people to give him emotional feedback on playing his games. But what about the emotional feedback concerning the first games of the franchise or the major console hits like the NES and Wii? Why does Nintendo only want emotional feedback to games it wants to make (Wind Waker, 3d Mario, Metroid: Other M) but not emotional feedback on games they DON’T want to make (Zelda 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, Metroid)?

There is a huge ego going on inside Nintendo. You would think they would want to know what the experience was to the gaming phenomena that sparked their great IPs or to a 90% lock on the market. But they don’t! Instead, they keep wanting feedback onto game consoles the market rejected (Virtual Boy, N64, Gamecube, Wii U, 3DS) and on games the market rejected (Wind Waker, 3d Mario, Other M, etc.).

As for the Zelda 2 comment, Miyamoto is trolling. It is as if he said he was disappointed in Super Mario World (which was a disappointment to many Mario fans). Zelda 2 was so popular that other game companies copied its design and is considered a classic. Miyamoto knows this.

And do you know why there was no backlash against Zelda 2 as there was with Wind Waker (or some other Aonuma crap game)? It is because Zelda 2 and Zelda 1 are nearly identical in design if you consider the definition of Zelda to be a hybrid arcade action and RPG game. Zelda 2 was the most intense in both fields: arcade action and RPG. I would love to see the RPG system re-used. It is certainly more fun than any ‘collecting’ or ‘scavenger hunt’ gameplay.

Zelda 2’s existence demolishes the notion that the definition of Zelda is ‘puzzles’ and ‘story’. Instead of pretending Zelda 2 doesn’t exist or is ‘flawed’ (a hardware selling game is flawed?), Miyamoto and Aonuma should re-examine their premises of why Zelda succeeded in the first place against heavy competition of RPG games in PC land and heavy competition of arcade games in console land.