Then why did it take sixteen years for a new 2d Mario to appear on handhelds?
After Mario 64, Miyamoto publicly acknowledged that Tomagotchi was a better game even though it used dot matrix graphics while he was using state of the art 3d. This would later lead to Nintendogs, and we are witnessing massive sales of Tomagotchi on the DS in Japan.
It has been inferred that those who like 2d Mario were supposed to be “satisfied” by games like Super Paper Mario. I ask them what they are smoking. By their own logic, since Super Paper Mario is also 3d, I could say why aren’t they satisfied with just Super Paper Mario and won’t need Super Mario Galaxy?
I do know for fact that younger Nintendo developers have wanted to make the games they grew up with like 2d Mario or even Final Fantasy (that would be fascinating to see, a Nintendo RPG that doesn’t have Mario or a Fire Emblem character in it). These younger developers are always told no by the older developers. Why? “We’ve made those games before, we don’t want to make them again,” say the older developers.
Something within Nintendo allowed them to make NSMB DS. It likely was the PSP threat. And NSMB Wii is only being made since the NSMB DS did 20 million units (which is tons).
Miyamoto revealed the sales guys at Nintendo kept demanding for another 2d Mario game. The person who Miyamoto told this to, a game journalist, shouted, “EVERYONE WANTS IT!” haha
Nintendo did make 2d games on the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube such as Link’s Four Swords as well as Yoshi’s Story.
Occam’s Razor applies. The most simplest answer is that Shigeru Miyamoto does not want to make 2d Marios. He is the choke point. After all, he controls Mario and Zelda totally and nothing can be done with them without his backing.
Prior to Galaxy, Miyamoto publicly said that he intended Galaxy to sell 2d Mario numbers. This, obviously, did not happen. He said that accessibility was the reason why 3d Mario did not sell as 2d Mario. Galaxy, with its fishbowl lens and all, was to make it more accessible.
Consumers see 3d Mario and 2d Mario as two entirely different series. They do not see them as the same game. This had to have been realized when Galaxy came out without a care in Japan (whereas NSMB DS rocketed out of the gate). Nintendo had to make commercials to compare Galaxy to NSMB DS hahaha.
What everyone wants is for 2d Mario series to continue to grow and evolve. We want to see Super Mario World and Super Mario Brothers 3 surpassed. We want to play as different characters such as Peach. Perhaps even multiplayer with AI would be interesting. Perhaps a return to Sub-Con to slay Wart again.
Instead, Miyamoto recently said he wants to use 2d Mario for User Generated Content. What the hell? No. First of all, that is a bad idea because it would be too much like LittleBigPlanet, it would be jumping into a Red Ocean. Second, it is a bad idea because action games do not work well with User Generated Content. If he has to make a User Generated Game, a puzzle or adventure game would likely work better. 2d Mario depends too much on new abilities in the stages and within powerups which has to be hard coded in. Puzzle and adventure games depend more on the arrangement of the levels so they would work better. Like a User Generated “Adventures of Lolo for Wii” would work better. Even a 2d old school Zelda game would work better with people making their own dungeons and all. Hell, even 3d Mario would work better since that game has so many puzzle elements.
Miyamoto doesn’t understand why consumers love 2d Mario. I know this is shocking to say, but hear me out. Miyamoto did not grow up with 2d Mario. He has been on the developer side of it all along. He doesn’t realize the “magic” the game has on a child’s mind. The younger developers do understand.
One concern I see is that Nintendo sees 2d Mario as something to expand to people who played the old 2d Marios. This is wrong. So wrong. The true reason why we want 2d Mario made is because the gameplay is timeless. NSMB DS’s 20 million shows that brand new gamers are getting into it. To those who grew up with 2d Mario, this completely makes sense.
No childhood should be deprived of 2d Mario. It is as classic as Pac-Man.
What concerns me is that Nintendo is angling toward a move to expanding to former gamers by making “remakes” of old classics (such as Excite-Bike).
Older people like myself are demanding a “return to the roots” not because we want to play remakes of games we played twenty years ago, but because modern gaming has lost the magic that the classics had. The magic of old games was that they had that arcade type gameplay. They were very simple to play but hard to master. I see Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Wii Play as successors to PONG, Epic’s Summer Olympics, Atari’s “Combat”, and so on.
People are excited about NSMB Wii not just because it is 2d Mario. They are excited because they miss 2d platformers. They miss that arcade gameplay that NO ONE is making today.
Instead of just making retro remakes, I’d love to see the Wii’s unique features, such as motion controls, be applied in that same arcade like context. The controls are fantastic in Wii Sports Resort. Instead of shooting a bow at a dull target, why can’t I go on an adventure and shoot some dragons? Why can’t someone join me with a sword and together we can go out adventuring? I very much dislike how Nintendo has been using Wii’s unique features only for Expanded Market games.
Zelda Wii is a move in the right direction. Everyone dreamed of a sword fighting Zelda when the wii-controller was shown off. However, this is not good enough. Zelda Wii will obey the Zelda formula. Why not use the new features of the Wii to create a new type of game that wasn’t possible before? I like my idea of using sword fight/ arrow shoot/ and frisbee controls to make a Gauntlet type of team based exploration/RPG game. People could equip different weapons which means they would change how they used the controller to attack. If they got tired swinging the sword (which does get tiring), they can switch to bow and arrow for example.
I think Nintendo has a gameplay orientated problem. They have to re-invent the wheel with each game and this is leading to some problems on the content side. A shining example of this would be Zelda: Choo Choo Train. They came up with the gameplay idea first for the Choo Choo Train and then forced it into the Zelda Formula in the Windwaker universe where the world is flooded. So they just make up stuff to explain why trains have suddenly appeared in an oceanic world. When someone thinks of Zelda, they don’t think of trains. What is next? Laser guns? Link could travel to the future in Ocarina of Time, why can’t he travel a million years into the future and return to Hyrule with an assault rifle or a rocket launcher? Link with a plasma rifle would certainly create new gameplay situations, but it ruins the content. Nintendo never thinks of their games from a content perspective which is why people who played the games from their first incarnations can clearly point to a substantial decline in the quality of those universes.
Imagine Diablo with trains. Imagine Warcraft with trains. Can you imagine Orcs riding a train? Or a Night Elf being an engineer? It doesn’t fit.
So I think the pattern of Nintendo developers in general, as well as Miyamoto’s specific actions and declarations, shows that he doesn’t make 2d Mario because he doesn’t want to.
There were quotes from one Nintendo developer saying how much he loved 3d Mario and wanted to a new 3d Mario game on the DS. It is never asked whether a new 3d Mario game would even be appropriate for the DS.
When gamers rejected the Windwaker cell shading, Nintendo returned to it on the handhelds. Why? Because they want to.
Look at Super Mario Galaxy 2. There is no business reason why this game is being made. Super Mario Galaxy 1 did not push hardware anywhere. Certainly, it did not push it in Japan. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to make something else? Or to make a game from another Nintendo staple like Starfox or F-Zero or something else? They want to make it so it is being made. Iwata being a developer can be a problem as he is allowing these developers to do almost whatever they want.
Starfox is another good example. The game sold very well on SNES and N64. Nintendo developers decided they don’t want to make it anymore so they farm it out. But they still had ideas left over from the unreleased Starfox 2 on SNES so they put the gameplay ideas in a horrible art style of Starfox: Assault for the DS. This tells me that the old farts at Nintendo are living in the past. (Starfox 2 beta for the SNES, which you can download, was far more interesting than that DS game.)
In his “Heart of the Gamer” speech, Iwata says game developers must stop making games for themselves. Yet, Nintendo developers do exactly that. Do we need another Zelda DS, this time with ridiculous trains? Do we need a sequel to Galaxy, a game that didn’t sell the hardware anyway?
This is why I am so ferocious in my response to hardcore gamers who whine that “Nintendo is abandoning them”. You guys don’t know what it is like to be abandoned. There are new Fire Emblems, yet no one buys Fire Emblem. There were new 2d Metroids, yet 2d Metroid has never been a big seller. 3d Mario never got near 2d Mario’s sales, and Miyamoto knew this. Yet, the reaction is to just make more 3d Mario, one after another. Hell, there has been even been a new 2d Zelda on the home console!
I’m hostile to 3d Mario not because it is poorly made but because I know Miyamoto is trying to cram it down my throat. He wants those of us to accept 3d Mario as the successor. But we won’t do that. We say: “This is not a real Mario game.”
I would be the first Nintendo fan to have a hostile response to Miyamoto. There is another universe of Nintendo fans out there, ones who got left behind or abandoned by the company. In the conventional Nintendo fan universe, Miyamoto is hailed as the genius, as the great game maker, and all. In my Universe of Disinterest, Miyamoto and other Nintendo developers come across more as jerks as they know what we want but have deliberately ignored us for decades.
I don’t see genius in these Nintendo developers. I see them abandoning 2d Mario (which set Nintendo home consoles in a free fall), running the Starfox franchise into the ground, inflicting irreversible harm on Metroid due to what they think is a “genius storyline” (after Metroid Fusion and that stupid purple outfit, every new Metroid game is now a ‘prequel’ because Sakamoto screwed up), and is currently running the Zelda franchise into the ground. The only big reversal they have done is Mario Kart: Wii.
Trying to pass off Super Paper Mario as a 2d Mario experience or say that the future of 2d Mario is “User Generated Content” I see as insults.Imagine if he said the future of 3d Mario is to be “User Generated Content”. Imagine how you’d feel.
My disappointment began in the 16-bit generation when I was waiting for Super Mario Brothers 5 and Donkey Kong Country game came out after Donkey Kong Country game. Now, Donkey Kong Country is OK, but it is a mediocre platformer with good graphics and fantastic music, just like Mario Galaxy. But it is not Super Mario Brothers 5.
I’ve been waiting 19 years! Good God!
To those who tell me, “Malstrom, lighten up on the 3d Mario.” Sure, as soon as you lighten up on 3d Sonic. I want a 2d Sonic as much as anyone, but I’ve given up on Sega long ago.
Keep in mind that I am coming from the Universe of Disinterest which is a very, very different realm than the conventional Nintendo gamers.