I had thought this emailer was in Japan since he previously told me things that were going on in Japan. Well, I was wrong on his location!
The Aonuma anger mail came from Finland, not Japan. But, there’s only one country and a small strip of sea in between, so it wasn’t that far off.
Indeed, the mail came from someone who has been around since the beginning of Zelda and had lots of anger in it. I was introduced to videogames with my grandfathers Pong clone, getting into games a little deeper after starting school, when I was introduced to Commodore 64, that many of my friends at school had, for their fathers having bought ones to play games with their kids. Soon after the local NES release, I got a NES myself (which eventually resulted the kids in the whole school to get ones, except those whose parents refused to buy one).
Every time I see the whiners in the message boards, it gives me this nostalgic feeling of listening to ten year old kids back in the 80’s, who whine because their parents didn’t buy them a NES.
Oh the 80’s with fathers and grandfathers playing games with kids. The game companies that time really tried hard to destroy gaming.
Anyway, I was already going to quit gaming because of the games turning to rubbish and/or losing/wearing out their appeal, until Wii came along.
And one more thought about Zelda. Nintendo obviously is watching public reactions to their Zelda statements. After Miyamoto first hinting to Zelda Wii supporting WM+ and public reaction being positive, they started talking about WM+ being in the game. The “concept art” was to see whether people want the game with “realistic” graphics or cel-shaded (or adult or child Link). Now Aonuma is throwing around his crazy ideas and Nintendo wants to see what people say about it.
What they should do, is to look how both NSMB games have done and make The New Legend of Zelda. Period.
With the way how Nintendo watches public reactions, it makes you wonder what the Zelda team has been doing for the past three years.
You bring up a great point that the “Game Industry” in the past were trying to destroy gaming (i.e. scorched earth revenue). In the mid 80s, the “Game Industry” actually succeeded in destroying gaming. Commodore who made the fantastically successful Commodore 64 ended up going bankrupt. The integrated hardware PC gaming was destroyed as well.
I don’t think a New Legend of Zelda is the path to go. Mario had to return to 2d because the essence of Mario is platforming. Platforming hasn’t successfully been implemented in 3d. Instead, Nintendo had to radically change the gameplay of 3d Mario so Mario had to scavenger hunt stars.
When people say they want a New Legend of Zelda, I think they are really hearkening back to that arcade combat and how easy and fun such combat was. 3d Zeldas have never had the ease and accessibility of combat as 2d Zelda did. This is perhaps why the 3d Zeldas focus more on puzzles.
The problem with 3d gaming in general is not that it is in 3d. The problem with 3d gaming has always been the interface. It is excruciatingly difficult to play a 3d game with a 2d interface. But with motion controls, the interface is now 3d. So I believe a Zelda, hearkening back to its roots, would work in 3d. When people played sword play in Wii Sports Resort for the very first time, they instantly thought of Zelda.
The way how motion plus controls will be used in Zelda: Wii will likely not be what we are hoping. Imagine motion plus added to a Lolo game. That is what we will get with Zelda Wii.
We will come to a room where we must use motion plus controls to screw in a block, or use motion plus controls to light a candle. We might use the sword once or twice and maybe the bow. But the motion plus controls will be leveraged toward puzzle solving, not towards attacking crazy monsters.
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