One of the reasons why I write this blog is that the process of writing churns up memories and realizations that I would never have obtained if I just sat down and thought or talked over. Consider the process when a game maker creates a game. During the process of creation comes a flood of ideas that would never have existed during the ‘brainstorming’ phrase. When our hands are in motion is when we think the best.
When writing the post about Gameboy launch games, the realization of how Gameboy’s Tetris was such a multiplayer blast came back to me (as well as the music). But with the below post, I was going through old TV commercials and stumbled over the original Gameboy commercial advertising just that. “Why do old commercials matter?” It is because they are time capsules showing how games were sold. What we remember and what game developers remember gets skewed by time. For example, the realization that Zelda was a combination of arcade/RPG elements didn’t come from me. It came from Nintendo Fun Club newsletter that advertised the original Legend of Zelda that way. In that context, games like Zelda II make total sense and put a frame as to why modern Zelda is boring and moving further and further into becoming irrelevant.
Check this ad out:
I’m now declaring the ‘Tetris was great being bundled with the Gameboy because it showed the portable nature’ to be a Video Game Myth. Gameboy’s Tennis or Super Mario Land could also do just the same thing. But Tetris did two things that the other Gameboy games didn’t.
Tetris is one of the best multiplayer games ever made. Nintendo went through all that work with a link cable to do multiplayer. It made sense to include a multiplayer game. Super Mario Land wasn’t multiplayer.
But aside from the link cable, there was other hardware included in the Gameboy package: the headphones. There needed to be a game to demonstrate the stereo power of the headphones. Tetris also has some of the best music ever.
Tetris being a great bundled game probably had more to do with putting the link cable and headphones to use than as a generic ‘good game for portables LOL’. I recall constantly playing Tetris head to head whenever I met someone with a Gameboy and everyone would try out Tetris when I pulled out my Gameboy. It was like a Wii Sports phenomenon.
You can see what is in the Gameboy box above. First thing the guy does is pick up the link cables. You can see the headphones burrowed in the slot next to the batteries. Tetris was the only game to really put everything in that box into perfect use.
I believe Gameboy’s Tetris should be considered as a type of ‘Wii Sports’ phenomenon. Gameboy Tetris should be thought more as a multiplayer juggernaut instead of a ‘portable’ juggernaut.
Nintendo’s mistakes with the 3DS stem from looking at the success of Wii Sports and only seeing the motion controls (software and hardware interaction). But the world actually went crazy over Wii Sports because it was a multiplayer juggernaut. In a similar way, the NES was approached that way too. It came with two controllers.
If Nintendo is interested in making the 3DS a phenomenon, it needs to create an incredible multiplayer experience that rivals Tetris and Wii Sports.