Email: ‘First 3d Mario’

“This is the first 3D Super Mario Bros. game. I wanted the transformations to carry over to the next stage…”

I think what they meant by that is that Super Mario 3DS is the first stereoscopic 3D Mario game.

However, I’m in agreement with everything else you said. It seems apparent that Nintendo must be destroyed if it’s to have a future. We have a bunch of immature game developers who are allowed to do whatever they want because they feel they can, who can sit there and laugh about much “fun” 3D Mario is and openly admit they want to convert 2D Mario fans (instead of just giving BOTH games the royal treatment which would literally please everyone) while Nintendo posts their biggest operating loss in a long time.

You’re right. These aren’t businessmen. These aren’t game developers. These are like spoiled nobles who don’t care how they piss off their subjects as long as they’re entertained. It saddens me that the game industry’s future is going back to being led by *shudder* Sony because Nintendo has given up on actually wanting to excel in business and make good games that people want to play.

It’s not about the customer experience. It’s about their development experience. It’s not about growing gaming. It’s about them growing their development toys.

It’s really revealing when Iwata says, “3d Mario and 2d Mario have the same roots because they were made by the same developers.” What Iwata is describing is that Nintendo’s game philosophy is Cults of Personality which is not a game philosophy at all. Somehow, the employees at Nintendo became more important than the actual products.

Sakamoto became more important than Metroid.

Aonuma became more important than Legend of Zelda.

Miyamoto became more important than Super Mario Brothers.

This is the behavior of a third class company. It’s the belief that the experience of the employees is far more important than the experience of the customers.

And to top it off, these Nintendo developers never get the blame when their products fail. Someone else always falls on the sword. With the Gamecube, Miyamoto blamed the marketing. With Metroid Other M, Sakamoto blamed the customers. Branch managers and others get the blame while Miyamoto and all skate all responsibility while they obtain more awards for excellence.

Why are these guys’ jobs so secure while everyone else working at or for Nintendo constantly on the ejection seat? Why can’t Sakamoto be ejected after destroying the Metroid franchise? Why can’t Aonuma be replaced with someone else to head up the Zelda franchise? Why can’t control of Mario be taken away from Miyamoto who insists on making endless 3d Mario games which so many Mario fans keep refusing to buy?

Why do Nintendo developers get to live in a different set of rules than what applies to everyone else?

The only time I’ve seen a Nintendo developer live in the same world as the rest of us has been when Gunpei Yokoi was dismissed from Nintendo after the failure of the Virtual Boy. But even that doesn’t make much sense as the Virtual Boy was released before Yokoi thought it was ready. There’s clearly something more going on in that situation than anyone knows. Yokoi certainly contributed more to Nintendo than anyone else including Miyamoto. Why was Yokoi canned but other developers, who do far worse, get to skate?

The 3DS made it to mass production before someone realized it needed a second stick. One of the people who are responsible for this is Miyamoto. He was to overseer the hardware for the 3DS this time around (and at investors’ insistence). It is the responsibility, in general, of the software developers to tell the hardware developers what they need. Yet, they didn’t need a second stick so they didn’t put one in there. Yet, the Nintendo engineers get the blame while the software developers get a pass. Miyamoto’s responsibility in the 3DS construction is not mentioned anywhere in the gaming press. Why?

When the Wii controller was introduced, it was to correct the flaws of the modern controller that really began with the N64 (which Sony copied). Well, who made that controller? Who is actually responsible for the decline of gaming? Who was it that arbitrarily decided that there would be no more 2d Mario games?