Email: Mario Kart options

I read your post about Mario Kart 7 allowing players to define custom rules. It’s a great idea that should have been added many iterations ago! But I just wanted to let you know that a limited form of it already does exist in Mario Kart Wii. There’s a multiplayer options menu that allows you to select weapon types (“Agressive”, “Normal”, “Defensive”, and “None”), kart speed, cpu difficulty (or they can be disabled for a traditional 4-player race), kart types, etc…

It’s not as robust as it should be, but it definitely reignited Mario Kart fever among some of my friends when we discovered it (this was over a year after the game came out, so I definitely understand people not knowing about it).
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I was aware of the Mario Kart Wii options. They were still unsatisfactory. What people wanted was to remove one particular item or two particular items, not remove most or all of them.By their definition, games should allow players to define how they play. The player knows what pleases himself and his friends far more than a remote game developer. Board games, for example, have a ton of options in how they are played. Video games always gave options for things like difficulty levels. A game like Civilization with its wide range of difficulty levels allows a large range of players to enjoy the game.What I do not understand is how modern Mario Kart could be coming from Nintendo. Modern Mario Kart is following a radically different philosophy than modern Mario and modern Zelda.Nintendo never said, “It is time to re-invent Mario Kart. The game will no longer be about racing. It will be about character stories and puzzles. It will be about free roaming through 3d environments.” Mario Kart’s modern ascension began with Mario Kart DS which the designer’s mission was to ‘beat Super Mario Kart’. He heavily adopted the Super Mario Kart’s gameplay (brought back hopping).The things added to Mario Kart are natural evolutions to the fundamental core (like online multiplayer or adding more customization to the karts). There was no transformation of the game into a different form. I don’t like some of the things they’ve done (like the stupid kites or the underwater racing), but the big picture of the game has remained true to the Super Mario Kart game that came out on the Super Nintendo nearly twenty years ago.

Look at Super Mario Brothers 5. That game is a definite natural evolution from the core Super Mario Brothers experience. It has co-op multiplayer, but the basic game is still the same. And look how the market responded to it. NSMB DS and Super Mario Brothers 5 did wonders in selling Nintendo hardware.

3d Mario did not sell Nintendo hardware. 3d Mario doesn’t feel like a natural evolution from Super Mario Brothers. It feels like a new type of game. Whether one likes it or not isn’t the issue. The issue is that 3d Mario has never been accepted as a Super Mario game by the market. 3d Mario is seen as its own separate series.

What is the problem with continuing the core series? The sales numbers are there in BIG NUMBERS. Yet, Nintendo doesn’t want to do it. They apparently don’t want people to buy their console.

And the same issue arises with Zelda. Where is the natural evolution of Legend of Zelda? We saw it with Zelda 2, definitely with Link to the Past, arguably with Ocarina, but then it trails off. Someone decided that progress in Zelda should not revolve around ‘reflexes’ but around ‘puzzles’. This sucks because any idiot can beat a Zelda game by taking a minute to read an Internet guide. Zelda games no longer require intelligence or some sort of skill to complete. Jigsaw puzzles have more action in them than an Aonuma Zelda game does.

What do you want from Metroid? Every Metroid fan I’ve heard says they want a natural evolution of Super Metroid, i.e., the core gameplay. Why was Metroid Prime embraced by Metroid fans? It is because it was like Super Metroid but in 3d. The developers were fans of classic Metroid. Then we get Sakamoto who is clearly not a fan of classic Metroid. Metroid: Other M was obviously not a natural evolution of Metroid.

I’m distressed for two reasons. One, Nintendo thinks a game series revolves around employees rather than gameplay, i.e. Mario revolves around Miyamoto, not around adventuresome two-dimensional platforming. To Nintendo, games are nothing more than extensions of people that make them. This means Nintendo has no coherent philosophy for its software. Two, different standards apply to different game series. Why does Mario Kart follow the natural evolution of the series while Mario and Zelda do not?

Contradiction arrives at Nintendo. How can they point to a game transformation like Mario or Zelda and say, “This is the way,” while Mario Kart doesn’t do that? Or how can they point at Mario Kart and say, “This is the way,” while Mario and Zelda doesn’t base itself on the classic’s gameplay? It has to be one or the other. Nintendo can’t claim both are correct.

I think, overall, what irks me is the complete lack of intellectual honesty coming from Nintendo this generation. For example, the Blue Ocean Strategy was ‘good’ a few years ago. But now, we are told that the Blue Ocean Strategy is ‘bad’ today. Why? Iwata won’t say. The reason why is because underneath all the bluster, Nintendo is little more than manchildren who wish to play with 3d or ‘narratives’ all day (whether the market wants it or not). Investors are seeing through the bullshit. So am I.