Email: They’ve got Sakurai now

Master Malstrom,

 

I decided to watch YouTube videos of Kid Icarus walkthroughs because I read in an article that Sakurai is claiming credit for writing the entire script of the game himself.  All the dialogue between characters and the story, etc.  You really should listen to some of this crap.  Jokes about fried chicken?  Really?  

 

Regardless of where someone stands on the decisions he made in the progression of Smash to Melee to Brawl, I had to respect Sakurai because he was focused on GAMEPLAY and got involved in the work of balancing and other things important when making something you want people to play.  But now Nintendo has promoted him from the demeaning work of game-making and managed to convince him that he, like Sakamoto, is a CREATIVE GENIUS.  Here’s 85 bajillion dollars: go make an episode of Family Guy with a little bit of bullet hell gameplay.  And he wants to be known for this?!?!

 

I don’t want to say the game looks mediocre when you strip all the fan service and cinematics away from it, because it may just be my personal tastes talking.  But I long for the days of yore when nobody knew who any of these Japanese people were and Miyamoto was just a white shirt working non-stop at a desk trying to please his boss and nobody had egos that sold any games.  Imagine if Double Dragon had a running script between the brothers throughout the game?

 

Am I ever going to be able to look to a Nintendo console for a game to just play again instead of a tour through someone’s imagination?Whose imagination is important? Is it Sakurai’s or the audience’s? It is the audience’s imagination.

This might be a modern problem caused by computers. In the past, entertainment didn’t have a virtual reality. Plays had people wearing masks. Shakespeare asked the audience to imagine horses because he couldn’t provide them in Henry V. Before special effects, movies used little models and paintings.

The entertainer was like a magician. The magician has all these tricks, smokes and mirrors, to stimulate the imagination of the audience. But because of modern computing, the entertainer is getting lost by stimulating his imagination.

The entertainer is supposed to be the STIMULATOR, not the STIMULATED.