Email: about Kirby

Hello Malstrom, I meant to email you about this a while back but I lost my message due to a phone issue. HAHA, MY PC WILL SAVE ME THIS TIME!

 

Kirby, the real Kirby, for Wii is awesome because of Iwata. He came from HAL Labs before he took the reins of the company. Epic Yarn may have been the result of him wanting to appease the Miyamoto-type of developer but Return to Dreamland is him appeasing true Kirby fans in a way that Miyamoto should have done when his team developed Super Mario 64 (3D Mario shouldn’t live at the expense of 2D Mario’s existence). It may also be his way of removing any shame that he may have felt with the release of Epic Yarn, at least in retrospect.

 

Kirby may try different styles of gameplay but in the end Nintendo never abandons the original Kirby style of gameplay. I liked Sonic Kirby (Canvas) but I disliked Epic Yarn. Sonic Kirby still retained stealing the powers of baddies, traversing the lands and just being Kirby-like. It felt a bit like Sonic but it was delicious. I would object to Canvas Curse usurping the core-Kirby game series in the same way that you object 3D Mario trying to replace 2D Mario. I do not play Zelda anymore. Once it hit the DS and I saw the decay without anything else shielding it from me I flipped Nintendo the bird.

 

Kirby may possibly be in danger of being thrashed but I doubt it. Not while Iwata heads the company. Mario is wasted as a technology show case of nostalgia and puzzles now. Zelda has a similar fate. Donkey Kong gets experimental controls and gameplay (Nintendo sabotaged DKC Returns by forcing Rare to add the motion controls that ruin it a bit). Warioware is the hardware tech demo, the ying to Mario’s yang now. Kirby simply just does what Kirby does.

 

To get off of the main subject for a moment here, HAL may possibly be getting infected. The next iterations of Smash Bros. should let us know this. Smash Bros. has always felt like an extended Kirby-based fighting game to me (aesthetically and the focus on simplicity that hides depth and pure fun). It has to be more than just HAL’s style since they make Mother, Picross and other Nintendo games. I’d hate for HAL, Gamefreak and Intelligent Systems to suffer for a company that wishes to advance a failing movement of trying to delude their customers into wanting what the developers want. Kirby games usually respect the gamer while experimenting (Epic Yarn doesn’t count).You say that Mario and Zelda games are used now as technology showcases. Nintendo doesn’t see it like that.The gamer thinks the experience of Mario and Zelda come from the games.Nintendo thinks the experience of Mario and Zelda comes from the ‘integrated-hardware-and-software’ (oh, that term!).Nintendo doesn’t make ‘games’ anymore in the way how we think of it. They make ‘integrated-hardware-and-software experiences’. It may explain why only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo hardware. Third parties are not interested in making an ‘integrated-hardware-and-software experience’ because they need to port the game to as many platforms as possible. This ‘integrated hardware and software’ approach by Nintendo is the reason why every third party game feels like it is not using the hardware. It is using the hardware but the game doesn’t revolve around the hardware features like Nintendo does.

There seems to be three ways to make a game these days.

1) Make as much within a limited time frame and ship- This is what the Game Industry does.

2) Make a game you think ought to be made- This is what companies like Blizzard does.

3) Make a game to fit the hardware- This is the Nintendo approach.

Nintendo isn’t interested in making the best Mario or Zelda game. Nintendo is only interested in making Mario and Zelda fit the hardware.

Instead of designing Mario and Zelda to fit the hardware, why not design the hardware to fit Mario and Zelda?