This is a continuation of the earlier post about Nintendo Land. Earlier I said I thought the bad art styles of Nintendo Land, which don’t even match some of the games that are in there (like Zelda and Metroid), may be caused by a misguided attempt to ‘propel Japanese culture’. Honestly, I don’t believe in “culture”. It’s a modern word that is only a few decades old. One only has to go so far to look at the early Civilization games and how there was no mention of this thing called “culture” because it wasn’t exactly a term. (“Culture” was added with Civilization 3.) The reason why the term ‘culture’ came out was to replace the term ‘civilized’. A society that reads, writes, makes cities, etc. is civilized. A society that holds no value in reading, writing, or making cities is uncivilized. I suspect ‘culture’ was a term used to make things that were considered uncivilized a false sense of value. Before, a bunch of drunks would be considered ‘uncivilized’. Today, a bunch of drunks is considered a ‘drinking culture’. And there is the ‘drug culture’ and ‘gangster culture’. Can’t call anything uncivilized today.
I’m asking myself: “Why did Nintendo design the art and the themes the way it did?” Then I remembered Nintendo pledging that Nintendo Land would be as big of a hit as Wii Sports. (Aside: Pahahahahahahahahahaha! *Snort* *Snort* Ah hahahahahahahaha. *Ahem*)
What if Nintendo doesn’t understand the success of Wii Sports and Nintendo Land is a demonstration of that non-understanding? After all, many game companies didn’t understand how Wii Sports was successful. The only successful follow-up to Wii Sports was Wii Fit… which was started before the Wii launched.
Poor Wii Sports player. If you are someone who bought the Wii for Wii Sports (such as myself), you are considered brain damaged and behave in a retarded manner. You’re stamped with the title ‘casual gamer’. You’re depicted as never speaking but only making a type of bark, and the Game Industry debates whether or not you have paws instead of hands. The Wii Sports player gets no respect.
Everyone is underestimating the Wii Sports player. The conventional wisdom is that these players have little to no standards but need the Miis. Yet, Nintendo is surprised when games like Mario Kart Wii and NSMB Wii attracts the Wii Sports players.
Did the ‘built in software’ with the 3DS attract a huge number of players? It did not. Did voodoo 3d effects of the 3DS make everyone say ‘Wow!’ and rush to get the hardware? It did not. And what about games like Wii Music?
The decline of the latter half of the Wii and the 3DS fizzle demonstrates that Nintendo doesn’t understand the Wii Sports audience. Yet, we’re expected to believe that Nintendo will suddenly realize how again with Nintendo Land?
People say predicting Nintendo is hard. I say it is easy. The reason why it is easy is that all one has to do is to pay attention to the patterns of gaming since the introduction of PONG. Of COURSE the Wii would succeed. It had Atari like marketing, NES simplicity, and was emulating gaming’s greatest hits. I remember when the NES sports games were very popular and brought in older adults. When I saw Wii Sports, I connected thetwo. Wii Sports even uses NES Golf’s courses. Wii Sports Tennis became so iconic and popular because it is our generation’s PONG. Why did I know that NSMB Wii would become so popular? It is because 2d Mario has ALWAYS been popular. It is only in the bizarro world of the Gaming Message Forum did a type of bubble world emerge where people get mixed up.
Nothing about the Wii was ‘new’ except for Wii Fit. Yeah, the Power Pad was novel and memorable, but I’ve never seen a video game intersect itself into health and fitness as well as Wii Fit did.
Just as gaming’s previous successes resonate forward into the future, gaming’s previous failures also reappear. It’s easy to say that the next 3d Mario isn’t going to sell gangbusters because… 3d Mario never has done this. It’s easy to say that a Nintendo console making Gamecube type software will fail because… the Gamecube did fail. Prior to the 3DS coming out, Aonuma (I believe) was talking up about how fascinating the Virtual Boy was and how Nintendo could look to make more games like that. I just slapped myself to make sure I wasn’t reading a parody website. The Virtual Boy failed. Why would making more Virtual Boy type games suddenly succeed?
Will Nintendo Land succeed? And by succeed, I mean with Nintendo’s expectations. Will it be the next Wii Sports?
Well, when has any mini-game compilation sold hardware? “What about Wii Sports?” Who says that the Wii Sports audience saw Wii Sports as a mini-game compilation. They just played Tennis and Bowling and didn’t bother with the rest of the games. For most people, Wii Sports was bundled in with the hardware.
While we may think of Wii Sports as a mini-game compilation, the people who bought the Wii for Wii Sports think of it as Five-Free-Games-With-The-Console. They saw the individual sports game for Wii Sports as a full game in itself. Tennis and Bowling were really good. The others were not that good. And if the reader happened to grow up with the NES Action Pack, did you treat the cartridge of Super Mario Brothers / Duck Hunt / World Track Meet as a ‘mini-game’ collection? Or did you treat it as if you had THREE FULL GAMES where that Mario game rocked but the other games weren’t that great. They were OK, but not something you’d want to play a ton.
Nintendo is saying that Nintendo Land is to have ‘full games’ and not ‘mini-games’ like the games of Wii Sports. This is interesting because the Wii Sports players considered the disc as five full games on it just like the NES kid viewed Duck Hunt and Mario as two full games. The only people who viewed Wii Sports as a mini-game collection were people who didn’t like Wii Sports anyway.
With this context, I cannot see any mini-game collection being a system seller. If Wii Sports is a mini-game collection, then Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt were a mini-game collection. I don’t think Nintendo understands what made Wii Sports such a hit and is relying on the typical Industry cliches about the ‘casual gamers’ (who apparently are never allowed to speak for themselves. For some reason, only Hardcore Gamers are allowed to self-appoint themselves to speak about what ‘dah casualz’ like).
I not only think Nintendo Land will not be the system seller, I think it will damage the brands that are in it. People will play the Zelda or Metroid games in Nintendo Land and then never want anything to do with Zelda or Metroid.
At E3 2011, Nintendo unveiled NSMB Mii. Again, totally reading the userbase wrong, Nintendo emphasized the Miis and playing the game on the controller. It was meant with hostile reactions. Nintendo probably didn’t realize that people do care about immersion in 2d Mario and seeing Miis where Mario should be felt as wrong as if a new Zelda game showed Miis for Link. To Nintendo’s credit, they salvaged NSMB Mii by turning it into NSMB U… as a sort of modern day version of Super Mario World. The reaction now has become much more positive.
“But that was only due to the 2d Mario fans. The CASUALS are different. They have no standards at all and probably walk on all four of their limbs, slobber, and do not eat utensils when eating. They aren’t even fully Human.”
Can we not be more condescending? Nintendo Land seems as off track as NSMB Mii was. Imagine if Nintendo put some kick-ass graphics and sound into the Metroid game or have the Zelda game not look like Miis in cloth hats. If Nintendo is trying to get ‘dah casuals’ into Nintendo’s biggest titles, this is not the way to do it. The proper way to do it is to make 8-bit and 16-bit type games of them.
The people who play modern Mario, Zelda, and Metroid were children who grew up with the Nintendo consoles. Adults will not play them. The fact that NSMB Wii ended up being a ‘bridge game’ should open up eyes inside Nintendo. You don’t get ‘dah casualz’ into fictional universe gaming by throwing Miis into a mini-game theme park. You get ‘dah casualz’ by making 8-bit and 16-bit type editions of those games.
If you want to get people into Mario, you don’t make more 3d Mario. You make 2d Mario. And it worked! Thanks to NSMB, Mario became as popular as he was since his fall in the mid 90s.
You want to get people into Zelda? Make another Zelda 1, Zelda 2, or Link to the Past type Zelda.
You want people to get into Metroid? Don’t make a bad movie. Make a 2d Metroid.
You want to get people into F-Zero? Don’t make a super hard game like F-Zero GX that punished newcomers. Make an F-Zero more like the SNES or N64 game.
None of that is hard. And the sad truth is that Nintendo could make brand new quasi-8-bit/16-bit games instead of whatever-the-hell of these mini-games. Instead of doing the trouble of a Zelda Battle Quest with motion controls and Miis, why not just make a new top down Zelda game?
Instead of Nintendo Land, Nintendo should just include into the bundle the following games:
Animal Crossing (Gamecube)
Super Metroid
F-Zero X
Link to the Past
Balloon Fight (NES)
Donkey Kong (Arcade)
“But Nintendo Land is all about multiplayer! It will be like Pac-Man VS.”
And how did Pac-Man VS sell? Oh, that’s right! It was another Gamecube game. Nintendo Land has the stench of the Gamecube philosophy. Heaven help Nintendo if their software goes to the Gamecube direction.