Who is the Cook of Classic Nintendo? Say his name.

Readers know that I love the Breaking Bad show. This clip provides a very useful metaphor for me to use.

Pretend that Walter White is Yamauchi. Pretend the drug dealers with their big black pick-ups are Atari. Nintendo wants to distribute their product outside Japan so they talked to Atari. White is the cook who makes the crystal meth a high purity rate of like 91% compared to the sloppy 68% the drug dealers were doing (who also use food coloring to dye the meth blue to match Walter’s product). Video games are digital drugs. I like the saying of ‘purity’ for the drug. A good video game is ‘purer’ than a bad video game. And people will pay MUCH MORE for a purer digital drug.

Walter White totally fits Yamauchi’s personality, at least from what I imagine his personality to be. “Say my name!” I can just imagine him doing that to all the video game distributors!

But the line I want to focus on is this. It is not part of the clip, but it is part of the scene. Paraphrasingly, it goes like this…

“We have a cook. We don’t need you.”
“My purity is 91%. Your substandard cook makes the drug at 68%. You dye your product blue with food coloring to make it seem like my product. You sell a third rate product. But I offer Classic Coke.”

That line about Classic Coke sums up the entire purpose for this website. What do I want? I want Classic Coke. Not this substandard crap. My standard in video games has a high purity rate. This is why my complaints about games always center around the things that make the game ‘less’ pure such as ‘story’ or ‘cutscenes’ and other junk that doesn’t belong in the game. Modern gaming is like Jesse’s original meth with the chili powder. The chili powder is ‘thrown in’ for the ‘signature’, for the ‘brand’. But it isn’t PURE.

This is a PURE PRODUCT. These are examples of a PURE DIGITAL DRUG:

These above games are the PUREST quality you will ever find in a video game. Video games are a drug. People will pay a premium price for purity. More people are attracted to purity.

Other highly pure video games include…

These games all have a very high purity rate. When people think of the ‘correct Metroid’, they think of Super Metroid. Why? It is considered the ‘purest Metroid’. While NES Metroid is pure, there are ‘errors’ in it that gets in the way of the ‘Metroid kick’.

Purity in the drug context is the word I have been looking for. Before, I used to say that we need more arcade-like games. Obviously, arcades are dead so am I saying to make games that only worked on an older business model? No! I said arcade-type because in my mind, as in many other people’s minds, arcade-type is synonymous with the purest form of gaming. When I say I want arcade type games, it does not mean I want games to be like Geometry Wars. It means I want quality of a certain type. Not of graphics, sound, or story but of something very different. Of purity.

What is the purpose of purity? In drugs, the purity serves to get a higher kick. Kick means the ‘high’, the effect of the game. Games with high purity ratings consistently deliver a very high kick. Hence, these high purity games attract attention and can be sold like Godiva chocolates. This ‘high quality’ gaming is what I consider Classic Nintendo to be (Classic Coke) and the standard I hold for their future games. With this view of quality of gaming, my behavior and many other people’s behaviors make so much more sense.

Why do I prefer 2d Mario over 3d Mario? It is because 2d Mario is the purer game. For the kick I am looking for, 2d Mario provides it. 3d Mario does so only in a substandard way. My behavior means that I keep replaying 2d Mario for that level of kick because I do not wish to go down to the 3d Mario level of kick. In Zelda, it is a similar story. The early Zeldas were Classic Coke and delivered a type of kick. The later Zeldas, especially with their focus on brainteasing and terrible NPCs, do not deliver this level of kick. I love Metroid’s level of kick. But Metroid: Other M does not deliver such a kick. If Metroid was a drug, Super Metroid would have a 91% purity rating while Other M had a 35% purity rating. Unacceptable. While Metroid Prime certainly had issues such as the constant scanning and 3d moving around, it still offered a very high purity rate (say 85%) which made it an acceptable Metroid game.

I think the Nintendo view on gaming is wrong and their sales demonstrate it. Nintendo’s view on gaming is that it is based on ‘surprise’ like movies or novels. The game must offer ‘new surprises’ or else people will get bored.

This theory of gaming falls apart when you analyze gamers who don’t buy new games. These gamers, instead of buying a new game, keep playing the old one! Before NSMB games, all those 2d Mario fans kept playing the old 2d Mario games. Why would they keep doing this if the game offered ZERO surprises? Why do people keep replaying Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy or Street Fighter 2 if they know all the surprises? The purity of the game keeps them playing as does games like Chess or Go. Purity isn’t etched in stone. As time goes on, the purity levels could decrease as the aging graphics and sound reduce the kick of the digital drug. This explains why HD versions of old games sell. The HD version of an old game is a purer version than the original (considering there are no ‘creative additions’). Why? It updates the graphics which, when aged by decades, can degrade the purity.

It is important to note that purity isn’t minimalism. Purity is kick. Take Gyruss. The game has the soundtrack of a remixed Bach. No doubt it adds to the kick. The music, which has nothing to do with the gameplay, gives the game a higher kick, a higher purity rating. This means that if you have two Gyruss games, one with the music and one without, the one playing with music enters a higher mental state. It’s a purer product, a better digital drug.  The bigger the kick, the more you can charge for it.

Video games as drugs also explains why young men would prefer video games over young pretty women or why people play video games instead of socializing like people used to do. Note how gamers talk like drug addicts. We need “a game” to “relax”. Video games give us red eyes, make us late to school, and to work. Like drugs, video games are always ‘addictive’. Console makers keep talking about ‘gateway drugs’ to move gamers up to other games.

   
Above: May he take your order now?

Do you see this man? Miyamoto is a drug lord. Miyamoto is a kingpin.

   
Above: Say his name! Say it! And tread lightly…

I want a high purity rating. I want Classic Coke, Classic Nintendo. Not this substandard stuff.