http://kotaku.com/the-internets-2001-hate-for-one-of-the-most-beautiful-1441105533
First of all, just look at that ridiculous title. Editorializing much?
Jesus, it’s like game journalists have to go out of their way to praise stupid decisions and ridicule all mass market tastes (as we know, journalists hated the mass market Wii). They’re here to tell us all how stupid we are (or allegedly were).
Some of Kotaku’s insanely idiotic statements:
“Many Nintendo fans wanted that 2000 Zelda. They wanted it really, really badly. They wanted it, in large part, because they wanted Nintendo to seem cool.”
I can tell you without a doubt that this is a purely bullshit, dismissive assertion. I was one of the people who complained about the initial unveiling of the art style, and it had nothing to do with Nintendo being “cool.” It was that I couldn’t really get into a ridiculous, childish, anime-style look for Zelda – one of the most sacred franchises in gaming. It’s like asking me to praise Barney. I don’t like Barney for what it is – not simply what it looks like.
Ocarina of Time had a grand sense of adventure. All of my friends described the game as making you feel like a badass. Link was a badass who used a sword, arrows, bombs, etc., and that, in turn, made YOU a badass. But what’s badass about a cat-eyed Link? Nothing. It’s childish. Adults DON’T like childish things (unless they themselves are man-children, like game journalists).
“Nintendo may not have ever turned into the coolest company around, but they sure did pretty well for themselves for quite some time.”
What is this crap? You asshole journalists did nothing but ridicule Nintendo for the Wii when that made Nintendo cool again and revived their shrinking console market. So what the hell are you guys referring to when you say “they sure did pretty well for themselves”? Because you certainly can’t be referring to the GameCube or the Wii U.
“The cartoony Zelda was released in North America in 2003 as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It got rave reviews.”
The fact is Wind Waker tanked so badly that Aonuma stated in 2007 it nearly killed franchise. Way to ignore that fact Kotaku.
“A couple of direct sequels, made for Nintendo DS, followed.”
“Nintendo eventually tried making a more realistic Zelda, 2006’s Twilight Princess. That game was cheered by the Nintendo faithful when it was first revealed, and yet now it seems to receive more criticism than Wind Waker. It’s Wind Waker that’s more commonly considered a classic.”
They’re imploding.
The reason why the Gamecube sold so poorly was because the Gamecube games were of such terrible quality in relation to their entertainment value. If we accept the Prime Direct of Consoles which is “Games sell the hardware”, then it is clear that the games were what destroyed the Gamecube. Fans of the games (our friends, the hardcore gamers) don’t like to admit that their sense of value is different than what most people’s entertainment value is. Therefore, the Gamecube didn’t sell because of “marketing”, because of “the handle”, because it was “purple”, or because it was a year late (Iwata’s favorite excuse).
And in the same way, the reason why the Wii sold so well was because of the high quality of the games (such as Wii Sports and Wii Fit). Since the hardcore do not see the entertainment value in such games, they can only conclude that the Wii sold due to “marketing”, due to “people being stupid”, and due to everything but the games on the system.
This is reason enough to ban hardcore gamers forever for expressing any opinions on games on gaming message forums. These people are freaks that are well outside normal society and how odd their value is to games.
I can’t see how anyone could be NOT surprised that Wind Waker bombed. Wind Waker was bomba on the Gamecube. Why would a remake sell any better? I’ve been trying to think of any time when a remake has been more popular than the original. Perhaps in some console ports (such as the splendid Life Force on the NES over the Salamander arcade game).
Have you noticed Aonuma running around saying Wind Waker now was only made because it was ‘fast’ and ‘cheap’ to make? Any remake would be ‘fast’ and ‘cheap’ to make. But why choose Wind Waker? Why not choose, oh, Metroid Prime? Or F-Zero GX? Or remakes of the sprite classic games? I’d love to see a Zelda All-Stars with the early Zeldas remade and perhaps some given Second Quests. After all, the music has already been re-made.
Above: Brawl remade the Great Temple music for Zelda 2.
Above: Here is the remade Dark World from Link to the Past
Above: From Link to the Past. Do you remember, reader?
It would not be hard at all to remake the early Zelda games. No, not everything has to be 3d but from a fixed camera view like NSMB. I wouldn’t want that path. But consider how those early Zeldas were made in the 1980s and early 1990s where computers were extremely limited. Now, it is so easy that you often see flash games make similar mechanics.
I love replaying Classic Zelda. I wish I could replay Legend of Zelda without it being 8-bit. Since it has two quests, it has plenty of content. Zelda 2 redux could add in a Second Quest (with, perhaps, more levels and/or different order of getting spells). Some of the more annoying elements of Zelda 2 can be ironed out such as the ‘knockback into pits’ and the limited lives. Link to the Past sorely needs a Second Quest that is substantially more challenging than the first game. Once they have the engine done (which is not complex), it is not hard to make their own levels along after translating the classics. Add in the Gameboy Adventure of Link as well, but it would be full color.
We would call it Zelda All-Stars. I guarantee you that every copy of such a game would sell out. The market’s response to it would be similar, though not as big, as to NSMB Wii.
So why didn’t we get that game (or any other game) but got fucking Wind Waker instead?
I wouldn’t get angry at the game journalists such as the one who wrote the Kotaku piece. Getting angry at a game journalist is like yelling at someone’s hand. The journalists are all puppets of someone else. They have someone else’s hand up their butt. The ones you should get angry with are Miyamoto, Aonuma, and the Zelda Team. I believe these game journalists are animating NCL’s reactions.
“How do you know this, Malstrom?” I don’t. But I strongly suspect it. When I arrived on the scene, there were certain ‘sacred truths’ that game journalists kept spouting and the hardcore gamers, who keep trying to be informed by taking game journalism as gospel (boy are the hardcore stupid, hahaha), did not question the ‘sacred truths’ but would parrot them.
One of these ‘sacred truths’ was that everyone loved Mario 64 and that there was no distinctive difference between 3d Mario and the true Super Mario Brothers. Prior to the Wii being launched, Reggie Fils-Aime asked game makers at DICE 2006 about how they would market the successor to Super Mario World to a generation raised on Grand Theft Auto. It took the explosive sales of NSMB Wii to force the realization that the market never accepted 3d Mario as Super Mario Brothers. Miyamoto is still raging against reality of this to this day.
The most absurd ‘sacred truth’ was that Zelda 2 was ‘The Black Sheep of the Zelda Series’. This was very surprising for me to hear. Zelda 2 was extremely successful and popular. Zelda 2 was also highly imitated by competitors (see Battle of Olympus for the NES). This ‘sacred cow’ was only gored when we confronted them with the reality (such as videos such as that 20/20 documentary showing people traveling across states just to get Zelda 2).
But that didn’t explain where the sacred cow came from in the first place. We found out that the sacred cow came from Miyamoto and Nintendo staff. Miyamoto did not like Zelda 2, therefore, it was a “bad game”. No game journalist will ever, ever cross Miyamoto especially when it comes to the subject of game quality. If there was any ‘game god’, it was Miyamoto. It is the same phenomenon why political journalists never write critically about the politicians they are covering. If they make the politician unhappy, they lose their coverage access. They lose their job.
It is not Kotaku ranting here, it is Nintendo themselves, and they use the game journalists as a proxy for it. Now, if you say, “This is insane, Malstrom. You think these journalists are acting as Nintendo’s megaphone?” Of course, they are. When was the last time you ever saw a game journalist say anything against what Nintendo liked? They don’t even question where Pikmin 3’s Iwata Asks is at. I don’t mean the ‘Nintendo is Doomed’ stories or ‘Need more third parties!’ stories. That is when a journalist is acting as Pachter’s stenographer or a third party company’s stenographer. During the Gamecube disaster, objective analysis would have said that “Nintendo has lost it, and is putting out games people do not want to buy.” The coverage, instead, was that Miyamoto was a GOD, that Nintendo’s Gamecube games were AMAZING and INCREDIBLE, but that the Gamecube was only left behind due to Sony’s better marketing/branding/year-ahead/etc.
The Defense Force isn’t originating from the journalists. It is originating from Nintendo itself. Why should the reader be surprised? Aonuma has sent the Zelda franchise into destruction, keeps putting out disaster after disaster of a game, yet he keeps being the ‘spokesman’ for Zelda and the leader of the Zelda Team. In an honest company, Aonuma would be seen as incompetent and removed from anything Zelda. But Nintendo is not an honest company. Nintendo enjoys lying to itself. People who believe in the myth of creativity or the superiority of their own imagination tend to rationalize reality away. This is why the Wii U is such a fucking disaster. It is the collapse of rationality.
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