Email: Nintendo Strengths and Weaknesses

The “master” is to reveal people who lack a sense of humor. Just how women have Ms. and Mrs. to indicate single and married status, men used to have Master and Mr. to indicate single and married status. This is all formal language. Lower classes adopted some of it (women, of course, always think they are aristocracy which is why they adopted the language so well). The reason why your Batman film has Alfred saying “Master Wayne” instead of “Mister Wayne” is not because he is a servant speaking to a superior but because Master Wayne is not married.I think all single men should adopt the title of ‘Master’ and refuse to use ‘Mister’. I suspect general society resists against this because they don’t want ‘husbands’ to know they aren’t the masters! hahahaha

Seriously, go with a date to a bar or something. Instruct her to refer to you, always, as the ‘Master’. Other women will hear this and become pissed off. “Why are you calling him that?” “Because,” she replies, “he is the master.” hahaha. It is just a word. It is amazing how people lose their emotions over a word.

So when emails here start off with “Dear Master Malstrom,” you can bet there are people’s heads exploding. “Why are they calling him the Master? They can’t do that! How dare they!” People on the Internet today have no sense of humor.

As a side note, after you answer the main question, how often do you play “devil’s advocate” in your head when fleshing out your thoughts?  Although I’m only thinking about your thoughts in relation to this blog, I imagine it would apply the same to how you think about all your other areas of life.  I hope my two questions challenge, or rather, provide, something fresh to think about…I’ve always liked the cuteness or cartoon-esque elements of the game. I’m currently playing Awesomenauts which is very cartoon-like. Games like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft are some of my favorites, and they are very cute.

What I protest is Nintendo’s Tingle side.

I think Nintendo goes the Tingle route by letting ‘creativity’ (oh, that word!) triumph over commercialism. Tingle, seen above, is not commercially viable. He is creepy! Commercialism means making stuff people want to buy. And people want COOL! They don’t want LAME. Tingle is lame!

Metroid: Other M is LAME. WHAT IS WRONG WITH USING SUPER METROID AS THE BENCHMARK? Why is it when Nintendo ‘reinvents’ a franchise, it ALWAYS goes the path of Tingle lameness. Why don’t they re-invent a franchise towards commercialization instead of their previous ‘creativity’?

I LOVED the direction Nintendo went with Super Mario Galaxy. They tried to put commercialism above creativity which is another way of saying putting ‘cool’ above Nintendo developers’ ‘crappy and creepy Japanese ideas like Tingle’. Mario Galaxy is very COOL. The music is COOL. The aesthetics are COOL. The problem with the game was that it was 3d Mario. If 2d Mario got this treatment, OMG, it would have brought the house down. NSMB Wii’s sales were extremely strong. Now imagine how strong they would have been if Miyamoto gave a damn about 2d Mario. Imagine that soundtrack and aesthetics in 2d Mario. Of course, that will never happen because Miyamoto is on a decade plus mission to have 3d Mario replace 2d Mario. It is why 2d Mario is given C team treatment while 3d Mario gets delayed to be ‘perfected’ with a much, much higher budget.

When I think of Zelda, this is what I think of:

Zelda used to be COOL. Link was a badass who kicked butt. He was a swordsman taking down ancient evils.

This is Link today. The problem is not that he is a ‘toon’ as early Zelda he was a ‘toon’ too. But this Link is so effeminate he might as well be a girl. He also isn’t a swordsman anymore. He plays with wands and does ‘puzzles’. LAME. The reason why I suspect of this transformation comes from the people inside the Zelda team being just as effeminate. Aonuma couldn’t finish the NES Zeldas. Aonuma spent his college years making wooden dolls (seriously, how LAME is that?). When you put lame people to make video games, they end up making lame video games.  The people matter. Give me kickass people like Gunpei Yokoi any day.

Making toys doesn’t mean you have to be LAME. To the contrary, making toys means you have to be COOL. It’s like Nintendo’s development team have been infiltrated with grass eaters.I do have some complaints about even the ‘classic’ titles. I thought Super Mario World’s content entered a decline from the height of Super Mario Brothers 3. Compare the BADASS World 8 of SMB 3 with its tanks, airplanes, and boats, including dead worlds where everything is all white, giant hands reaching out to get you, of a final castle where statues of Bowser shoot terrifying lasers to Super Mario World’s final area that has more in common with Vegas with shiny lights and Bowser being a buffoon on a clown car.

Creating good villains is key to creating good heroes. I don’t feel like much of a hero if Bowser or Ganon act like a clown. Nintendo can do what we want but only when Nintendo wants it. Instead of castrati sounding Mario, they gave us Mario Galaxy which was far cooler than Super Mario Sunshine.

This is not cool.

People mistake me for saying I want Nintendo to change. To the contrary, I want Nintendo to be what it used to be. Much of the ‘change’ has been in attitude coming from the top. This obsession over 3d, this worship over ‘creativity’, the taking of their fans for granted, and looking down at any and all negative market reaction. To this day, Miyamoto says the Virtual Boy failed because the marketers didn’t do their job. THIS is what happens when fans and the industry treats these people like gods. WE HAVE CREATED MONSTERS.

Think of the poor Star Wars fans. George Lucas responds to criticism with shoving it into people’s face. “Don’t like Darth Vader’s scream in Episode 3? Well, I will edit it into Episode 6 as well! hahahahaha!” That is a monster.

Some of these Nintendo developers have turned into monsters. Consider Aonuma saying, “Everyone has accepted Toon Link,” when we know that is not the case. That Wii U Zelda trailer everyone loved? Aonuma hates it, therefore you won’t get a game that looks anything like it. Since his son likes trains, you have to endure a Zelda (Spirit Tracks) that revolves around trains. This is someone who is not even trying to make a game people like.

The same goes for Miyamoto with his obsession over 3d and Sakamoto with his insistence that Samus Aran must share her ’emotions’ with us (despite the universal criticism of Metroid Fusion for Samus acting this way).

If you notice the Nintendo games that perform very, very well, it is because commercial interests were put above someone’s ‘vision’. Animal Crossing 3DS was the team thinking they failed fans with the Wii version so they put in extra effort. They didn’t turn Animal Crossing into a different genre of game. Wii Sports and Wii Fit cannot be said to be ‘visions of creativity’ as Nintendo did not invent tennis, bowling, or fitness.

In the Classic Nintendo Era, Yamauchi put commercial interests above everything. The reason why we got Super Mario Brothers 2, 3, and 4 was because Yamauchi made Miyamoto make it. Miyamoto did not want to make it. The reason why we got Link to the Past was because Yamauchi made Miyamoto do it. The more autonomy Miyamoto and other software developers got, the crappier the games became. When Sakamoto got to do what he wanted, we got Metroid: Other M.

Commercialism means making games WE WANT.

Creativity means Nintendo making games THEY WANT.

Since we’re the ones paying, they need to put out games we want. If they want to pay us, only then can they go make the games they want.