Man, that's well put!!

Nintendo doesn't take that sort of risk with Mario - they don't make claims with Mario that they can't back up. But even if Nintendo hadn't specifically said it, or even if you take it as pure PR spin, the fact of the matter is that Malstrom was talking out of his arse by claiming that Nintendo wasn't interested in more 2D Mario, or that 3D Land was intended to somehow "kill" 2D Mario.

So, with recent news coming out of E3, I decided to drop by Malstrom's blog to see how he was reacting.

Hey, look at that. Nintendo shows off two 2D Mario titles, there is no 3D Mario in sight, not even hinted at... and Malstrom continues to claim that Nintendo is obsessed with 3D Mario. He learns that the 3DS one is being a bit different by having a massive coin feature to it... and proclaims that it should have been a Wario game (Wario gets off on collecting treasures, not just coins). This is strange, given that the coins themselves aren't the content, but how they're worked into the game. What if collection of coins serves the purpose of gathering what he needs to gain access to Bowser's castle, for instance? That's just one possible reason that I came up with after about 20 seconds of thought. I can already see three or four other explanations that don't translate into "Greedy Mario".

He never even noticed the lack of a life counter (and instead claimed that there would be massive numbers of lives... which only makes sense if you assume that it would remain fixed at 1 life every 100 coins - interestingly, it's typically 50 coins for a life in 3D Mario games)... but when it was pointed out to him, he proclaimed that it "wasn't really Mario", and asserted that he was quite certain that 3D Mario doesn't have a life counter (completely false, as anyone who has ever played 3D Mario can attest - 1-Ups and the life counter is present in every 3D Mario). He also falsely attested that Super Mario World was the first Mario where having a power-up means when you're hit, you drop to just Super Mario, not all the way to small Mario (this feature was only added for the GBA re-release). When his error was pointed out to him, he then claimed that Super Mario World was easier because if you're riding Yoshi, and you get hit, you can get on him again (which is like saying that it's harder to ride a bike than to ride a unicycle because there are more moving parts on a bike). For a guy who claims to have loved 2D Mario, he doesn't seem to know much about it, I must say.

At the end of the day, what I said stands strongly - Malstrom used to be a great, and effective, analyst of Nintendo's actions and results. He has since turned into nothing more than King Anti-hardcore, and has a massively inflated ego, an ego that rests entirely on the fact that he predicted that the Wii would sell well. On being shown a game that looks very arcade (Tank! Tank! Tank!), he complained that Namco hadn't instead made an "arcade collection" with Pacman VS on it for the Wii U, as though what the Wii U needs is old game collections (never mind that such titles will almost certainly be available through the eShop, at a significantly cheaper price than a retail game would cost).

As it turns out, Malstrom has now proven that it's not actually Arcade gameplay he wants, it's "the old days". He's stuck in the past, and doesn't ever give anything the benefit of the doubt (case-in-point, he proclaims that NSMB U will just have plain old generic worlds, based solely on the fact that they haven't revealed everything about the game yet - never mind that they quite intentionally tend to keep things secret when announced, so that they can give more info later... and so, he compares NSMB U's reveal with a Super Mario World commercial, which just doesn't make sense as a comparison).

This E3 should have been Malstrom's favourite E3 since 2006 by far. Nintendo announced a collection of new arcade-type games (NintendoLand), showed off two 2D Mario titles, showed another arcade-type game (Tank! Tank! Tank!), and another one that may be arcade-type (Project P-100), made no mention of 3D Mario, practically ignored the hardcore's preferred titles (like Mass Effect 3, which got all of about 10 seconds of attention), and otherwise, focused on innovative gameplay. The sort of multiplayer that he claims to like is plastered all across the system. Nintendo even upset the hardcore by not having a massive blowout of what's coming in future years, etc - it was all about what people would immediately have access to.

In typical Malstrom style, he hasn't really posted a single positive thing about Nintendo. The closest he has come is tentatively referring to NSMB U as "Super Mario Bros 6"... and that's mostly based on the fact that it's the sequel to NSMB Wii. When it comes to the "social" stuff, he proclaims that Nintendo is "forcing" these things on the consumer. Other than the fact that you don't have to have the system constantly connected to the net, there's also the strong likelihood that you will be able to simply turn off those non-gaming features you don't like.

Indeed, when it comes to Malstrom, the word that is probably the most appropriate description is "assume". He assumes everything. He assumes that there will be no way to quickly launch a game without going through the OS menu (it might work like the DS, where you can set it to auto-load a game if a game is in the system, then you just access the OS using the Home button), or without spending more than a second on it. He assumes NSMB2 will be all about greedy mario collecting coins. He assumes that E3 is "the day for information on Wii U", when it's entirely possible that Nintendo decided they'd rather speak to the people directly when giving the real information. He assumes that Nintendo are delaying information on eShop for nefarious purposes (it's far more likely that they're still adjusting the setup, along with the rest of Nintendo Network beyond the messaging system). He assumes that Nintendo is trying to angle towards a 3D output future, despite Nintendo not having said a single word about 3D at E3. He assumes that third parties aren't supporting the system because EA's and Activision's games weren't showcased (never mind that Black Ops II is practically guaranteed, that EA's sports lineup is pretty much contractually obligated to be on the system, and that there are at least 4 months before launch, during which Nintendo needs more stuff to announce).

He assumes that Nintendo is trying to separate the TV from gaming, despite the fact that only one of the 20 Wii U games shown actually operates that way, and it's Wii Fit U.

But here's the final nail in the coffin. This time, I'll quote him directly. "Game console business is a service business."

This is in complete contradiction to everything he has had to say about the videogame industry in the past. He has stressed "content, content, content"... now, suddenly, it's all about service, at a time when Nintendo went out of their way to focus on content. Suddenly, broad appeal of the system means making the games he likes, and not having a broad variety of games. Suddenly, he concludes that Pikmin 3 fans won't have any interest in NSMB U, and vice versa, for no particular reason. It all sounds almost exactly like the sort of argument that a hardcore would make ("Oh, they only have one strong FPS title at launch - why buy it when we don't know if it'll get other games that I like?"). He even made specific note of the fact that, with the 360 and PS3, you buy the game for Halo or Call of Duty, confident that there are many other games of a similar type on the system... never mind that it takes time for those other games to show up, or that FPS wasn't huge at the start of the last generation (it became huge with CoD4).

Also interestingly, the only time that Malstrom ever reserves judgment is when he can't find any negatives (for instance, with regards to the Zelda mode in NintendoLand, he realised that it sounds almost exactly like the game he explicitly said he wanted, a few years ago... suddenly, he is "reserving judgment", never mind that he has no problem judging everything else). Mind you, he also complained about Miis in Mario (and saying that it's as bad as Miis in Zelda)... and then in the next post complained about the fact that the Zelda-based NintendoLand game isn't Zelda-like enough, despite having Miis.

He also constantly changes his goalposts to ensure that Nintendo can never actually score with him. Apparently, announcing Pikmin means that Nintendo is throwing away sales (both of the first two easily sold over a million copies, despite being on the GC). Apparently, Nintendo did a bad thing by not specifically telling people at this E3 that the Wii U will play Wii titles (never mind that it's old news that isn't relevant to the context). He claimed that Nintendo slipped up by not specifically discussing eShop titles, as opposed to in 2006 (when, in fact, WiiWare didn't even exist yet, that Virtual Console was only mentioned in passing, that eShop was already known about, and that they actually showed off an eShop title amongst the games they showed, unlike in 2006). And he complained about the absence of a "New Legend of Zelda", when they released a Zelda game last year (it'll take a couple of years for them to make another one, Zelda isn't like Mario, with 5 or 6 studios working on Mario games at the same time).

He also complains about lack of games he wants for 3DS, when he clearly doesn't even know about them. He mentions that Mario Kart 7 is the only game so far, with NSMB2 being the second... why no mention of Pokemon Rumble Blast, which is very arcade-like and heaps of fun? Why no mention of Pacman and Galaga Dimensions, which is basically an arcade collection featuring Pacman as one of the titles (which is basically what he wants for the Wii U, anyway)? How about Crush 3D - an arcadey puzzle game that uses the 3D graphics in a sensible way? And how about the 3DSware titles that are very arcadey?

His primary complaint about NintendoLand seems to be that it's colourful, in complete contrast to his usual complaints about the hardcore, who eschew anything colourful. He complains that they called the Mario game New Super Mario Bros U, rather than "Super Mario Brothers 6" (sic). Not sure why he spelled out "brothers", but it's just another example of his inconsistency. He complains about the failure to mention online multiplayer (never mind that this seems to be a specific failure to discuss Nintendo Network, likely due to it not being 100% ready for unveiling), he complains about them not specifically saying that NSMB U will "explore the Mushroom World" (actually, Kingdom, but let's not pick nits there), he complains about them not spending time on games "on the horizon" (the system doesn't even launch for 4 more months, and he wants them to unveil every title for the next two years?), he complains about the fact that there's only one 2D platformer (actually, two - Rayman Legends is a 2D platformer, too), he complains about Nintendo making something like a "workshop", when there's new IP and new content all over what they announced. And he complains that Nintendo isn't listening to him, specifically.

So, after all that, my point is that it's great news that he plans on stopping blogging. In fact, he should have stopped about 3.5 years or so ago. Let's watch as the articles he said in 2007 he'd write continue to be completely ignored after he stops blogging, more than 4 years later. Why? Because writing the articles would mean that he would have to talk about concrete things that can't be easily countered, and his fan club won't stick around to wait for them (heck, their boards were only formed because he blocked comments on his posts - he blocked comments on his posts because that would mean having to actually think about what he says, as others would publicly call him on mistakes and nonsense). As I said, he used to make sense.

But who knows - maybe I'm wrong, and he'll stop blogging, and it will enable him to move past his immature anti-hardcore, anti-Nintendo stupidity and back to where he really needs to be in order to understand Nintendo's success (which he claimed was the purpose of the articles to begin with - to understand Nintendo's actions back in 2006, for the purposes of hopefully emulating them... well, it's 2012, now, and he's made no progress).

OK, rant done. Sorry, I just felt I had to get that off my chest, and this seemed the most appropriate place.

@Aielyn

I can't imagine how long it took you to write all that It's not worth it . Malstrom is still right on some things (mostly, he's the only one that predicted Nintendo's /fall/ post-2009, and that 3DS would not take off from launch.) But he is deliberately provocative and discards anything that doesn't fit the narrative he wishes to form. If you read Malstrom, just take his ideas into consideration but form your own idea of what Nintendo should do.

And of course he won't stop blogging. He's threatened to leave on three seperate occasions I can think of.

Whether he's right or wrong, Nintendo clearly are disconnected from the market now. They do what their developers want, and whenther something goes right or wrong they have no idea why. Their rationale for Wii U, for 3D Mario, for 2D Mario, for Metroid is all completely wrong. Any company that came to the market with a Wii like philosophy would destroy Nintendo, it's just that MS and Sony have even fewer ideas about expanding the market.

Ultimately Nintendo's purest test will be Wii U sales. If it flops Iwata is fired. If it does not, even Malstrom will be forced to reconsider.

That's about as succinct a summary as anyone's ever going to make.