| Khuutra said: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance Almost depressing how much I end up linking that. Raven Blade was decided to be stupid and un-fun. It got scrapped. Go figure. You need to understand that Retro Studios had its choice of projects that tey could have done - Miyamoto brought this up in one of his E3 interviews. They jumped on the chance to make a new Donkey Kong Country (yes, it is new) and fought for the chance to give their iteration on that franchise. That wasn't something that was imposed on them. They wanted to make them some Donkey Kong. Here are your primary problems with this assertion: 1. You are confusing "living in the past" for intellectual property iterations. They are not the same thing. Living in the past would be relentlessly releasing remakes and capitalizing off of old works without actually creating any new ones, and tryingn to claim that they have done that this gen or are doing this now is factually incorrect. The closest they have comee is the Virtual Console, and that has never been a primary selling point of the system (and has taken a considerable backseat to WiiWare in recent months). 2. You are factually wrong about Donkey Kong Country Returns. It is an all-new games created by an extremely talented studio that happens to be made up of people who loved Donkey Kong Country. 3. You are blatantly ignonring the literally dozens of new Intellectual Properties which Nintendo has developed in this generation. You are being needlessly reductive, narrow in your analysis, and stubbornly incorrect. |
I'm fully aware that Retro Studios was interested in making this unnecessary new Donkey Kong Country.
What are the "dozens" of new IP's Nintendo "created" this generation? I'm looking at Wikipedia and here are the "new" ones I see: Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Music, Wii Party (really all this Wii-whatever crap is like one IP), Brain Age, Endless Ocean, and Captain Rainbow. Pretty much everything else is just them sticking to past IP's when they're not outright remaking stuff (Ocarina of Time*, StarFox64**, Punch-Out, Mario64 DS, Metroid Zero Mission, every single Super Mario side-scroller being re-released at least twice, not to forget all the "new play control" Wii releases, etc), and again, the few original IP's they've had (like Disaster and Fatal Frame) have been largely squashed by Nintendo and forgotten, released in maybe one region and that's it.
Factually, Donkey Kong Country Returns clearly re-uses a lot from the SNES games, not the least of which was the mine car stage and the clearly still shallow "run-n-jump" gameplay.
I'm not arguing from ignorance. Anyone who plays video games knows that Nintendo is over-reliant on a few key franchises. Nintendo did not make "literally dozens" of New IP's this generation. That's absurd. No one made "literally dozens" of new IP's for anything.
Bottom line: Nintendo is living in the past, they do make more remakes and re-releases than any company in the industry (especially considering that most Zelda and Mario games are little more than remakes), and they are overly-reliant on a few key franchises. You don't see Sony putting Rachet & Clank in every single genre of game they can come up with just to make a buck. On top of all this, while they're pushing the limits of 3-D on their portable system, they're making side-scrollers like it's the 80's again with the Wii. That's hardly progression. Metroid, Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong--all have side-scrollers for the Wii. You didn't see Microsoft and Sony trying to show off side-scrollers as "new" at E3 this year.
*The 3DS marks the fifth time Ocarina of Time has been released: N64, GameCube twice, Wii, and 3DS.
**StarFox64 was essentially a remake of StarFox on the SNES, so the game on the 3DS is actually a remake of a remake.
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