Lafiel said:
no I haven't, I've played only very few Nintendo games, so you may say I'm all wrong about them, but.. When I think of Ghibli I think of Grave of the Fireflies, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo and Spirited Away -and Howl's Moving Castle, but that's not a Ghibli original- (*sigh* I normally only use the japanese names). These all are movies with a meaning, with a deeper layer, besides these Ghibli also made some "pure fun" work, but that's not their prime works. And when I think of Nintendo it's Mario, Pokèmon and Zelda and (nearly?) all of them are 100% about gameplay and don't even have the ambition to go into a deeper layer of thought than just "pure fun". I don't see where these companies are comparable. |
The problem here is you're confusing mediums, and focusing primarily on story. Film is strictly narrative, while games are not. Within their mediums both Nintendo and Ghibli are pretty similar, they target "everyone", they're hugely popular and influential (worldwide), they're perfectionists and deliver extremely polished results, they came up around the same time, they're both pretty prolific but don't sacrifice quality as a result...
I'd also say your experience with Nintendo is pretty limited if you really think that there's never any "deeper layer" to their work. Even within the series you mentioned, there can be emotional resonance. Take the Little Prince inspired story within Mario Galaxy, it's more or less the background story for Roslina, and reveals she left home as a child to travel in the stars to find her dead mother (and eventually came to fill her mother's role for the Lumas). Or in Link's Awakening, the realization of what waking the Wind Fish will do to the world and people in it. Or the pure isolation in Metroid, the mission of genocide in Metroid 2, which is directly inverted in Metroid 3. Majora's Mask is filled with evocative moments, usually centering on NPCs (the girl's father in the desert, the wedding mask subquest, etc) but there's also striking moments of beauty and scale just within the main game (awakening the giants, the children playing on the moon, etc). Generally too, the notion that you literally "can't save everyone" and the everpresent armageddon (literally staring you in the face), Majora's Mask is a rare instance where game design (3-day cycle, repeating patterns) actually leads to an emotional response, and that's just echoed in the dark and complex story. Actually, I'd say Majora's Mask feels almost like a Ghibli film, much moreso than the stark and reductive narratives you find in ICO or SOTC imo. There's often narrative layers to Nintendo's own games, though it usually tends to be in their adventure titles rather than their platformers, racers or shooters.
Also, I'm speaking purely to Nintendo developed games. Pokemon is really Game Freak's. The only Pokemon titles Nintendo ever did inhouse were the N64 Stadium games, which were just arena based supplements to the main Game Boy titles.
