For those who are confused by Malstrom's "Zelda used to be a RPG hybrid!" statements, he presented this old Nintendo Fan Club newsletter from 1987 as proof that Nintendo marketed Zelda in the early days as an adventure with arcade-like action and RPG elements. Malstrom may be an old fart but he lived through an era that most of us didn't and this gives him a unique perspective on things (I had a NES but didn't own one until 1992 and I was just a kid, I didn't follow the industry like Malstrom did.) This is why I love it when people track down old articles and videos related to gaming and uploading them on the internet.
Nintendo Fan Club Newsletter: http://www.tomheroes.com/images/ebayfunclub.jpg (which I found in this post: http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/email-my-zelda-experience/)
Read this sentence from the last paragraph of the Nintendo Fan Club Newsletter: "It has the fast action that you'd expect from a ARCADE hit, along with the depth and advanced ROLL (sic) playing of personal computer games."
Mr Khan said:
theRepublic said:
loves2splooge said:
Sean Malstrom may be public enemy #1 in the Nintendo subforum but it's worth noting that gaming wouldn't have expanded so much this gen if it wasn't for Nintendo deliberately targeting the "lapsed gamer" (which is basically his schtick. He thinks Nintendo should cater to this demographic). Adults who grew up with the Arcades, Atari, 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo and Sega, etc. but then lost interest in gaming once it started shifting towards 3D, becoming more complex and adding more buttons and sticks to the gamepads. Recently when chilling with my ex-girlfriend she told me that she hates videogames because she sucks at them. I bet if I brought my Wii or DS Lite to her place and set it up with some pick up and play games, she'd change her mind. After all, she is a fan of boardgames (like many women). I see no reason why she couldn't be converted into liking videogames.
Malstrom may have only a little Wordpress and forum corner. But there are tens of millions of people who can sort of relate to the basics of Malstrom's old-school philosophies. The Wii and DS brought back a lot of adults to gaming and also brought in new adults. These games focused on a "back to the basics" type of experience for gaming with a more simplified control scheme than the dual-analog modern gamepad.
I really think that Nintendo should create a 2D New Legend of Zelda to compliment the 3D Zelda line. There would be a strong market for it. Old-school Zelda would appeal more to fans who want Zelda with more action and non-linearity in their exploration.
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"He thinks Nintendo should cater to this demographic"
Close but not quite. Malstrom thinks Nintendo should cater exculsively to this demographic. That's the reason he gets so much hate from the enthusiast gamer crowd.
Malstrom may be disliked in the Nintendo forum, but it is nothing compared to what he gets in the general gaming forum. He at least has some supporters in the Nintendo forum. I actually liked him when he stuck more to the business side of things. It came at the right time too. He was predicting success and then explaining it when everyone else was predicting doom.
What did it for me and a lot of others is when he started trying to critic individual games. Everyone has their biases, but he takes his to the extreme. He hates on pretty much everything after SMB3 for destroying gaming, and ignores any evidence that contradict his theories. He just can't see past his own nostalgia when it comes to games.
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Right. It's the whole "if it's not a console-seller, it's a waste of resources!" schtick that is very annoying. Only a select few titles can be standalone console sellers, and even with their focus on "wasteful" games Nintendo still has more standalone console sellers than any other publisher out there, including Sony and Microsoft
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I do agree with Malstrom that the killer apps should be made. But it might be problematic if every single Nintendo game is made to appeal to the mass market because this could lead to gamer burnout. EA pimps out their EA Sports "franchises" (a very dirt corporate word) every single year but is that really working for EA? Last I checked EA is losing money. Something is definitely wrong with EA's formula and if they don't correct that problem, then some execs really need to be fired. And EVENTUALLY gamers are going to get tired of Activision releasing Call of Duty every year. In the long run, you're better off spacing out your killer apps than milking them to death. It's hard to create successful new IPs so the last thing you should be doing is killing them off.
