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Majora on 10 March 2013
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happydolphin said:
Majora said:

I think that is HIDEOUS and I hate it. But someone else might love it. But yeah I kinda see your point. I don't, however, see the link with that and NSMB. That image above is not made by Nintendo and looks nothing like a NSMB game. Which do look awesome. IMHO, of course.

Your post is a breath of fresh air. Like you just realized, there's a level we can all see is "art" with the intention of making money (in the case of this clone).

Looking at certain elements in the NSMB games, the design of those games leads me to believe that they are made by B teams within Nintendo or are just intentionally made like that to ensure minimum effort and minimum alienation from consumers (by sticking to the same formula), similarly to how we notice patterns in that clone of a game.

I believe that though much about art is subjective (like you correctly said), I believe there is another aspect which is not, things we can discuss, especially in the gaming market where money has an influence on art design. The deeper we dig into this topic, the more you would understand what it is I mean by that exactly. By looking at variances between SMB games (like Basil did), we can compare Nintendo's effort on the creativity front. If we do, we'll notice that Nintendo has been making minimal effort to be creative with their games from a presentation and story point of view, and Gunman Clive was a good example of how to push the limits of the expected when it comes to 2D platformers, both in terms of music and visual art. If you have a 3DS you should try it just to see what I mean.

Ok, I can kinda appreciate EXACTLY what you're talking about now. So yeah I agree to an extent on the whole art debate. What I do not agree with at all in any way shape or form though is that NSMB is not art or visually interesting or relevant. It caters to a wide demograph, which is rare for any game to do and for NSMB to do it so successfully I think is a testament to the creative teams at Nintendo. Also, having played NSMB from the first on the DS to the latest on the WiiU, I can tell you there has been a refinement - some of the levels on NSMBU are just sublime, really well thought out and beautifully presented. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.