Words Of Wisdom said:
Look past Mario for a moment and focus on Nintendo. This is less about rehashing Mario and more about Nintendo covering every possible genre. Nintendo is getting footholds everywhere and sinking is teeth into as many genres as possible. Mario is a vehicle more than anything which gives a Nintendo game some automatic selling power but it does so because of what Mario represents. The key is that, despite the massive number of games he appears in, Mario does not represent shovelware. It would be one thing to condemn Mario's use were it more like Sonic appearing in crappy game after crappy game, but Mario actually leaves his mark on numerous good games. That's not necessarily good in my opinion or yours but by and large people recognize Mario's games as being good. The fact that as you say Mario is a vehicle of Nintendo's to set a foothold in every genre illustrates their philosophy of exploiting their most iconic character for inflated profits. It is also a cop out from investing into decent original characters, design and gameplay mechanics. They simply adapt the Mario universe and place it into a severely dumbed down sporting context while selling this low budget adaption at full price. It may score decently (though scoring between 7-8 is lower than any standalone Mario platformer would stand for) but it also deters Nintendo from investing into new IP's and very basic aspects such as VA's, proper online community etc -Because they can make a large sum of money with minimal investment. You condemn Nintendo for spreading into other genres while not rehashing its own which is entirely ironic. Nintendo does what it does well. Mario obliterates platformers but Nintendo works long and hard to make sure that their lead Mario title is amazing. It's easier to pull a rabbit out of your hat when you have 4 year spans to go out and find that rabbit than every year and a half after all. Compare Nintendo to Blizzard. Blizzard is the king of RTS yet how many RTS have they released? And recently? They spend a long time fleshing out their games and their games are awesome because of that. If you expect either company to shovel their flagship titles into the marketplace over and over like some other developers, you fail to understand who they are. I never implied that I expect them to shovel their flagship titles into the marketplace -Considering that Nintendo is already doing that I am suggesting the complete opposite. Rather than make 1 Mario platformer every several years while allocating creative talent to milking the icon through several annual spin offs I'd rather see Nintendo design more traditional, quality high budget Mario Platformers as they did during the NES and SNES dera. Considering the philosophy behind the Wii is innovation I would also expect greater investment into original, innovative software. While Nintendo has done a great job of creating and marketing such games on the DS the Wii is still largely saturated by brand name first party games. It's not that your opinion is unpopular but moreso that it's ignorant and judgmental (one of the worst possible combinations). If you can't be more objective and look for a wider understanding of your subject, whatever you endeavor in will fail. Also, it is the mark of a fanboy to defend his opinions by saying "Well I own all these systems." Ownership of a company's product does not somehow make all your opinions into facts and it never will. The reason I even mentioned owing all systems is because you said, I quote "Not knowing the price of a Wii game also indicates that you either don't own a Wii or are very ignorant of game pricing overall." |
