Email: Cut the Crap Already - by Sean Malstrom

You wrote:

“After a few days it took to finish the game, I sold it at a used game
store. Extremely disapointing especially considering what great
potential a true 2d Mario RPG could have.”

Yes, because Super Paper Mario was certainly the first to explore that
potential. It’s not like there was a total of four 2D Mario RPGs
before that, namely Paper Mario, Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door,
Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga and Mario and Luigi Partners in Time.

Do you honestly expect us to believe that you bought Super Paper Mario
expecting a full-fledged RPG? Why would you even want to play an RPG
to begin with, Malstrom? We’ve all heard you bitch and moan about
games having too much text and too many NPCs. If you eliminate those
elements from an RPG entirely you are left with an adventure game! Why
the hell would you want to play a Mario RPG then?
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Let’s see. I have a brand new Wii, looking for new games, and Super Paper Mario was shown to be a 2d Mario RPG. Of course, it shares no similarity truly to the old arcade era 2d Mario games except in appearance. I had never played a ‘Mario RPG’ before than. I bought Super Paper Mario based entirely on its 2d Mario appearance.

I’m not the only one who had a problem with all the text. That cartoon I put up wasn’t made by me. Very effective cartoon. “Super Paper Mario, the Pop Up Book” and then it shows Mario pop up in the corner with everything else filled with text.

Text isn’t the main issue. The main issue is removing control from the player. Early PC games were more text heavy. But they never removed control from the player. Or, at least, they gave the player some illusion of control. Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, any of the Ultima games, they all had tons of text, but at least you were interactive with it. It is no fun just sitting there and pressing a button to watch text scroll over and over.

Look at the intro to Super Paper Mario. Six minutes long! Six minutes of the player just sitting there!

The game constantly removes control from the player. It was very frustrating to me. In the end, Super Paper Mario comes across to me as a bunch of text with some peppering of interactivity.

No game worth their salt, RPG or otherwise, takes control away from the player for so long and so frequently.

Super Paper Mario is a fine game for what it wants to do. However, the game is not a successor to 2d Mario. Super Paper Mario is not the successor to Super Mario Brothers 3 or Super Mario World. Remember that I was answering an email why I say there has been no new 2d Mario when something like Super Paper Mario was around. The entire post was about why Super Paper Mario was not a 2d Mario in the tradition of the old school classics.

Let’s cut to the chase, Malstrom. You’ve been complaining about
Nintendo’s more “traditional” games ever since E3. It’s ironic that
the hardcore are often associated with cynicism and jadedness when
that’s all your posts seem to be full of these days. We get it; you’re
incapable of enjoying any post-1994 Mario, Zelda or Metroid title
(save for New SMB).
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Did you miss that one guy who emailed me very angry that I really enjoyed the Metroid Prime titles? I even got 100% in Metroid Prime 2. I also liked parts of Twilight Princess, chiefly the game once you get the Master Sword and get to go to Arbiter’s Grounds. Everything before that was a yawn fest to me. Herding ram, catching cats, running around as a dog catching phantom bugs, all got very tedious. The ‘puzzle’ right before the Master Sword just made the game stop dead in its tracks. But after all that, I really enjoyed the dungeons and all like the Temple of Time. I could do without the ice-leaf racing however.

You wax poetically about games not having new
content, but complain about the new content that is introduced in the
Zelda and Metroid series.
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I liked the Metroid Prime series. I don’t like how Zelda is recycling Ocarina of Time’s formula however. There is much ‘fluff’ and ‘junk’ that needs to be cleaned out of Zelda. I miss how far away from the ‘basics’ Zelda has strayed.

It feels like I am no longer playing games but playing formulas. It is not surprising, not memorable, and beginning to get very stale.

Your complaints about Metroid and Mario have been particularly
nonsensical. For instance, you are convinced that no one cares about
Samus and Adam’s backstories when a glance at any Other M-related
topic on any given Nintendo-related forum shows otherwise.
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Video games are a very different medium from novels or television or movies. In the novel/movie business, the emphasis is on characters. They highlight the internal struggle of the character where the rest of the events are just symptoms of that struggle. People in that business cannot understand why people would think Mario is interesting. Mario doesn’t *talk*. Mario doesn’t have *issues*. Mario doesn’t have a *backstory*. He’s just Mario. When games DO make their characters have *issues* and *backstory*, universally gamers get angry and annoyed. Much mocking commences. An example would be gamers mocking the heroes full of *angst* in the latter Final Fantasy games.

There are no games, that I am aware of, where internal character issues are the nature of the game. This suggests either no one knows how to do them or that the video game medium is not about internal character issues. I believe it is the latter.

Internal character issues are all about movies and novels are. But video games? This is why I think the philospohy behind Other M is unsound. When I say no one cares about the internal issues of Samus, I mean as a general principle that no one cares about internal issues of video game protagonists. The market just won’t find it interesting.

Another red flag was how the developers behind Other M kept talking about how wonderful their vision is yet they wouldn’t say whether the game is 2d or 3d. That, to me, is a red flag.

I’m thinking more and more that Other M is just a way to keep Team Ninja from going out of business than anything else. The company they were at was having tons of problems.

You project your own feelings upon the fanbase, insisting that they agree with you when the harsh reality is they don’t.
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I don’t insist on anyone to agree with me whatsoever. There are two reasons why I put out my views. For one thing, I am trying to put on the Yamauchi hat. What I mean by this is that Hiroshi Yamauchi had the uncanny ability to predict whether a game would succeed or not before it came out. So I am trying to play that game and say, “This game will be successful” and “That game will not be succssful” just to playfully see if I can get that Yamauchi business sense.

The other reason is that I am a member of the Expanded Audience. I am putting out my views, which I believe are more consistent with that Expanded Audience, only because you never ever hear of Expanded Audience taking part of the online discussion. Only the ‘core’ gamer dominates these online discussions.

Remember, you are emailing me. I am not going to your forums and declaring my view is the way it is. It sounds to me that you are trying to insist your view upon me.

The problem with gaming is that it has been a Core Market echo chamber. The Expanded Market has a voice too. No one has the right to shut them up.

For the past few years, I have heard nothing but denigrations, dismissal, and demagoguery on the Expanded Market. In fact, they aren’t even given the respect of a consumer. They are smeared as ‘casuals’, talked about as if they are retards.

Other M might be the best game ever made. But from a business standpoint, I do not think it will do its job in the sales goal.

From an Expanded Market standpoint, I think Other M is downright hilarious and is a sitting duck to be mocked. Other M is going to be a ‘love story’ as Samus explores her feelings. Yes, folks, that is what we have always wanted from a Metroid game! This doesn’t sound anything like what Metroid is about.

But we’ll just have to wait and see.

People ARE excited about Metroid: Other M. They are going to buy it, and you have really not a single reason to doubt that it will sell as good as if not better than Prime 3 did.
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It better sell more since there is a much larger Wii install base than there was when Prime 3 was released. And Prime 3, unlike most Wii games, won’t be given a long shelf life since Trilogy has obviously replaced it. No one is going to buy Prime 3 now.

Reggie set the goal was to break Metroid Prime 1’s sales. Metroid Prime 1, of course, is the best selling Metroid. Metroid has never been a mainstream seller like Mario and Zelda. I do not think Other M will get close to Prime 1’s sales.

It looks like the goal for Other M is to sell more in Japan because it is Manga Metroid and for Other M to sell to women (who will supposedly care about Samus’s feelings). But women don’t buy games in that fashion. And the trends of Japan appear to be away from home console and away from single player.

Your recent nonsense about Yoshi’s Island was even worse. It doesn’t
make sense that Shy Guys appeared in Yoshi’s Island, you say? That’s
funny….because Pidgits were in Super Mario World! Bob-ombs were in
Super Mario Brothers 3! And the events of Super Mario Brothers 2 all
took place in Mario’s dream anyway, meaning there is absolutely
nothing strange about these enemies appearing in the Mushroom World.
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Now you are making stuff up. I didn’t say the problem with Yoshi’s Island was because it had characters from Super Mario Brothers 2. I said the problem with Yoshi’s Island was that it didn’t really bring any new content to the table in comparison to the earlier Mario games.

Can you tell me of any great Yoshi Island characters or lands? You likely can’t (or have to try to look them up) because Yoshi’s Island didn’t exactly bring anything new.

What I’m saying is that Yoshi’s Island didn’t expand the Mario universe any further. Certainly not on the scale as the earlier 2d Mario games.

The worst part about it is that you don’t publish letters like these.
You only publish the ass-kissing letters where people tell you how
great your writing is.

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Hate mail is my favorite! It is tons of fun to put up. And I have put up many negative emails.

Well your writing was great. I used to enjoy reading your commentaries on the state of the video game industry, but it all went sour went you started to inject into your post your narrow-minded rants about what’s wrong with everyone’s favorite video games.
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The “Game Industry” and the business of gaming are two very different things. I don’t care about the “Game Industry”. I actually want the “Game Industry” to die. The “Game Industry” is harming gaming and preventing its expansion. It is time for it to go.

The ‘business of gaming’ is still being focused on. Why does Super Mario Brothers still sell to new generations decades later? How do you make a game to sell forever? These are all very interesting questions. I am not really putting out answers in these blog posts so much as hypothesis. One current hypothesis of mine is that Super Mario Brothers is eternal because its influence of Alice in Wonderland is eternal. Maybe I’m right on that, maybe I am not.

There are still a few time-honored classics that you have left
unscathed, so please, finish this off, will you? Give your misinformed
(i.e. Mario is from Brooklyn—made up by Nintendo of America, and
never officially supported by any of the series creators) opinions on
the following titles. And then please get back to commenting on the
game industry, as opposed to spending most of your time pretending you
know what sales figures mean and what the general public thinks about
particular games:

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The only ‘commentary’ I am interested in on the “Game Industry” is to give its eulogy. I am interested only the business of games.

And gaming is in the content business.

Exploring and asking questions about how that content is made, why some content is eternal while others is not, is very relevant to the issue of the business of gaming.

- Earthbound (how have you not complained about it’s childish story
and simplistic graphics yet?)
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The game bombed on the SNES. However, I don’t know why NOA refuses to put Earthbound on the VC or put Mother 3 for WiiWare.

- Pilotwings (has no mythos!)
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Mythos doesn’t mean mythology. It just means the true source behind the magic of its fun. For Pilotwings, it is obvious that it is about airplanes, parachuting, and flying in general. These are all things that people can easily associate with.

- Star Fox (generic space shooter!)
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Nintendo makes an amount of ‘Core Games’ each year. However, I do not like how resources are being squandered on more Mario and Metroid, of which 3d Mario and Metroid are already present on the Wii, when resources could have gone to make a good Starfox Wii or another core Nintendo game over.

I would like to see a new Starfox take the shape and scope of the SNES and N64 type games. Starfox is about flying around in a space ship. Leave the ground adventure to another series please.

- Donkey Kong Country (I can’t wait to hear about this one..)
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A spiritual sequel to 2d Donkey Kong Country would be pretty cool. Perhaps on DS? Anyway, the 2d platformer part is going to be fulfilled by NSMB Wii. Although I don’t think Nintendo will make any more type DKC games without Rare. Though, I am tired of the ‘experimental’ Donkey Kong games.

- Kirby (unimaginative characters and repetitive gameplay!)
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Kirby would be the series to do the experimental gameplay on, not Donkey Kong. Though, I think Wii consumers would prefer Pikmin 3 or Starfox Wii far more than Kirby. I think Kirby is way down on the list with the Core’s favorites.

Please Malstrom, let this be the one hate letter you don’t ignore and
finish off this stupid anti-Nintendo tirade that began with your
premature assessment of Metroid: Other M.
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It amuses me that I get this very intense reaction on Metroid: Other M. What I’m saying isn’t controversial at all. With Other M, it is about two red flags: making Samus’s love life and her feelings as the center of the game and the second red flag being how the devlopers refused to say whether the game was in 2d or 3d. What did they do all that time, just make fancy cutscenes? How can you not know whether your game is going to be 2d or 3d?

Aside from thinking their approach is silly, I don’t think it will be successful in the sales compared to the first Prime.

I’ve been wondering why my comments on Other M spark such passionate emails. And then I’ve realized that I am ‘ruining’ their hype. Core gamers tend to feast on hype until they get the game in their hands, try to deny the reailty for several days and weeks by believing the game is The Best Thing Ever, and then reality slowly sets in that the game is NOT the Best Thing Ever. Then they find a new game to hype over and the cycle starts all over again.

I’m tired of the hype game. The hype game needs to die along with the “Game Industry”. I already feel ridiculous investing emotions in games I play. I’ll be damned if I invest emotions in games that I have not played.