From a recent interview:
We have just launched Other M in Japan and I’ve been checking user opinions on the Japanese bulletin boards. What you say is definitely true; many of them are saying that they prefer Super Metroid. So it gives me some mixed feelings to hear that.
The reason why people prefer Super Metroid over Other M and other Metroids is because of the mechanics. People LIKE exploring, they LIKE gaining new items, they LIKE the maze like world to adventure in. Sakamoto does not like these mechanics because they do not allow his movie director vision of character drama to be realized. The audience couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about Sakamoto’s visions of ‘character drama’.
It’s complicated simply because to me Super Metroid and Other M are both products that I was deeply involved with. So as far as I’m concerned, I don’t have to compare the two.
It’s all about him, folks! He doesn’t feel he needs to compare the two because he was involved with both. To Sakamoto, Metroid revolves entirely around him and not around any mechanics or gameplay principles.
It’s definitely true that Super Metroid was a good game but it is one of many good games in the series.
Who defines ‘good’? The audience or Sakamoto? To Sakamoto, only he can define what is a ‘good’ Metroid. This guy is really high up on himself.
Of course, there was the choice for me to work on a game more similar to Super Metroid but I don’t know if that would represent a true evolution of the series.
What I find hilarious about this is that Super Metroid is a remake of NES Metroid. And Zero Mission is also a remake of NES Metroid. If the series was ‘evolving’, what remake the same exact game?
It is because he wasn’t trying to remake the same game. He was trying to ret-con it so it would fit his ‘creative visions’. People wonder how I can be against Zero Mission. The answer is that I see no reason to re-make a game when a brand new Metroid adventure could have been made. Re-making a famous old game and ‘changing it up’ is essentially pissing on the fans who bought the original when it was released. If Miyamoto ‘remade’ Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda, people would complain just the same.
And this is why I would never be allowed to be a game journalist. After Sakamoto saying he didn’t want to make a game like Super Metroid because he wanted to ‘evolve the series’, I would stop him right there and ask why did he remake Metroid I with Super Metroid and Zero Mission?
We know the answer. It is that Sakamoto cares only about the emotional reactions of Sakamoto. The audience can go to hell.
Sakamoto doesn’t have much in personal integrity either. Here is some hypocrisy on display:
Here is what Sakamoto said right before the release of Other M:
“I certainly do get asked that question a lot. During the Prime series, people always asked me when are you going to make a 2D Metroid. So we realized there was a lot of demand there, and that’s actually what drove the initial process to work on this project. I realize that there’s a lot of influence over a control scheme in the way that you feel about a game: When it’s in 2D, it feels more direct in terms of moving exactly where you want. There’s a certain dynamism with the screen in that regard, so the player has an exact understanding of their location and orientation of their movement. We wanted to bring both elements of the immersion of 3D and that kind of connection to your location on screen that you get from a 2D game.
When people say ’2d Metroid’, they ARE NOT REFERRING TO THE CONTROLLER! He isn’t even listening to the audience. He just hears what he wants them to say.
“So for all of these people saying that they really want a 2D Metroid, what I’d really like to say to them is I think this is your game. I’d like to see these people play it, and if they still want a purely 2D Metroid game after they’ve had this experience, then they should certainly let me know, then we’ll have to think about what to do next.”
And from the current interview, he says:
We might be able to come up with a better Super Metroid but, some day sometime, we would work ourselves into a creative dead end if we were simply moving forward in one direction. I, myself, have been seeking new stimulations and new play feels with the games that I’ve been working on so at least I am trying to avoid repeating the same things.
I definitely consider the feedback of those players that prefer Super Metroid but the fact of the matter is that Other M has other features that must be exciting and appealing to the audience.
Prior to Other M’s release, he said that if people wanted another 2d Metroid, he would gladly do it. Now that Other M is out and people are rejecting his ‘creative visions’ and demand another 2d Metroid, he is telling you guys to go to hell.
I love how he says that Other M has ‘other features that must be exciting and appealing to the audience’. WE ARE THE AUDIENCE! We don’t think these new Other M features are ‘exciting’ or ‘appealing’. They are boring, miserable, and to some downright offensive.
When the audience disagrees with the Great And Amazing Sakamoto, Sakamoto pretends they are not part of the audience and creates an imaginary audience in his mind.
It’s only a few days since the game’s worldwide launch and at this point I’m anxious to learn the initial reaction from the public but, on the other hand, I’m always looking forward to reading the comments and feedback once those players have completed the game for the first time. Perhaps their opinion will have changed by then.
He is trying to dismiss any and all criticism by suggesting they haven’t finished the game. But people have finished the game and are still unhappy with it.
Have you ever seen a game developer so… dismissive towards the audience reaction? If Miyamoto was where Sakamoto is, Miyamoto would be horrified and very sorry people are not enjoying the game and look to correct it. But Sakamoto truly believes he is a MASTER ARTIST and you peasants do not tell the MASTER ARTIST what to do or what games to make! Oh no! The only role for you dirty peasant customers is to buy the Master Artist’s “masterpiece” and to praise it.
Let me make a suggestion to this ‘Master Artist’. If he doesn’t want to make a 2d Metroid, why not let another company do it like Retro? Retro can make a good 3d Metroid and will likely prove they can make a good 2d game in DKC 4. They would be perfect to make a 2d Metroid. But I am sure Sakamoto will not allow this! He’d rather no 2d Metroid ever be made even if he could continue on his bizarre Other M type ‘creative visions’.
Deep down, his status is very much in doubt. If someone could make a better 2d Metroid (which would not be hard) without Sakamoto, what claim to fame would Sakamoto have? He would be destroyed as ‘Game God’. So I bet he would be hostile to ANYONE making another 2d Metroid even if he was allowed to do whatever he wanted in a parallel Other M type Metroid series.
It is all about Sakamoto and his make-believe status as ‘Game God’. You, the filthy peasant audience, are only allowed to be ruled by his ‘creative whims’.
As a matter of fact I think I made some basic comment about that in one of the official guide books to Super Metroid all those years ago. Specifically what I said was, the way we made Super Metroid was to try not to use dialogue or text at all and that everything should be conveyed through gameplay. We intentionally avoided direct narrative. Rather than have Samus talk about herself we preferred the player to feel things through the game. This even extended to navigation as, rather than tell people where to go using text messages, we would design the stages so that people could sense where to go next.
So, between Metroid: Other M and Super Metroid we had clearly defined concepts and even if we’d had similar technologies back then we would not have made Super Metroid the way we made Other M.
I highly doubt Sakamoto had a choice in the matter. Back in 1994, Sakamoto was a small fry compared to, say, the producer of the game like Gunpei (who was to Nintendo’s toys as Miyamoto was to Nintendo’s video games). But all the people who worked on Metroid are either dead, retired, or just work in the engineering side of Nintendo. As producer of the game, nothing could have been done without Gunpei’s approval as he was the boss. And I imagine Gunpei and the other elder developers were following in a general direction that Yamauchi outlined for his developers. My point is that Sakamoto has MUCH more freedom to do what he wants today than he did. And this is the problem. He thinks he is a genius when he is not.
However, this totally destroys the Sakamoto Cultist talking point that “If Super Metroid was made today, it would have story and cutscenes because the technology wasn’t available then!” (and I point out NES Ninja Gaiden that did have cutscenes and story).
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Yes, it might be true that I thought in terms of the new audience, who might not be very good at games like Metroid. But the reason we emphasised storytelling this time around was that we wanted to have the psychological depictions of Samus Aran and have clear cut drama sequences in order to tell the entire story. We thought of that premise because in the drama sequence we have so much dialogue and narrative devices that if we somehow eliminate all such similar devices in the gameplay sections then it might become unbalanced as a whole. It became more natural for us to make written or spoken directives given to the audience now that we have so many drama scenes.
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So, yes, I always want to attract more players to the Metroid franchise. Giving clear cut directions in terms of where they should go next, through dialogue and drama scenes, is something that we thought would help with that. But it was more about us wanting to include some in-game narrative outside of just the story scenes. Now, I have to admit that yes I wanted to cater to the needs of casual players. Metroid games have always been created so that players can sense where they should go next but that’s a skill of the veteran players and must be hard for newcomers.
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Holy smokes! Metroid: Other M is a Birdman game! The more Sakamoto talks, the better this gets…
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Specifically talking about the storytelling of Other M and the visual quality of the computer graphics, I think we have used quite luxurious resources to create these movie sequences and I think these scenes are worthy of the ‘movie’ label.
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However, if you ask me if I want Samus’s story to be told in cinemas, I really don’t think so. I want to tell the story of Samus only in the unique, interactive game format. However, if Mr Ryuji Kitaura, the director of the CG scenes in Other M, wants to make a Metroid movie and if the concept and methodologies he presents are agreeable with me then I might be okay with the idea. But only if it is made by him. Right now though, I have no intention to make a Metroid movie.
The real reason why Sakamoto does not wish to have a Metroid movie made is because movies are controlled by the movie director (which would not be Sakamoto). This is why writers prefer to work in television because they get more creative control where in movies the director has control.
The full paragraph reveals the desire of Sakamoto to be in FULL TOTAL CONTROL of Metroid. Sakamoto sees himself as the Tin Pot Metroid Pope!
This all presents a test for Iwata. Other M is not selling well. Reputation wise, it is heavily tarnishing the Metroid brand. The business response would be to remove control of Metroid away from Sakamoto.
Iwata’s big weakness is that he was a game developer so he sympathizes with them more often than he probably should. A game developer’s job is not to be ‘creative’, it is to make stuff that sells. Often, being ‘creative’ is what leads to sales. The entertainer works only at the pleasure of the audience.
Iwata revealed that if the DS and Wii were not successful, he probably wouldn’t remain as Nintendo president. But with so much decline occurring so rapidly, I imagine the decision makers could be re-evaluating the decision of Iwata as president. If Iwata keeps allowing Nintendo developers to do whatever they wish to do and keep making games like ‘Other M’ that scare away the audience and permanently harms the brand, I wonder how long Iwata will remain.
