.
Prior to Other M’s release, I was raising red flags about Other M and even mocking Sakamoto’s crazy statements (‘maternal instincts’, ‘so young and naive’ trailer, etc.). I don’t hate Sakamoto or anything like that. I am using this scenario to illustrate that Gamer Drift does not exist. What we are getting, instead, is Developer Drift. The developer goes off the reservation and steers the franchise into a direction that the original audience cannot recognize. For some reason, this direction is ALWAYS more cutscenes and more story. Developer Drift never says, ‘Let’s do less story and cutscenes’. It is as if game developers, if left alone for several years with no supervision, would deliver us their new game which would end up being a bad computer generated movie. It is a trend I see with all game companies. It is shocking that it has even infested Nintendo. If your boss is Shigeru Miyamoto and he says, “Do not put in the story,” and you go behind his back and do it anyway (Super Mario Galaxy 1 for example), what is there to say? If a game developer is not willing to listen to his boss, who happens to be the esteemed Miyamoto, you know they are going to ignore us lowly customers.
Other M is also a good illustration why I do not like the notion of ‘Game God’ and why ‘Game God’ is bad for gaming. It is fascinating, to me, how a group of gamers began to practically worship Sakamoto, turned him into a ‘Game God’, and hung on his every word. What is so interesting to me is that Sakamoto can do no wrong as if he wasn’t really human but some sort of angelic being of light who graces us with his creativity. It is absurd to give such reverence to a mere human being, so I mocked them as ‘Sakamoto cultists’.
The cultists were furious. To this day, they are still attacking me. At one point, some expressed desire to punch me and cause other physical harm.
Prior to Other M’s release, I was being taunted by emails from these cultists telling me to ‘keep talking’ because once Other M came out, it would outsell every other Metroid ever made. I had to marvel at their faith in Sakamoto. Some people expressed surprise that I would praise the Prime games since I prefer 2d Mario over 3d Mario. Certainly I would prefer 2d Metroid over the Prime Metroid, right? Well, the Prime games were at least trying to be like Metroid but in 3d form. Other M is so far off the reservation that I cannot recognize where it is at.
The cultists truly believed Other M to come out to great acclaim and sell out everywhere. People would rush to buy the Wii to receive the wonderful creative gift of ‘maternal instincts’ that Sakamoto graced upon us mortals. And everyone would praise Other M and diss those ‘awful’ Prime games (as the cultists say that Retro was defiling Sakamoto’s grand vision of Metroid).
When the reviews first hit, they were all over the place. Some were extremely negative such as the G4 review. The cultists’ response was to attack the reviewer or the website itself. When people on the Internet said, “Whoa! I do not like this ‘maternal instincts’ in my Metroid!”, the cultists raged and said, “Read the manga!”
There is nothing ‘polarizing’ about Other M. The game is being soundly rejected by the market. It has flopped in Japan. We still don’t know how it will perform in America, but given how aggressive NOA has been in special deals, promotions, and commercials for Other M, the sales are likely not there.
So the question I want to ask is: “Why are the Sakamoto cultists still angry?”
They got everything they wanted. They got their ‘Game God’, Sakamoto, to make a Metroid to HIS vision. It was backed with a huge budget and an aggressive marketing campaign (something that not even the Prime games had).
And with the game in their hands, the Sakamoto cultists have declared it game of the year (or the century to some). If they got what they wanted, why are the cultists so upset? Why are they mad?
And why are they still mad at me?
My guess as to why is that Truth is the Mother of Hatred. The truth is that ‘Game God’ Sakamoto has feet of clay, that he is not a ‘master storyteller’, that the Metroid franchise is being brought to its knees by his “creativity”, that Other M is flopping in the market, and it was everything that the ‘demon’ named Sean Malstrom said would happen is happening.
Of the many years this website has been around, there has been colorful feedback from people. When I began downplaying 3d Mario for 2d Mario (which Mario 5 did not exist at the time), some people were upset because they liked 3d Mario. But if you put on your business hat, you can see that 2d Mario receives a much stronger reaction from the market and boosts the hardware in ways 3d Mario doesn’t even come close. From a business perspective, it makes sense to keep making 2d Mario and not allow 3d Mario to replace 2d Mario (as it had for eighteen years). With Zelda, I got some grief when I talked about the earlier games in how they were more arcade action orientated instead of slow puzzles. But when you play the early Zelda games, it becomes very clear that Link is a swordsman first and if you do not do combat well, you die.
But Metroid fans are a totally different story. Why this is remains a mystery to me.
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And we always took turns. We also played Chip and Dale (this is an amazing game! It's a NES coop Jump n Run, almost as much fun as Mario Bros. on the Wii) and Ducktales (see avatar 
