This wasn’t supposed to happen. The plan was since Casamassina’ s bad column generated many views (for the same reason a car crash does) that a podcast filled with the same would also generate many views. The gaming groupie that works at IGN (a more accurate term for these “game journalists”) intentionally placed all the comments they know would infuriate fans of Nintendo like poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. We got the ‘Wii is gimmick’, ‘Wii is going to lead to a 1983 crash’, ‘Wii games suck because they don’t have epic stories’, and so on. And, sure enough, fans of Nintendo (who are the only ones will listen to a Nintendo podcast) end up becoming disgusted and riled up.

But then something happened they didn’t want. Usually, someone writes a summary of these Nintendo podcasts on GAF or somewhere else. So I decided to do it myself. I post it up there and was done with my little site for the day thinking nothing of it. Everyone links to that blog post because no one wanted to listen to the podcast to get a summary. The last place the ‘gaming groupies’ want viewers to go is to this anti-game industry site.

The viral marketers panicked. Immediately, they began to denounce this website, myself, and incredibly put up their own ’summaries’ in a desperate attempt to get people from coming to this website. This all happened as soon as others linked to that blog post. It is as if these marketers are just sitting around there, refreshing the webpages, and immediately went into action as soon as the links appeared. Just look at how fast they responded!

Usually this site is full of commentary but that blog post of a summary I didn’t make any usual commentary. It was just what I heard, and I wrote it down. Many of it were exact quotes. Hilariously, the marketers rushed to accuse me of ‘taking IGN out of context’ and that I was ‘teh biased’. Have you ever seen an IGN podcast summary so examined and re-examined as mine was? I had no idea this was going to happen when I wrote it. Take this as an example:

- “Says Nintendo stopped doing this because they couldn’t compete. (No mention of Blue Ocean Strategy.)“
His fanboy bias there is pretty apparent as he’s just searching for a way to defend Nintendo.

Yes, because clearly best selling business books are ‘teh fanboy bias!11!!’ Nintendo is hailed and paraded around as the most visible ‘Blue Ocean Company’ by the authors of that best selling book. Everyone knows Nintendo execs would name drop ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ into every speech they gave from 2005 up to even 2009. Nintendo could most certainly compete as they had around a 8 billion dollar warchest at the start of this generation. Nintendo did, indeed, compete directly with the Gamecube and N64 and were more profitable than their competitors.

Blue Ocean Strategy as well as disruption are big problems to our Viral Marketing friends. They cannot refute them (for not even the greatest business minds can really refute them). Since they can’t bring down the message, they have to go after the messenger. “Malstrom is teh raging fanboy!!1!!” “Blue Ocean Strategy is teh fanboy defense!11!!” “That summary was teh biased!!” It is so funny. You guys have no idea how much fun I am having this generation. Once people know what Blue Ocean Strategy is or what disruption is, nothing the marketer says can make any dent.

That IGN podcast cannot be taken out of context. The groupie at IGN did insult people who liked Nintendo by calling them brainwashed. They called Wii a gimmick. They said that Wii would crash the industry like the 1983 crash. They compared Wii to the plastic plug-and-play guitars you get in the line at Walgreens.

It’s not about me, it’s not about IGN, and it’s not about our marketing trojan horses masquerading as average gamers. It is about the gamers. And gamers deserve to be better treated no matter what console they are on.

The groupie at IGN thinks this was a great ratings stunt, and it will blow over. But it will not blow over. Not anymore. After Cassamassina’s bizarre editorials of “Can Uncharted 2 save gaming?” and “Nintendo is lazy”, people question the sanity of Cassamassina (and moderators have been removing any threads that appear on the subject in the IGN forums). After that Nintendo podcast, why on earth would any Nintendo player trust IGN? What we’re witnessing is IGN destroy its trust with readers in days what took years to build. Yes, they will get a bump in hits from all this but the long term damage is done. I don’t think IGN will be able to recover from this.

Gamers are tired of this crap.

Do you know the Lesson of Mega Man 3?

There is a pattern that began in the 8-bit Generation that continues to plague games today. This pattern is relying on the elements for stages or weapons in a game. These elements I am referring to are the Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water.

It was an exciting innovation during the 8-bit days of course. Games couldn’t have such a diversified stage set most likely because games didn’t have different boards. Miyamoto admitted that when Super Mario Brothers was made, he wanted to have a game that went from land, to sea, to air (and you could count the castles as fire).

Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire are often used as stage themes, boss themes, or weapons. It is so cliche to be confronted with an “Ice Monster” that everyone pulls out their fire weapon without even having to think about it. There is nothing so incredibly dull as approaching yet another ‘fire stage’ or another ‘ice/water stage’ or another ‘earth stage’.

Mega Man games are notorious for this which could be a reason why the series feels so stale. Mega Man 1 had six robot masters. At least three of them were the elements (Fire Man, Ice Man, Guts Man) with perhaps Elec Man or Cut Man representing air. Mega Man 2 had Bubble Man for water, Heat Man for fire, Wood Man for earth, Air Man for air (with Quick Man and Flash Man being Fast and Slow). Mega Man 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 all have the four elements represented in the same cliche stages yet again.

But Mega Man 3 is very different.

Mega Man 3 is the only Mega Man game that doesn’t have any of the elements. Sure, there is water in Gemini Man’s stage but no one would call Gemini Man’s stage a water stage. I frankly don’t know what in the world type of stage Gemini Man’s stage is. Gemini Man is nothing like Ice Man, Bubble Man, Dive Man, Wave Man, etc. Shadow Man’s stage has flowing lava in the background but it isn’t a fire stage as Heat Man or Fire Man all the way to Napalm Man is. There is a part in Top Man’s stage where you hop over some flying tops. But if Top Man’s stage is a ’sky stage’, then what is Snake Man’s stage that does something similar at the end? And no one would call Snake Man a ‘wind element’. The only one that comes anywhere close might be Hard Man for earth, since you go through a mountain, but that is the only thing in the stage that links it to earth.

Look at the robot masters from all the Mega Man games that came after Mega Man 3. Try to spot the ‘elemental bosses’. They should pop out at you.

Even Mega Man 9 is a huge offender. You blatantly have Magma Man as fire, Splash Woman as water, Tornado Man as air, and likely Concrete Man as earth.

One thing I noticed when looking at the above images was there was another… uh… ‘element’ that was placed in all the Mega Man games (except for 3 and 1 because 1 only had six bosses). This is the element of ’speed’ as represented by Quick Man. Other characters of ’speed’ would be Centaur Man, Charge Man, Turbo Man, etc.

Mega Man 10 currently only has Commando Man and Sheep Man revealed which do not appear to represent elements. However, we do know there is a desert stage (i.e. the fire element like Pharoah Man). We’ll see if Mega Man 10 fits the pattern.

Mega Man 3 still is rated as the highest of the Mega Man games, besides two, because the robot masters do not feel like copies of what came before. While you could say all bosses of the first three games were copied, you can’t deny there seems to be some unspoken rule by game developers that all four elements must be represented in every game. Mega Man 3 is the only Mega Man game not to rely on the four elements which is why the game is still interesting.

As much as I love Mario 5, seeing the worlds represent the elements gets a pass only because we haven’t seen a Mario game in twenty years. But already those ‘element’ based worlds feel incredibly stale. We’ve seen zillions of ‘water worlds’ and ‘ice worlds’ and ’sky worlds’ and ‘earth worlds’ and ‘fire worlds’. This is perhaps why people remember worlds like Giant World or Pipe World more vividly than yet another level representing an element.

Another bad offender of this element disease is Zelda. The first levels in Twilight Princess felt so tired because they were clearly Earth, Fire, and Water. We’ve seen element themed dungeons a zillion times. It doesn’t surprise anymore. Dungeons are more interesting when they are different. While City in the Sky was clearly an air level, I can’t remember too many Zelda dungeons where you constantly saw a blue sky and didn’t feel cramped up in a cave underground. So this is perhaps why City in the Sky comes across as being more memorable while Earth Temple, despite its monkeys, is fast forgotten.