Greetings,

as far as I’ve been able to tell, you don’t really play rpgs, right? At least not the japonese kind. I get that, plenty don’t like, they just don’t see the fun in mashing the attack button over static battles and reading through walls of text. Makes sense.

Not true. I enjoyed the classic Japanese RPGs such as the early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games. I own Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy for the NES. I also paid the insane $90 or whatever it was to get Final Fantasy IV for the SNES. It was totally worth it. I enjoyed the ‘menu battles’.

In fact, I am currently replaying Final Fantasy I on my Wii via the Virtual Console. Last I left it I was in the north, with my airship, after the class change but still haven’t taken out the Water Element yet. So I still play these games today.

You’ve been writing how it’s stupid what nintendo is doing with their zelda games or the new metroid coming up, with all the story thing and necessary requirements of helping Mr. whatever get his whatever from the top of a tree. I couldn’t agree more, these games weren’t like this before, why would they change it, it really does make the experience ‘bloat’. It doesn’t fit those games. And even though you say Sakamoto intends to make a “character” game, that’s really unlikely, you know it will be an “event” game overall.

I believe the player’s minds will ‘filter’ out stuff depending on the medium he is playing. Cutscenes, in particular, will get ‘filtered’ to background scenery when the player is trying to play a game. In a movie, the brain will not be filtering what is shown. The player picks up his controller intending to create commands. He will not be content to just sit there and ‘absorb’ in a passive way. Gaming isn’t a passive medium.

The only times the gamer’s mind won’t filter out the cutscenes is at the introduction and at the ending of the game (and maybe between levels) when the player isn’t playing and his mind can shift to ‘absorb’ mode rather than ‘play’ mode.

The ‘in-game’ cutscenes movement appears to be the wrong way to go. If you are going to do cutscenes, put them outside of the game. It tends to work better.

But I wanted to tell you my vision of what makes a good rpg, or makes stories valid for any kind of game. You’ve said before how game developers think that anyone can make a cool story, instead of hiring a proper professional for it,

It is not about hiring a professional about it (because there are very few ‘good’ people who do that). It is about treating the ‘world creation’ process with more care than a 101 creative writing class in some poor college. To create great music, it takes some work. It takes some time. To create great gameplay, that takes work. It takes time. But to create a great fictional universe, it takes work, and it takes time.

Where do many game makers get their ‘fictional universe’ ideas from? Movies is one common source. And where do the movie people get it? The most common source would be the novelists. 2001: Space Odyssey didn’t truly come from Kubrick, it came from Arthur C. Clarke. Sure, Kubrick made something unique with it, but the core world universe idea did not start with him. How about Jurassic Park? Spielberg didn’t create that ‘world idea’. It came from the novelist Michael Crichton. One very interesting thing is that novelists do not have the privilege to create a ‘imaginary world’ from sources like movies (unless the book is a license like a Star Trek book or a Star Wars book). They tend to use many other things. But a few things the fantasy and science fiction authors rely on very heavily are ancient mythology, history, and anthropology.

Let me put it this way. Pretend you are a game developer. Would you rely on your ‘creativity’ to make the gameplay? Or would you do a careful research of gameplay of the past and present games as well as studying intensely the emotional feedback of people playing your prototype? It is the latter.

Yet, when it comes time to do ‘world creation’, we get nothing but the most banal cliches. One thing the novelists also tend to do is detail their world (and this is long before they write any words). It is a common practice to make maps, for example. Even if none of this material actually makes it into the novel, a detailed world makes it much easier to make the ‘novel’. When you look at the really cool game worlds in gaming, you see things like blueprints for the space ships in Wing Commander to the cloth maps in games like Ultima. You can tell there was tons of care in devising these fictional worlds.

you also said many developers are treating their games and their characters in it like it was theirs. Like with metroid, in wich Sakamoto loves her precious Samus, and he wants to make people love her too. They might get a little blind on things like that and forget of making a fun game.

It is even beyond that. Here is my test: take their funky ideas and wrap it as a stand-alone game. With Other M, it would be to make a non-Metroid game and have it be about ‘maternal instincts’ of some female warrior remembering her ‘naive’ years. Would that sell?

I don’t think it would. I think it would bomb in massive fire. Yet, this idea gets injected into the Metroid franchise. Why? If the idea of gamers exploring ‘maternal instincts’ of a female protagonist is so entertaining, why not put it as a separate game? If the modern ‘stories’ of Zelda are so entertaining, such as the train game, why not make them as separate games? Why not have a RPG train game instead of injecting that into the Zelda franchise?

Early on, when gaming was new, Nintendo made new types of games, new types of series. Some of these games were not that successful (Startropics, Kid Icarus) but others were very successful (Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda). It was common to present new content. Starfox was not a game of Arwings piloted by Mario, Princess, Luigi, and Toad. It had its own characters and its own universe.

As time went on, game series became seen as permanent fixtures of the gaming landscape. It is assumed that Zelda will always be popular or that Mario will always be popular. This is a false assumption. Mario became seen as ‘lame’ during the latter end of the 16-bit generation and especially grew more lame during the N64 and Gamecube Eras. How did this happen? Strange ideas were injected into the Mario franchise that created games that did not seem Mario.

Who wants to play that? Is it any wonder why Mario stopped being cool?

Zelda followed the same pattern of becoming ‘not cool’ as strange ideas got injected into the franchise. Wind Waker should have been Star Tropics in 3d with Mike sailing to all the islands. It was very not ‘Zelda’ like. And consumers turned away.

Gamers do not want ‘creativity’ in their franchises. What I mean by this is that they do not want the series to become something different than what it is. With Mario games, they want it to be about Mario getting power-ups, platforming, and kicking Bowser’s tail. They want new additions to the gameplay, but they do not want totally different gameplay unless you are doing a spin-off (such as Mario Kart successfully became).

If I am wrong on this, then why did Mario 5 sell so strongly? Why is everyone so excited about DKC 4? At a restaurant, if you enjoyed the hamburger before and asked for it again, and you get something completely different like a lobster, you go “WTF?” And the chef tells you, “I was being creative.”

Take Tetris or Bomberman. People will still want to buy and play those games on future platforms. They don’t want ‘creativity’ in them as Bomberman turning into a platforming game or Tetris turning into an RPG.

Before someone injects a ‘gameplay’ or strange notion into an established franchise, the question should be raised, “Is this good enough to stand in a separate title (or IP)?” If the answer is no, then why are you poisoning your own franchise?

The ‘enhancements’ to established franchises have always been about carving out the game world more. It was taking the established gameplay and fleshing it out more. In Super Mario Brothers 3, it was said that it was to be a further exploration of the Mushroom worlds. Cool. People liked that. In Super Mario World, which was Dinosaur Land and a completely different area, there was some annoyances. By Mario 64, Nintendo had lost many of its customers. And after Sunshine, well you know how that went.

From the eyes of the customer, they get maybe one or two Zelda games on a home console maybe every half a decade. The customer’s life is not fun with work, with family, with all the things that must be done. There is not much joy in the customer’s life, but the customer is very much looking forward to the Zelda game. When the customer gets the Zelda game, which is a special moment for it may not come again in 5 more years, imagine the crushing disappointment of the customer when the new Zelda game is completely different than what made Zelda popular in the first place. The customer does not care if developers got to engage in self-indulgence and ‘had fun’ making it. The customer gets sad that he does not enjoy the game. After several times of not having fun, the customer gives up. He stops playing games (or, at least, of that particular series). And if you enjoy 2d Mario, you must wait 18 years for the next version on the home console.

Not only are the developers turning the game into something else entirely, they have lost track of the mission of imagination. The imagination that must be sparked and cultivated is not the developer’s imagination, it is the gamer’s imagination. The entire purpose of the game, or a play, or a novel, or a movie, is to create illusions and all to spark the audience’s imagination.

A video game is not the finished dish from a chef named Imagination. A video game is the spice named imagination that creates fireworks inside the customer’s head.

A magician is in the imagination business. Does the magician use smoke and mirrors to spark the audience’s imagination?

An actor is in the imagination business. Does the actor use props, costumes, and words to spark the audience’s imagination?

A novelist is in the imagination business. Does the novelist use words, adjectives, and careful phrases to spark the audience’s imagination?

A movie director is in the imagination business. Does the movie director use music, light, and camera angles to spark the audience’s imagination?

When video games had much more primitive technology, they were designed to spark people’s imagination. The glorious box art was to spark imagination. The initial text on the screen was to spark imagination. The sound effects and music were to spark imagination.

Now as technology has improved, it seems as if developers are using it to funnel THEIR imagination and to cease attempting to spark the audience’s imagination.

For example, in Metroid for the NES, many things of the game sparked players’ imagination. This was true for Metroid on Gameboy and on SNES. Metroid Prime worked because it did things to spark people’s imagination (such as the ‘text’ descriptions on the scanned creatures).

A game like Other M is not interested in sparking the audience’s imagination. Other M is interested in dumping Sakamoto’s imagination on us. It is his story. But a good video game has the player saying my story. You can really tell this difference between later and earlier Zeldas.

A bad artist is someone who wishes to shine like a finely cut stone. A good artist is someone who holds a mirror up to the audience. The greatest untapped resource in gaming is the imagination of the gamers.

Why the hell do you think all that Time Line stuff comes up in Zelda discussions? The players’ imaginations are still working, still engaging in the experience. In a way, they are still playing the game even though the console is turned off.

I agreed with you on all those points and it added into my intellect. I’ve been also listening or reading plenty of comments saying that the traditional japonese RPG isn’t really a RPG. It does make sense from a gameplay standpoint, but what I always say back is: ok, I get that, but for two decades these games have always been called RPGs, why change it now, I get your point, and it’s a valid one, but it’s still a RPG, because we say so. Besides, even if there is no choice involved in the games, and all I do is watch in the cinematics, I still feel like I’m playing that role, I don’t go out to my friend and say that Crono sacrificed him self to protect his friends from Lavos, I go and say that “I” did that. As far as I know, that’s role playing at a certain degree.

You could say that because Chrono never talked. Chrono wasn’t really a “character” at all.

I don’t mind at all if the game has little gameplay and huge texts, as longs as those are great texts, and preferably they aren’t in the beggining of the game, because it always sucks to have to go through a 30 minute presentation before you get some action, I want to check out what’s the game like fast. I don’t mind at all that a game like Xenosaga has a 21 minute long cinematic with no gameplay at all, as long as those were good 21 minutes, if they were, I would still go out and say to others that that is a good game to play. I gave up playing Zelda Twilight Princess real fast because I couldn’t catch the damn fish, I played that for I don’t know how long and I saw no action at all, just that stupid green village, so I quit it. But there are games that any story at all just doesn’t fit the game. Metroid Primes always had huge texts o f story in it, but you could just not read it, most probably didn’t, but it is there. Like World of Warcraft, most people I know don’t read the whole quests, they just read the objectives and goes for it, either way, the story is there.

The purpose is to spark the player’s imagination. The purpose is not to transfer the developer’s imagination into the player’s brain. This is the true reason why you liked what you said above.

There are no brain machines. What is between the developer and the gamer is a bunch of digital assets and a game engine. The best way to create an imaginary world is to aim at sparking the player’s imagination.

What do you think Shakespeare was so successful? Everything he says and does is all about sparking the audience’s imagination, not in showcasing his own imagination. Even at the beginning of some plays, the prologue will attempt to assist the audience in their feat of imagination.

Shakespeare is asking for the audience to really work their imaginations because the stage and skipping of time are barriers to show the events in King Henry V. Shakespeare does this type of thing in everything he does.

You now what’s even more marvelous? In the plays, themselves, Shakespeare constantly has characters using their imagination in different ways. The plays are triumphs of imagination. But imagination can be good or bad. It is bad when someone whispers horrible rumors in your ear about your wife, and we end up with the Tragedy of Othello. But it is good when someone says wonderful things like so and so is actually in love with you, we end up with the Comedy of Much Ado About Nothing.

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The problem isn’t that games with too much story, or some story, is bad. The problem is the story itself. And I’ve been seeing game after game with stories that suck, it really really disappoints me. I just don’t get it how they are still making RPGs of the valiant hero who saves the world, over and over, even though there are some variations in it. I also don’t get how they still make so many RPGs with the standard attack, spell, defend, HP/MP gameplay, since there are infinite possibilities of different, very fun gameplays. A good rpg has to be new, the battles have to be fun, and the story has to be different. A good story needs characters with different values, elaborated personalities, characters that change with the game, the y evolve, they start to see that the world isn’t all black and white, there’s the color of shit and blood as well. The characters need to lose some battles, they can’t win it all, they need to feel all different kinds of feelings, and change with their experiences. The characters need to be as complex as the average real person, and some could be even more, intriguing the player on their motives. The events in the game need to have meaning, all of them, they need to add something into the experience, no random missions of killing rats in the sewers or whatever. The story needs a perfect balance between different emotions. Not only that, the story also needs to discuss something pertinent, have a context that adds into our lives. It can discuss religion, politics, human values, whatever. The game needs to be interesting to a point that it will make people think even after they play it, trying to understand why the character did that, why that certain whatever happened, and th ey’ll have something to talk to their friends about that are also playing. The game also needs a perfect balance of text and gameplay, to make neither tiring. That would be a good RPG, and it’s the reason why I still try out all of them, trying to find one that fit those criterias. At a certain degree, it’s not that hard. The typical story may still be cool for a teenager, but it got old for us, men like you and me needs something a lot more… complicated.

The reason why there are problems is the following:

OLD WAY: Developers aim to ignite the player’s imagination.

NEW WAY: Developers aim to ignite THEIR OWN imagination OR they rehash what has come before because it ignited THEIR OWN imagination.

If we shift the focus of ‘Whose imagination should be ignited?’ to the customer, magic happens.

Let’s consider the parallels:  Both were, in their heyday, solid first-party publishers.  Sony’s quality as a publisher is underrated, but the fact is that they have put out an awful lot of million-selling games (I’m surprised you never mention Gran Turismo…GT3 sold almost 15m units, more than any Sega-published game has ever sold, ever).  Both seem to have critically misunderstood what made them successful (fun games) and focused more and more on being OMG HARDCORE.  And, both came to their end (I believe this is Sony’s end) in a flurry of expensive hardware add-ons that no-one really wanted, but cost them an awful lot of money to develop.  Whereas motion controls were a new platform for Wii, they’re basically Sony’s “Sega CD.”  Whereas 3D is a new platform for Nintendo, it’s Sony’s “32X.”   Instead of focusing on games and letting the software speak for itself (did you notice that Nintendo’s E3 was little more than Reggie listing a bunch of awesome games?), they’re desperately trying to leverage their studios to sell you even more ridiculously expensive peripherals.

If I were to really push the parallel, I would say that 3DS is to PSP what PS2 was to Dreamcast.

Do not insult Sega by comparing them to Sony!

Hi Malstrom.

As everyone is emailing you about Zelda, I thought I wouldn’t do the same, other than commenting, as a Zelda fan since the 80′s, based on what was seen in E3, Nintendo atleast seems to be on the right tracks (instead of being on Spirit Tracks). But let’s wait and see, as Nintendo is still judging public reactions.

But what I really wanted to email about is the gaming press. After trolling the motion controls for three years, and now being “forced” to change direction due to Move and Kinect, their trolling starts to backfire, as seen in the “IGN virals” you posted in the blog.

Despite them trying to soften the blow for the whole year by suddenly seeing the light in motion controls, they are now between the rock and a hard place. As the advertisers want the journalists to promote their Kinect and Move games, the readers want to read them being bashed, just like they’ve done this far. Then again, they can’t suddenly just get new readers for a number of reasons, with their earlier trolling not being the least.

Now that, for example, IGN editors took the stance that Kinect is the best thing since sliced bread, they really are softening the blow for Microsoft, but they do it on their own cost, as the “hardcore hatred” is going to be geared towards the journalists.

Some people saw the future coming, as Matt Casamassina left IGN as soon as he could, despite just being promoted. The move looks being a little similar to Harrison and Moore leaving their jobs as they realised what the outcome of this generation would be.

After this E3, I suppose we are starting to see gaming news sites going bankrupted as either the advertisers flee or the readers. As it has been a pleasure to watch Sony (and Microsoft) going down this generation, the fun continues with the gaming media being the next on the line.

As I’m assuming that people are, or are going to be, emailing asking your thoughts about Steam on PS3, I’d like to point out, that in 2006 Sony announced, that PS3 is open for 3rd parties own hosting for online multiplayer, just like Wii is (which is why we have publishers like Capcom and EA hosting online play on their own network, now Valve is only doing the same on PS3). Only 360 is limited to its “default” online network, due to it being a huge source of revenue to Microsoft.

Sony and Microsoft are showing us who they are… especially Microsoft. We’ve all known these non-gaming companies do nothing but put out soul-less boxes that play PC games in your living room with a controller and envelope it with massive marketing. With Microsoft, the marketing extent to Kinect seems absurd with the circus, with all the fake demos, with the free Xbox 360 systems, with the viral marketing campaign, and so on and so on. But all of this has always been going on.

I think Matt Cassamassina left because he knew IGN was a company in decline. IGN is not really a game news company. IGN is an advertising vendor for young males. I was surprised that the company didn’t embrace the Wii to get all the new players to come to their website. Apparently, the company was determined to remain as an ‘advertising vendor for young males’. This allowed other game sites like Yahoo to surpass IGN on its Wii coverage. This could be why much of the game media were hostile to Nintendo ‘reaching to non-traditional gamers’ because the game media doesn’t advertise to those demographics.

With Microsoft going Kinect and Sony going Move, none of this is going to help these ‘advertising vendors’ that pose as game websites.

But I think the underlying reason these game websites are in decline is because they do not know how to generate their own content. Their ‘content’ is nothing more than press releases and reviews. This is causing all the game websites to have similar content. Is Gamespot different than IGN or vice versa? There is no differentiation.

Malstrom,

You’ve tipped your hat here a bit. How old are you? You’ve described yourself as “old” — if so, how the hell do you know what Sailor Moon is?!? As a 24-year old, I have an excuse, as that show was broadcast when I was just a little tyke. But you? And you know more than just “what” it is — you even know the characters and whatnot. Now, that, my friend, is not very becoming of the “most interesting gamer in the world.”

A vice president from IBM was spotted at the playground. Why? Kids did not play with the product his company was making. But the problem is that young people become old people. Trends of tomorrow start as the trends of kids today. Marketing people and big shots at companies all take a special interest in the habits of older kids because they are tomorrow’s market. If you look at Reggie Fils-Aime 2005 breakfast talk where he outlines disruption and Blue Ocean Strategy, you will also hear him talking about behavior and patterns of pre-teenagers. “They’re not interested in video games as they used to,” said the worried Reggie. “This has to change.”

I keep the habit of trying to know what TV shows and other major trends are in youth. I cannot tell you much about Power Rangers, for example, but I know it exists. I get the very basic premise of the show. Same with Dragonball Z, same with Pokemon, same with Harry Potter, and so on. If you do anything in entertainment, you have to know the entertainment of young people.

I was trying to find a way to communicate my disgust for Other M. So I tried to think of some really cheesy, ‘girl power’, show that was about ‘young and naive’ romantic feelings. Samus Aran being so very much ‘blonde’ made me immediately think for another ‘blonde’ out there. Wasn’t Sailor Moon also from Japan?

How about comparing Sakamoto’s Samus Aran with someone else? How about She-Ra? She is, like Samus, the Princess of Power!

Above: Inspiration for Sakamoto

All Samus Aran needs now is a unicorn.

The reader protests, “Malstrom, it is not fair for you to compare She-Ra and Metroid: Other M!”

You’re right. She-Ra is more entertaining.

That’s what a lot of fans are saying. DKC4 has a lot in common with NSMBW, which came in an awesome red box. Since you claim that Nintendo reads your site, maybe they’ll like this idea, and package Donkey Kong Country Returns in a bright, banana yellow case.

Absolutely not! The yellow case is reserved for another game. Perhaps it will return with Super Mario Brothers 6.

Mr. Malstrom,

You’re probably sick of all the emails you’re getting regarding E3, and while I find the collapse of the hardcore fascinating I’ll spare you my perspective on that.  What I want to talk about is something that seems to have flown below your radar, and that is the OnLive service.

The service itself launched a few days ago and is supposed to allow you to play games remotely – the video is streamed to your PC while your input is sent to their servers.  This entire service is so ludicrous that it will probably fail spectacularly for several reasons.

Not only is there going to be terrible control delay as most peoples’ latency would probably be upwards of 100ms, but the video quality will be low as streaming video takes up ridiculous amounts of bandwidth even when compressed.  I suspect the lack of quality will chase away all but the most diehard early adopters.

Those are just technical concerns, however, and they could be resolved by new technology in the future.  The real reason I think the service will utterly fail is because it completely removes control from the consumer.  Since these games are installed remotely and you’re paying a monthly fee to access them you lose the ability to modify your game in any way, from simple .ini tweaks to total conversion mods.  The other critical problem is that they can close your account at any time – you are paying a monthly fee to access your games, plus full retail price for the games themselves, and if your account is closed you lose everything you’ve paid for.  Not to mention that they apparently only keep games for three years, and when that happens you lose whatever you paid for.

I still play games from the 1980s and 1990s to this day.  If I can’t replay a game three or four times it’s not worth buying, especially with today’s showy cutscene heavy games that usually only have 10 hours of gameplay (the fact that people accept that when games 10 years ago could have 60 hours of gameplay is in itself ridiculous but that’s a topic for another email).

The entire idea is so ridiculous that I can’t even believe anyone would buy into it aside from publishers, who love the idea of controlling piracy and removing all control from the customer.  If the customer can’t install mods, there’s no Hot Coffee scandal!  No retroactive adjustment of ESRB ratings of games due to nudity mods!

I’m really starting to see the wisdom in your “cult of technology” article from several months ago.  At first I was a bit skeptical, but everywhere I look there seems to be more and more evidence.  Services like this are utterly pointless and likely doomed to failure, and only someone completely obsessed with technology would think otherwise.

Is it no surprise the big companies want the future to become a type of Digital Feudalism? Just as the peasants didn’t own the land they worked on and had no property rights whatsoever, so too will consumers of the future not own the product they consume or have any property rights to it whatsoever.

OnLive will fail. I don’t think that is any story.

But here is what will happen. After it becomes clear the market keeps rejecting Digital Feudalism, the big companies will instead go to Congress. “Make Digital Feudalism into law or else we cannot compete!” And so OnLive forces its way into the market by the legislator’s pen. Woe to the customers!

Hi Sean,

I couldn’t help but be reminded of this old YouTube video from 2006 while watching this year’s E3. An Old School Revolution? It certainly seems like it to me.

If the video was made today, a better enemy than Sony and Microsoft would be the “Game Industry” as the collective group-think it is. Perhaps instead of Bill Gates at the end, it would be Bobby Kotick!

You, rightly, noted how Donkey Kong Country was a success because it was a new universe for gamers to explore. I can tell you this is spot on. The gameplay may not have been as rich as, say, Super Mario World, but the universe and “texture” of the game have endeared themselves to the minds of gamers.

This is where I think you are being inconsistent with regards to Yoshi’s Island. Yoshi’s Island may not have had the counter-culture attitude of DKC, and this is why it may have not done as well, but man, it was a VAST new universe with a VAST new stable of characters and enemies and scenarios. I cannot tell you how BIG that game. You have said you’re fan of Atari and SEGA fan ClassicGamer (as am I), take a look at his review of Yoshi’s Island. He was blown away.

When Nintendo gamers are asked which of Nintendo’s games are “magical,” Yoshi’s Island is usually among the most cited. I think this is something worth noting.

I’ve never said Yoshi’s Island is a ‘bad game’. I am saying it is not a Super Mario Brothers game. Instead of saying ‘Super Mario Brothers game’ we should say ‘Mother-of-killer-apps’ since that is what Super Mario Brothers games are. Any game compared to a Super Mario Brothers game, with the exception of Wii Sports, will be very small in comparison not due to the game being bad but due to how much power Super Mario Brothers has.

The fact is that Yoshi’s Island never drove momentum of the SNES. Donkey Kong Country did. Yoshi’s Island didn’t.

Did Yoshi’s Island make the Mario series more or less popular? The answer is less popular. In a way, Yoshi’s Island has more in common with Super Mario 64 in that regard.

As for new content presented in Yoshi’s Island, no.

Much of it is typical Mario monsters. Even the Yoshi and Dinosaur Land is from Super Mario World. The Shy Guys are from Super Mario Brothers 2. There is nothing new in the game.

Do you know where the rumors about Miyamoto not liking Donkey Kong Country came from? It all revolves around Yoshi’s Island. I can confirm at the time that Yoshi’s Island’s graphical style was extremely controversial. In a time period where games like Mortal Kombat were the ‘hot’ title, where Super Mario World was already castigated by competitors’ marketing as ‘lame’ (one of the reasons why Sonic became popular), Yoshi’s Island took the bad cutesy trends of Super Mario World and injected steroids into it.

It was Donkey Kong Country that saved the SNES, not Yoshi’s Island. The rumor wasn’t that Miyamoto hated Donkey Kong Country but hated that its success caused NOA to ask for a more realistic graphic style for Super Mario World 2. And when Yoshi’s Island came out, Mario fans did not gravitate to it. If anything, they gravitated more toward Donkey Kong Country.

There is a problem with gaming that as graphical capabilities have gotten so much better, eccentricities of developers tend to put off the mass market. For example, western game makers turning their games into ‘brown’ with ‘space marines’ with ‘super realism’ is a massive turn off especially to the Japanese audience. But it goes the other way. The super cutesy cartoony style of Japanese games is a turn off to many Western gamers. One only has to look at Wind Waker to see this. And this is an issue a worldwide selling company like Nintendo is deeply wrestling with. How far should the art style go? How much is too cute?

There has been a trend for late SNES games to become more popular in age, far more popular than they ever were when they were released. Aside from Yoshi’s Island, I’ve noticed this heavily with Super Metroid. To many younger people, they think Super Metroid was this mega-hit when it was released. This wasn’t the case at all. The game quickly got overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country. To Metroid fans at the time, Super Metroid was seen as a disappointment. The game was WAY easier and lacked the ‘enigma’ and mysterious theme that the NES Metroid had. The enemies in Metroid were deadly and scary. In Super Metroid, they were a bore and only seemed to have the purpose of slowing down the player from Point A to Point B. However, the game was a triumph in how extremely atmospheric and moody it was.

As time passed, many tastes have changed in gamers. Today, NES games seem ‘extremely hard’ but they were considered ‘normal’ back then. A game like Super Metroid seeming ‘easy’ back in 1994 is now considered to be ‘just right’ difficulty. The extremely atmospheric and moody atmosphere was not as appreciated in 1994 but is valued more today.

I believe the trend for later generations to gravitate to the latter SNES games has little to do with the quality of those games but due to the mediocrity of modern gaming (and this includes Nintendo’s offerings on the Gamecube and N64). The move to 3d broke the core arcade gameplay line from the Atari to the Genesis/SNES in many genres like platformers.

I fully expect a younger person to gravitate to Super Mario World instead of the NES Super Mario Brothers games. Super Mario World is easier, is easier on the eyes, and not very demanding. But that doesn’t mean Super Mario World had a bigger impact than the previous Super Mario Brothers games because it didn’t.

I am not saying Yoshi’s Island is a bad game, I am trying to get people to stop re-writing history. Yoshi’s Island was no phenomenon. It didn’t make the market catch fire. In an alternate timeline, if Yoshi’s Island was slated for 1994 holiday release, we would be writing today how Sega won the 16-bit console war.

I dont know if youre a troll or just a fanboy, but I shouldnt have to email you if you’re not influencing too many people with your fallacy and your misleading opinions.

One fallacy was the myth of casual games and gamers:

“Just know this: there is no such thing as ‘Casual Market”

Have you even type in google about casual games Malstrom? Theres a casual market, I think you should know what casual games is:

“A casual game is a video game or online game targeted at or used by a mass audience of casual gamers. Casual games can have any type of gameplay, and fit in any genre. They are typically distinguished by their simple rules and lack of commitment required in contrast to more complex hardcore games.[1] They require no long-term time commitment or special skills to play, and there are comparatively low production and distribution costs for the producer. Casual games typically are played on a personal computer online in web browsers, although they now are starting to become popular on game consoles and mobile phones, too. Casual gaming demographics also vary greatly from those of traditional computer games, as the typical casual gamer is older [2] and more predominantly female,[3] with over 74% of those purchasing casual games being women.[4]“

Even wikipedia knows more than you. Is there anything in that definition about the Wii? That the term popularized because of the Wii?

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for much of anything let alone the business elements of the historically difficult-to-understand video game market.

The people who best understand Nintendo’s business would be the business people inside Nintendo. They have publicly said things. Why don’t you quote them? Why doesn’t anyone quote them? Why quote fictional nonsense from sites like Wikipedia where anyone can upload anything?

“It is a BS term made up by people who could not explain the spectacular Wii sales growth.”

Im laughing inside right now is the definition already proof to you? Or better yet search on the internet like google type casual games if you’re still lazy to research it I will link it to you:

http://www.google.com.ph/#hl=tl&source=hp&q=casual games&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=33afd0d9db30ca54

have you seen a link that mentions about the Wii? No. Most of these games are either web based, flash games or mobile phone games. Nothing or few mentioned about the Wii.

If you expect a ‘google search’ to prove a point, you are extremely deluded. Anything can pop up in a ‘google search’. If you google search ‘Malstrom is god’, does that mean the hits show that Malstrom is, in fact, god?

“Note that Nintendo never refers to ‘Casual Market’ or use that lingo. They use ‘Expanded Market’ which is likely from disruption vocabulary.”

I think you should do your research more Malstrom, what Nintendo did was expand the audience to all age demographics thats whats expanded market came from. Or you dont know whats the histroy of Playstation? Since you’re too lazy to research I’ll give a link to you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9TbVyNAWQI

The ‘video’ you showed was put together by ‘journalists’ and is full of myths. Sony did do some things very correct in the console market such as bringing on third party companies early (Nintendo did not do this) as well as flooding tons of software onto their console (Nintendo also did not do this because of the memory of too much software crashing the Atari 2600). Sony did these things because they were in entertainment in other mediums. Nintendo has already implemented these things which is why you saw so much third party software for the 3DS for example or why Wii outpaced the PS3, even in the early days, in the number of software titles available on it.

Sony used to be the poster-boy for disruptive innovation. Sony used the computer chip to disrupt music with the walkman, with their small radios, and in other areas as well. The rise of Japan also came from disruptive innovation as Japanese car makers disrupted American car industry in the 1980s.

The term ‘expanded audience’ comes from the business strategy of disruption as does the other term called ‘core audience’. It is also referred to in the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’. Nintendo is not talking ‘expanded audience’ in the stereotypical way most people do.

What I do not understand is why no one cites what Nintendo says when it comes to discussing Nintendo’s business strategy. Take a look at what Nintendo has said is their strategy, and you will not hear ‘casual marketplace’ at all.

Listen to Reggie explain the way how it is:

you should watch all of it even a executive of SONY says that theyre catering for 15-25 year old male demographic.

Exactly my point. This is why Sony was unable to expand the market. If you remove multiple console ownership and population growth, it is clear that the market has not expanded in terms of gaming popularity. Now that there are markets that have population decline, including recession, (such as Japan) Sony is unable to deal with it.

Why do you think Sony has seen only decline with the PS3? Why did the PSP fail outside Japan?

Everyone agrees that the Wii got many new gamers who did not previously own a last generation console. So the question becomes, “Where did all the PS2 gamers go?” They didn’t all go to the Xbox 360 or to the PS3. Perhaps gaming is in decline?

“Was the entire Atari generation a ‘casual market’? Did only ‘casuals’ buy the NES?”

No, not all of it but majority were. Did you research the best selling games on the NES? Most of them are casual games. Not most of them are not castlevania, double dragon, smash tv, contra, batman, etc… that you want to preach. Unless you mean that those best selling games on the NES was arcade gameplay? No. Theyre casual games. Nintendo at that time was catering for children at that time after all.

Did YOU research the best selling games on the NES? It is difficult to come to publicly known sales figures, so let us take this list with a grain of salt. http://www.listal.com/list/bestselling-nes-games

Are Zelda I and Zelda II ‘casual games’? Is Metroid a ‘casual game’? How about ‘Punch Out’? Is Dragon Quest a ‘casual game’? Is Kid Icarus a ‘casual game’? What about Final Fantasy?

What other types of games were the best sellers of the NES? According to this list, we have the usual Mario and other Nintendo games. We have Tetris and the Tetris clone games. But then look at all the NES sports games that were selling strongly on the system. If you notice, a couple of sports games are big sellers for the Wii (Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort) who the developers said they even took inspiration from the NES titles.

You say that the best selling games were not ‘arcade’ games. Let us look at the list. I see Hogan’s Alley which was an arcade game. I see literal arcade ports such as Ghosts and Goblins, Xevious, Donkey Kong, and Mario Brothers.

While Nintendo’s biggest group of players then were children, there were many adults who played. Who bought the Lolo game so that sequels were made? It wasn’t children. Who bought all the sports games? It wasn’t children.

The NES is very interesting in its history. I divide it into three phases. At the beginning, many adults were playing the NES who really liked the sports games. I know adults today in their fifties who played through Legend of Zelda on the NES. But NES games got longer and harder. The middle phase mostly had only kids and teenagers play. By the later phase, young girls began adopting the system. There is a reason why some of the last games being released for the NES were games based on Cinderella and other ‘girl’ properties.

When Nintendo moved to the Super Nintendo, they lost those older adults who bought the NES for the sports games and other titles. And to the N64 to Gamecube, Nintendo would keep losing prior customers. It was only with the Wii, with a nod to the NES Era type games, did many former Nintendo consumers come back with titles like Wii Sports to Mario 5.

About the atari yeah, most of the people buying ataris arent casuals theyre gamers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryQZ9ZBD4rE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om84Zc4-KcQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvec8Jvxq34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqJwWmzX7NU&feature=related

… but most of them were casuals. In fact, most of these commercials are catering to parents and kids, which composed of casual market today.

Most of Atari’s big hit games, like Space Invaders, were direct arcade ports. Unless you argue that ‘casual gaming’ is ‘arcade gaming’, then that would mean the ‘casual gamer’ plays games in dimly lit bars drinking adult beverages. Donkey Kong first appeared in a bar not in a children’s festival after all.

Unless farmville like you say was a arcade game and not a casual game which really the proper term for it then I cant help but feel sorry for you.

The alternative to arcade games at the time were computer games. Computer games had very different values than arcade games. Computer games had a larger input due to the keyboard and ‘save’ games due to the disk drive. Computer games could also be more time intensive because they were not competing in an arcade arena.

There is a difference between customers and users. Farmville has very, very few customers. It is not a game that is put on the shelf where people buy. It is a free online game where money is made from a very small group of people.

It is impossible to ‘buy’ Farmville. You can buy things inside the game, but not the game itself as it is free. I have to laugh when someone tries to compare a ‘free’ product to ones that you have to pay for.

“Mark how New Super Mario Brothers Wii sells insanely well today on the Wii. While it may be tempting to shove everything into a box that says ‘casual market’ on it, the truth of what is occurring is far more interesting.”

Because its a casual game?

Mario 5 is definitely about arcade values. Even the four player simultaneous multiplayer harkens back to the day where four people would surround a single arcade cabinet like Gauntlet or X-Men to play.

If Mario 5 was a ‘casual game’, then why does it have such a high degree of difficulty? Even Super Mario World and the original Super Mario Brothers were way easier than Mario 5.

And in conclusion, theres a reason why Nintendo lost the console war during the early 90s till 2006. Because Nintendo was too catered to parents and children demographic, which composed of casual gamers today. SEGA and SONY just seize the opportunity thats why the Genesis and Playstation was popular during those times. But in time, that demographic was dwindling so Nintendo have the opportunity to take back the gaming demographic again, whether casual or core. Unless your mind was half asleep when theyre announcing core games during their E3 conferences. And theyre at least announcing one FPS in each conferences.

E3 2006: COD 3, Red Steel
E3 2007: Medal of Honor Heroes 2
E3 2008: COD: WAW
E3 2009: The Conduit
E3 2010: Goldeneye 007

What you are saying makes no sense. If Nintendo lost the console wars because it was too busy catering to ‘casual gamers’, then how did Nintendo win today by catering to ‘casual gamers’?

The so-called ‘hardcore’ demographic you speak of is not dwindling at all in North America. Yet, the Wii was sold out for three years in North America. How did this happen?

You don’t have any answers. All you offer is stereotypes and broad generalities. You offer no business language to point to that says, “This is how it happened.”

One of the finer joys for me this generation is to point out that our hardcore gamers know very little about video games.

As you know readers, there is a Nintendo employee (very low ranking, probably above the janitor but we’re not sure) who is stuck in some very small corner office, wears a dunce hat, and is assigned to read this website. As he reads this site, he probably thrashes and screams at his misfortune. “Why?” he cries out wondering why he is being so punished by his superiors.

I am going to post this email twice. The first I have bolded certain parts for our particular Nintendo employee not to miss (we must help him, reader). And the second time I post it is where I respond to parts.

Let’s get started!

Hi.

Recently a friend of mine showed me this website, and after reading comments I made about what I was reading, he dubbed me a “Malstrom Gamer”. I admit that previously, I had not heard of you or your website, but reading articles here has been both informative and eye-opening. My acquaintance referred to me as what you call “the future of gaming”, i.e. I am someone who has grown so discontent with the “Industry” and its current status that I don’t play much anymore, and if I do, I go back to games that made me remember why I played them – old school Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid, etc. You know, the games that gave you a sense of accomplishment when you completed an objective or beat the game, instead of walking you step by step through them.

Now, I’ve read enough on your website to agree wholeheartedly with the “hardcore” aspect of gamers, and laughed quite a bit on the “hardcore games make soft gamers” article, because it’s true. All of my friends who play Call of Duty or other such games could never be bothered to play Super Mario Wii, yet me and my family of four have a blast with it – my four-year old has even figured out that if he can’t hack it in a level (which is quite often), he can bubble himself or ask me to carry him to the finish line. Amazing!

Years ago as a child, I was way into Mario and Mega Man games. Metroid was awesome, but at the time was a bit difficult for me, but I still played it. After largely ignoring the N64 and early PlayStation titles, Mega Man drew me back into the fray with Mega Man X5, because hey, the SNES MMX games were good, so why not give it a shot? What greeted me instead was fury-inducing gameplay that made me stop every few steps because there was some obstacle I would have had no clue how to get past unless I was given instructions. God forbid there be bottomless pits in games. But alas, it drew me back into the Mega Man fanbase for a time, and for lack of anything better to do with my free time, I played video games, and as far as Mega Man was concerned, I joined a staff of equally-interested people, eventually heading up operations for the Mega Man Network. But these days, a question lurks in my mind – were I not attached to said website, would I have devoted endless attention to it? Probably not. I likely would have never touched the Battle Network games, and I still have never finished any of the Legends games.

Metroid was another series I favored, and another that I chose to dabble in when it came to website administration. That project ultimately became the care of a more dedicated group of gamers after the runaway success of the Prime series. I thoroughly enjoyed Super Metroid, and when given the chance to download it over the Virtual Console, I leaped at it. Now, I see a game before me that hails itself as the successor to that game, and I am very skeptical. Admittedly, my disinterest in gaming prevented me from really learning much about it, but recently I have watched it with … concern, really. I made the mistake of harshly judging Metroid Prime before its release, and that led to a bet I lost because I ended up being a huge fan of it. I don’t want to do the same to Other M, but man, it’s hard. It doesn’t even seem to feel like Metroid, with this focus on humanizing Samus Aran. Last I checked, Samus was a shoot first, ask questions later, no nonsense, ass kicking heroine who was a friggin’ bounty hunter. Now we have to endure her maternal instincts that apparently resulted from her sparing a baby Metroid that’s only purpose was to craft a plot for Metroid 3? Somebody kill me now, please. My last beloved series is about to be put on the guillotine from what I can see, by someone who seems to think Metroid Prime was a mistake. This coming from the person who is responsible for Metroid Fusion, no less. Metroid is, I believe, suffering from the same thing that ultimately killed Mega Man for me – trying to do something with the series that wasn’t meant to be. In reference to Mega Man, I mean pokemon-izing the series and creating too much out of a little bot in blue underwear. Battle Network/Star Force, to me, symbolize the corporate evil that befell my blue hero, and while interesting, Mega Mans 9 and 10 haven’t really rekindled any feelings of hope.

Now, I won’t comment too much on Zelda, other than to say Zelda 1 was awesome, Link to the Past was great, and everything after that made me cry myself to sleep. Wind Waker bored me to tears, and I think I managed to turn into a wolf in Twilight Princess before putting that one aside. But it illustrates an alarming concept with the medium of games lately, and one that you’ve already stated in these pages before – games just don’t challenge anymore. 2D Mario is good, and it’s fun. Like I said, my wife and kids play NSMBWii like it’s the best thing since sliced bread, and I can’t tell you how hard I laughed the day I came home from work to find my wife huddled over a DS in the kitchen cursing at Koopas in World 8 of the first NSMB.

Anyway… there’s something about franchises I grew up with being massacred by today’s developers that hurts me at the core. I’ve mostly given up on Mega Man… I doubt he can be saved except through compilation sets – I hear the Zero Collection is pretty sweet, but God forbid a Battle Network Collection see the light of day. Mario is hard to screw with unless you make him go outside of his comfy 2D niche – wasn’t a huge fan of Mario 64, I haven’t played Galaxy, and I honestly see no reason to get Galaxy 2. That’s not to say, though, that I’m a 2D purist – Mario Kart and its subsequent incarnations have been great, Mega Man’s foray into RPG was at the very least successful in my book, and with perhaps the exception of Metroid Prime 3 (have a few complaints about that one), Samus Aran’s first-person adventures were incredible.

This is probably a major reason why my PS3, 360, and Wii library combined doesn’t top 25 games. It’s probably why my PS3 is more or less a Blu-ray player that occasionally plays games, and it’s probably why I dusted about a quarter-inch off of the 360 the other day. *sigh* I’d like to get back into gaming, but really, nothing these days really is grabbing my attention.

… Except, perhaps, the 3DS, and the new DKC. Those look rather promising. But I quirked my eyebrows at this Kinect thing, and PlayStation Move? I have a Wii for that.

This is a great email because it is well written, but more importantly you illuminate the despair the Old School gamer has and how no one wants to make games for us anymore. And it is not because we are ‘retro gamers’. It is that modern games are losing the tight crafted gameplay and magical world the classics had.

Now let us go through your email in more detail…

Hi.

Recently a friend of mine showed me this website, and after reading comments I made about what I was reading, he dubbed me a “Malstrom Gamer”. I admit that previously, I had not heard of you or your website, but reading articles here has been both informative and eye-opening. My acquaintance referred to me as what you call “the future of gaming”, i.e. I am someone who has grown so discontent with the “Industry” and its current status that I don’t play much anymore, and if I do, I go back to games that made me remember why I played them – old school Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid, etc. You know, the games that gave you a sense of accomplishment when you completed an objective or beat the game, instead of walking you step by step through them.

The ‘articles’ on the main site are YEARS old. Much has changed since 2007 and 2008. In this rapidly changing market, I’m pleased people get any value or entertainment from the years old articles. It is rare for anything on the Internet to be read after a few years.

You aren’t the only one who keeps playing the classics. Since there are no sales numbers that can show this activity, people like you have been invisible to the game companies.

Today’s gaming is so absurd they give out fake digital trophies, that do not exist, for doing something in the game. You know modern games have no feelings of accomplishment if they give out ‘fake trophies’.

The conventional wisdom is that many people do not play games like 3d Mario or even the modern Zeldas because “it is not accessible”. But I never found that to be the issue, and I don’t think you did either. The games got boring. They felt more bloated. Before, where the fire of the arcades were where new games were forged, video games were stimulative with neon lights and sound effects that made you think you were in a Vegas casino. Today, they are sedative. I keep getting the impression that the developers think computer animation is interesting. It isn’t. You know how annoying new movies are that are nothing but special effects? Awful. The rules of good movies haven’t changed in needing a good script, good directing, and good actors. Just because video games now have the power of more ‘special effects’ doesn’t mean the fundamentals have changed. The same fundamentals to make a good game in 1980 still exist thirty years later in 2010. It feels like modern games are relying on their computer animation to create the entertainment rather than relying on the fundamentals.

Now, I’ve read enough on your website to agree wholeheartedly with the “hardcore” aspect of gamers, and laughed quite a bit on the “hardcore games make soft gamers” article, because it’s true. All of my friends who play Call of Duty or other such games could never be bothered to play Super Mario Wii, yet me and my family of four have a blast with it – my four-year old has even figured out that if he can’t hack it in a level (which is quite often), he can bubble himself or ask me to carry him to the finish line. Amazing!

I bet most of those Call of Duty players you know play mostly that game or they are husbands who play it, alone, at night when the family has gone to sleep. If there is any such thing as the ‘casual gamer’, it would be the Call of Duty player.

“But Malstrom!” a reader argues. “That reverses the status quo! Are you to suggest the Call of Duty player may be the ‘casual gamer’ and the Wii Sports player to be more ‘hardcore’?” Perhaps. Wii Sports is a demanding game.

While you like Mario 5 because you enjoy it, it has even more value to you since your family can enjoy it, and you can play with your family. Now, isn’t this what gaming is about? Is it not families gathering around a television set? Imagine the magical memories your kids will grow up with. I’m sure when you were growing up, I bet you wished your parents would play games with you or that your family played games together.

Years ago as a child, I was way into Mario and Mega Man games. Metroid was awesome, but at the time was a bit difficult for me, but I still played it. After largely ignoring the N64 and early PlayStation titles, Mega Man drew me back into the fray with Mega Man X5, because hey, the SNES MMX games were good, so why not give it a shot? What greeted me instead was fury-inducing gameplay that made me stop every few steps because there was some obstacle I would have had no clue how to get past unless I was given instructions. God forbid there be bottomless pits in games. But alas, it drew me back into the Mega Man fanbase for a time, and for lack of anything better to do with my free time, I played video games, and as far as Mega Man was concerned, I joined a staff of equally-interested people, eventually heading up operations for the Mega Man Network. But these days, a question lurks in my mind – were I not attached to said website, would I have devoted endless attention to it? Probably not. I likely would have never touched the Battle Network games, and I still have never finished any of the Legends games.

The Mega Man series I fear has met its end. The last hope for this over-milked series was getting back to its roots. Capcom did this in part with Mega Man 9 and 10, but the games are designed to be the self-indulgence of the game developers. You can tell they are not trying to make the game for a mainstream audience. They are not trying to make Mega Man popular with gamers again. The only people who care a whit about Mega Man are those who grew up with it on the NES or the SNES with Mega Man X. And these people are getting older, have less time, and the generations following are not getting into Mega Man.

I suspect many Japanese developers know that their market is shrinking so since instead of fighting disinterest, they are saying, “Hell, let’s do whatever we want.” This is the opinion of most American newspaper editors these days as well.

Metroid was another series I favored, and another that I chose to dabble in when it came to website administration. That project ultimately became the care of a more dedicated group of gamers after the runaway success of the Prime series. I thoroughly enjoyed Super Metroid, and when given the chance to download it over the Virtual Console, I leaped at it. Now, I see a game before me that hails itself as the successor to that game, and I am very skeptical. Admittedly, my disinterest in gaming prevented me from really learning much about it, but recently I have watched it with … concern, really. I made the mistake of harshly judging Metroid Prime before its release, and that led to a bet I lost because I ended up being a huge fan of it. I don’t want to do the same to Other M, but man, it’s hard. It doesn’t even seem to feel like Metroid, with this focus on humanizing Samus Aran. Last I checked, Samus was a shoot first, ask questions later, no nonsense, ass kicking heroine who was a friggin’ bounty hunter. Now we have to endure her maternal instincts that apparently resulted from her sparing a baby Metroid that’s only purpose was to craft a plot for Metroid 3? Somebody kill me now, please. My last beloved series is about to be put on the guillotine from what I can see, by someone who seems to think Metroid Prime was a mistake. This coming from the person who is responsible for Metroid Fusion, no less. Metroid is, I believe, suffering from the same thing that ultimately killed Mega Man for me – trying to do something with the series that wasn’t meant to be. In reference to Mega Man, I mean pokemon-izing the series and creating too much out of a little bot in blue underwear. Battle Network/Star Force, to me, symbolize the corporate evil that befell my blue hero, and while interesting, Mega Mans 9 and 10 haven’t really rekindled any feelings of hope.

One of the reasons why I suspect elder game developers such as Miyamoto and even Sakamoto missed this ‘old school’ population is because they were never customers of their own games. Miyamoto has heard people tell him that he made their childhood, but how can he truly understand what that means? Miyamoto, as a kid, never opened a Christmas present under the tree that was a new Nintendo system that had a new Mario game. While talk during the 80s was how Mario was more well known than Mickey Mouse to children, the impact of this hasn’t really been absorbed. Or, at least, he may think it is the character of Mario people like. But it is not the character. It is a magical experience for the kid to get a new console and for it to have a Mario game. The Mario game was a fantastical wonderland which summed up what a brand new game console was to a little kid: a fantastical wonderland full of riches.

Children are not rulers of their world. They are told when to eat, when to sleep, and when to go to school. The child’s only true escape, where he can be free to explore, to experiment, to take risks is in the video game. In Super Mario Brothers, the child felt free. Now, it is natural for the child to grow older and put aside the video game to play the real games of life. But the grown adult will smile and return to these video games.

With Sakamoto, I don’t think he is interested at all in advancing Metroid. He seems more interested in making a name for himself. He wants to become a Miyamoto which is why he deliberately does things Miyamoto would not do (such as injecting story and ‘maternal instincts’).

Now, I won’t comment too much on Zelda, other than to say Zelda 1 was awesome, Link to the Past was great, and everything after that made me cry myself to sleep. Wind Waker bored me to tears, and I think I managed to turn into a wolf in Twilight Princess before putting that one aside. But it illustrates an alarming concept with the medium of games lately, and one that you’ve already stated in these pages before – games just don’t challenge anymore. 2D Mario is good, and it’s fun. Like I said, my wife and kids play NSMBWii like it’s the best thing since sliced bread, and I can’t tell you how hard I laughed the day I came home from work to find my wife huddled over a DS in the kitchen cursing at Koopas in World 8 of the first NSMB.

This is why I keep pointing to ‘arcade values’. Arcade games were very accessible and equally very challenging. The game being hard did not frustrate players. Arcade games had to be this way because the player could step two feet over to play their competitor’s game. And the game had to be challenging to attract quarters.

I would like to see Zelda ‘difficult’ again. Or, perhaps more appropriately, to have Zelda feel ‘dangerous’. “It is dangerous to go alone. Take this.” The first line from the first Zelda tell us how it is. The world is dangerous which is why you have a sword.

Link to the Past I remember being pretty easy compared to the previous NES Zelda games. However, it was still satisfying.

With Ocarina of time, a game I just put down the controller in the middle and walked away, it wasn’t the ‘difficulty’ that made me walk away (only in some instances is the game really ‘difficult’). It was the constant puzzles that dragged on that bored me.

Wind Waker was appealing only in the introduction trailer and the couple of times you were in Hyrule Castle under the sea. The story in the trailer about Hyrule being flooded was far more interesting than what Wind Waker was. The overworld was boring, but the sunken Hyrule seemed much more interesting.

Twilight Princess was extremely boring at the beginning. It did get better in the second half. I think the Temple of Time and Castle in the Sky were the high points. The last dungeon, Hyrule Castle, was very disappointing.

Zelda has seen some serious decline lately. Zelda also isn’t as cool as it used to be. Kids these days are not playing Zelda where they used to. Only old farts who grew up on Ocarina of Time or prior Zeldas are playing Zelda.

Anyway… there’s something about franchises I grew up with being massacred by today’s developers that hurts me at the core. I’ve mostly given up on Mega Man… I doubt he can be saved except through compilation sets – I hear the Zero Collection is pretty sweet, but God forbid a Battle Network Collection see the light of day. Mario is hard to screw with unless you make him go outside of his comfy 2D niche – wasn’t a huge fan of Mario 64, I haven’t played Galaxy, and I honestly see no reason to get Galaxy 2. That’s not to say, though, that I’m a 2D purist – Mario Kart and its subsequent incarnations have been great, Mega Man’s foray into RPG was at the very least successful in my book, and with perhaps the exception of Metroid Prime 3 (have a few complaints about that one), Samus Aran’s first-person adventures were incredible.

This is probably a major reason why my PS3, 360, and Wii library combined doesn’t top 25 games. It’s probably why my PS3 is more or less a Blu-ray player that occasionally plays games, and it’s probably why I dusted about a quarter-inch off of the 360 the other day. *sigh* I’d like to get back into gaming, but really, nothing these days really is grabbing my attention.

… Except, perhaps, the 3DS, and the new DKC. Those look rather promising. But I quirked my eyebrows at this Kinect thing, and PlayStation Move? I have a Wii for that.

Let me attempt to put into words something you feel.

When you were growing up, you would walk into a game store and feel overwhelmed. All these different types of games were available. You didn’t know which one to pick? You would feel very rich whenever you got a new game. Perhaps you rented games with glee. You never knew what you would discover. Even the very badly made games could be entertaining in some way. Video games used to feel rich with adventure.

Now, when you go to the game store, you become depressed. Your eyes glaze over all the titles, and you cannot find anything that remotely looks interesting. It is as if the magic is gone.

Games feel ‘soul-less’ today.

One thing is that when you were growing up, there was no ‘Game Industry’. The NES was a ‘fad’ which was going to crash, just like the Atari 2600 did, and all gaming would return to home computers. This is what the president of EA said at the time. Also, during the 16-bit generation there wasn’t much of an “Industry” either. But since then, the Industry has appeared.

The “Industry” makes games for the pleasure of the “Industry”. The “Industry” does not make games for us. These games feel as if they came from an assembly line. If there is one word that keeps coming to mind when playing modern games it is ‘artificial’. These games feel so incredibly artificial.

When I bought Mario 5, each day I would excitedly turn on my Wii to go to the next level, to the next world. When I finally beat the game, I was very happy. Then, a cold wave of depression hit me. As I turned off the game, I realized there was nothing else to stick in my Wii to create similar magic feelings. Back on the NES, we had not one Mario game but three of them. And there were games that were incredibly good such as Capcom’s Ducktales or Rescue Rangers or Little Nemo. There were great games to pop in from Contra to Double Dragon to Bubble Bobble to Life Force to Gradius to Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy to Zelda I to Zelda II and so on and so on. Nostalgia does color the lens, but Mario 5 is the first time, aside from playing Wii Sports the first time, that I had that ‘magical moment’ feeling. Nintendo had to have been shocked at all the Wii systems they sold when Mario 5 was released. What Nintendo didn’t realize is that gamers like us have been observing and waiting for ‘magical’ games to return.

We want to see Zelda become ‘magical’ again. We want to see all games become ‘magical’ again. It seems the obstacle to this is the “Industry” itself.

I try to resist walking into the fanboy fodder. I have outgrown the need to prove how smart I am on the internet thanks in part to your blogs about people being deluded into “playing analyst”, but at the back end of a work day waiting for my time to tick down, I decided to comment on a Gamespot article regarding Iwata blaming the industry as a whole for poor game quality and the slumping sales as a result. I found it amazing that so many posters were quick to mention that “it has been a banner year for game quality” based on reader and “game journalist” scores for games like SMG2 and GoW3.

The number of commentators citing game reviews as evidence that Iwata is wrong makes me think they can’t ALL be viral messengers (can they?). Some people actually believe it’s more important to get a high review score than to actually sell well. I know there’s no way to convince folks of the simple reality that sales = quality, but why do you think so many people are “stuck on stupid”?

This isn’t an issue where viral marketers would appear. Viral Marketers act as ‘shepherds’ on popular message forums or websites in order to corral opinion the way their company wants. Viral marketers appear at certain specific times such as during promotion of a company’s product or when that company’s product is released. For example, viral marketers were unleashed when ‘Natal’ was unveiled at E3 2009 as they declared how ‘amazing’ it was and tried to shepherd all other opinions about it. You could instantly spot the viral marketer when they would use language like ‘just imagine the possibilities!’ as in trying to shepherd other people to ‘use their imaginations’ to invest in Natal. What was really funny was that gamers did do this. They ‘used their imaginations’, and it got out of control. People began ‘imagining’ a brand new console successor to the Xbox 360 which, if it kept going on, people would begin to stop buying Xbox 360s  because ‘they read on the Internet that the Xbox 360 successor would come out with Natal’. Microsoft had to make some public comments, and they reigned in their little marketers. Their hype dog slipped its leash!

What benefit is there for a viral marketer to disagree with Iwata on this issue? Microsoft and Sony are focused on Kinect and Move and are using their marketing muscle for that. Also, due to lagging U.S. sales there is no debate from analysts that the market is not healthy.

Iwata has been saying this stuff for years. The only people who are ‘shocked’ by what Iwata said are those who have never paid attention to him in the first place. Due to population decline, Japan can only see long-term decline. Soon Europe and America will follow. The DS and Wii were designed to combat this decline by expanding the market.

Why are people stuck on stupid? It is because they know much that isn’t so. These commentators truly believe ‘hardcore gaming’ is what grows and makes the industry healthy. They believe “casual gaming” to be a fad and to go away. This is why you keep reading comments like “recession has hurt Nintendo the most!”.

The commentators hear Iwata’s words of “the industry is the problem” as to mean “the hardcore games are the problem”. This is why they are going bonkers. Our lovable and misguided hardcore gamers believe that hardcore gaming is ‘healthy’ and ‘proper’ gaming and everything else is ‘casual gaming’ and that ‘casual gaming’ is a fad.

I have emails from people new to my website who are enraged that I wrote “there is no such thing as ‘casual gamers’”. They have created a world-view that healthy gaming is ‘hardcore gaming’ and that what they perceive to be ‘casual gaming’ is a fad. Iwata’s statements are conflicting with their world-view.

The hardcore gamer has a choice. Either their world-view is wrong and Iwata is correct, or their world-view is correct and Iwata is just speaking nonsense. Since human nature tilts towards behavior that makes us believe we are ‘superior’, the choice is almost always that Iwata is a clown who doesn’t know what he is saying but the random commentator on the website truly understands the business of gaming.