Hypercritical: Nintendo in Crisis

Siracusa on Nintendo’s current woes:

Nintendo needs to do what Nintendo does best: create amazing combinations of hardware and software. That’s what has saved the company in the past, and it’s the only thing that will ensure its future.

via Hypercritical: Nintendo in Crisis.

I hope Nintendo survives, I really do. I’m not convinced that them producing iOS versions of their most popular games (or even bespoke iOS games) is the path to salvation – I’d much rather see them survive in the vein that John Siracusa mentions above.

For a long while I was a Sega man. I yearned for a Master System when I was young, and having finally got my hands on one for my (10th, 11th?) birthday, me and it were inseparable. I played the hell out of that console. Everything from Italia ’90 to Wonderboy III, from Alex Kidd in Miracle World to Shinobi, I just couldn’t get enough of it. I remember my Dad watching me play Hang-On and commenting on it being so realistic – after coming from a green-screen Amstrad CPC6128, it was as though we were watching real motorbike racing on the TV.

However, as much as I loved my Master System, my friend James had a NES. Outwardly, I liked to mock his blocky, boxy console, compared to my contoured, sloped beast. Inwardly, however, I was crazy jealous of his games: Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda. The list went on. Sure, Wonderboy III was good but c’mon, Super. Mario. Bros.

Eventually, I gave in to the Sega marketing machine and persuaded my parents to allow me to trade up my Master System and raft of games for a Mega Drive. Woah. The Mega Drive was a different beast entirely. An altered beast, if you will. The graphics, the music, the game complexity, all light years ahead of its little 8-bit predecessor. I spent what seemed like years playing that puppy. I couldn’t get enough of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Street Fighter II series, every Madden game, the EA NHL series, Castle of Illusion, and probably a thousand others I’m forgetting. It was around this time that I started buying all the associated magazines, too, like C&VG and Mean Machines, and pored over their pages for the latest rumblings about upcoming games and systems from the Far East, a mythical land that got all the best stuff years before we Westerners did. I remember calling up some of the advertisers in these mags to get a grey import of a certain game that wasn’t out in the UK at the time (the region lock on the Mega Drive was that each region had a differently shaped cartridge, a fiendish system that could only be overcome by removing the corresponding piece of moulded plastic within the console’s cartridge slot), and being simultaneously thrilled and petrified. Thrilled at the thought of getting an awesome new game, petrified that I, an early teenager, had to actually talk to someone on the phone.

But I wanted more. So I went big and, as it turned out, I went wrong. I carried on believing the Sega marketing, and managed to find the cash required for a grey import Mega CD. Oh dear. The only game I managed to afford for it was Earnest Evans, which turned out to me a mediocre Castlevania rip off with a ridiculous soundtrack, and even more ridiculous animated cut scenes. Not cool. The prospects for future Mega CD games didn’t look too hot, either. What to do, what to do…

So one Saturday morning, Dad and I set off in the car for a video game shop in Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire, the name of which unfortunately escapes me. With us, we had my beloved Mega Drive, my not-so-beloved Mega CD and the plethora of games for the Mega Drive that I’d accrued over the years. I’d found out that this video game shop would entertain part exchanges and, after countless hours hand-wringing and perusing of the video game magazines, I’d decided to cash in my chips and get a Super NES. Yup, I’d decided to switch my allegiances and, at the end of the day, it was all down to one game: Super Mario World. I’d read and reread the reviews of it when it came out, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. I cursed it and cursed it for being on a competing system, especially when I (or, more accurately, my parents) had invested so heavily in Sega kit. But I longed for it, and when I was wavering whilst deciding whether to dump my Sega systems, it was the thought of Super Mario World that swung it for me. Oh, the colours, Yoshi, the cape, everything about it seemed perfect to my eyes. The SNES controller, with all those colours and buttons, was the Super Mario controller (well, it was the 2D Super Mario controller; the N64 controller became the 3D Super Mario controller). So on that Saturday, on the way back from Goldthorpe with my new console and a copy of Super Mario World, I was like a pig in shit. Needless to say, I played the living hell out of that game, as I did with any others I could get my hands on. F-Zero, Pilotwings, Super Mario Kart, 4-player Super Bomberman and many more.

And that was the start of my Nintendo love. I followed up the SNES with a Nintendo 64 a few years later, after playing about 10 minutes of Super Mario 64 on my then-girlfriend’s family’s N64 and becoming instantly hooked. Super Mario 64 was the epitome of a company marrying hardware and software beautifully to create a near-perfect video game. Siracusa comments on this in the aforelinked post, too. Whilst in recent years I’ve dallied with Playstations 2 and 3 for “serious” gaming, I’ve also had a Nintendo DS, DS Lite, 3DS XL and Wii for “casual” gaming (I somehow missed out on the Gamecube, and don’t have any real desire for a Wii U. Yet.) And I’ve probably had more enjoyment out of the casual consoles than I have out of the grown-up Playstations.

So yes, I want to see Nintendo survive, and survive through creating killer new hardware and first-party software combos that show the big, serious boys at Microsoft and Sony how to do it, rather than dilute the brand by releasing their franchises on iOS or Android. It may be wishful thinking but, as Siracusa points out, if casual gaming isn’t going away, this is what Nintendo might have to do to survive.