There’s something missing from gaming today. I’ve been feeling it for a while now, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is exactly. It’s certainly nothing totally debilitating for the gaming experience or I wouldn’t keep buying games, and I definitely wouldn’t identify myself as a gamer, but there are still times that I feel a disconnect between myself and what I’m playing. I’m not really sure how to fix it, but the first step to recovery is acceptance, right?
Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985, and since that fateful year, Mario has become world-renowned for his contributions to the gaming industry. This year marks the 25th anniversary since that original release, and it’s impossible to argue that gaming hasn’t made leaps and bounds both technologically and in terms of gameplay since then. 3D graphics are now the standard, games are lasting 20+ hours are a dime a dozen, and character description as well as character dialogue are often extensive and involved, especially in today’s role-playing games. Games have come so far as both an entertainment and even an artistic medium, yet somehow Nintendo can release games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a 2D platformer and essentially sister game to the original Super Mario Bros., to more commercial success than you can shake a stick at. I refuse to believe that a simple graphics update with some new gimmicky features and a four-person multiplayer is enough to make it a brand new, original gaming experience. But it’s this realization that has shown me what’s wrong with gaming today, and unfortunately, I find Nintendo to be one of the main culprits of it simply because they’ve been around the longest.
You see it all around you today—decades-old series being milked to death by a corporation that purports to specialize in “fun.” That’s not to say that games today aren’t fun—I thought Super Mario Galaxy was a beautiful game despite the fact that 3D Mario hasn’t been new, aside from random features original to each game (like Sunshine’s FLUDD and Galaxy’s whole space thing), since 1996—but there are some things that superior graphics can’t replicate. Over the years I’ve watched some of my favorite Nintendo franchises fall to the warriors of mediocrity all while graphics were improving like nobody’s business. The Star Fox series hasn’t been good since SF64 (not to mention Miyamoto hasn’t even touched the series since the release of the Wii, hopefully because he’s realized what an abomination it’s become), Banjo-Kazooie’s recent incarnation on the Xbox 360 was garbage (though that was Rare’s fault, not Nintendo’s), and even Pokémon, one of my favorite franchises in the world, is showing its age.
It’s sad to see. You know there’s something wrong when you’d much rather play Super Mario Bros. than something new, and what’s even sadder is that I think either Nintendo realizes that and would just rather release it again as New Super Mario Bros. Wii, or it’s just another attempt to milk the franchise dry. Besides that though, I think its representative of a different problem, and that is that Nintendo seems perfectly content to simply recycle its constituency. In its infancy, Nintendo was committed to its demographic, but by now, “old-timers” like me can be easily shuffled away for the prospect of hordes of youngsters. While I’m starting to get tired of being a ten-year-old kid starting off from the generic “Pallet Town” with a Fire-, Water-, or Grass-type Pokémon on my journey to become the greatest Pokémon Master of all time because I’ve been doing it since ’98, my baby sister thinks Pokémon Gold Version is the bee’s knees and doesn’t even know where Pallet Town is. But Nintendo doesn’t seem to care. They’d rather just release a new version with “updates” consisting of new Pokémon and some new berry minigame than actually modify the gameplay in any really tangible way.
In a way you could say that’s perfectly alright since people are just going to keep having babies and fueling Nintendo with the consumer base that they seem to be looking for, but what they don’t seem to realize is that every older fan they piss off might simply decide to head over to Microsoft or Sony. That’s business lost. I’m not saying that Nintendo has to develop the next Halo or Metal Gear, because the “kiddie games” they make are their MO and what attracted many of their older fans in the first place. Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Kirby, Pokémon—these are all series that people love, regardless of age. But they’re not getting the attention or updates they deserve. Between that and the fact that the top-selling Wii games are Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit, I’ve got a bit of a beef with Nintendo right now.
In conclusion, there’s a reason that many franchises had what fans consider their best titles on the Nintendo 64. Star Fox 64, Harvest Moon 64, Pokémon’s second-gen 3D incarnation Pokémon Stadium 2—the list goes on. And there’s a simple reason for that. At that point in time, I truly believe Nintendo, not to mention the gaming industry in general, was committed to developing and publishing both new and quality software for its consumers. Gaming was moving into the 3D realm, and as such everything could be painted on a fresh canvas. Things aren’t the same anymore. The Wii’s had a lot of success with its motion controls, and that’s never something that I’ll attack, but the software for that interface—namely titles like Wii Sports and Wii Fit, games designed with my grandmother in mind—are targeted at a much different consumer base, namely very young children who don’t know Link from a hole in the ground and retirees who need some kind of loose physical activity but whose joints are too arthritic to take the plunge outside. Everyone in between, which sadly consists of some of Nintendo’s most diehard fans, are being overlooked, and not only does that disappoint us, but it also loses Mario and Co. business.
Remember, Miyamoto: The first step is acceptance. God knows you’ve been in denial for the past three years, but I think it’s about time you snapped out of it and gave something new.
