My problem with Nintendo and the 'If it ain't broke' theory.
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No particular thoughts about Nintendo, but the biggest problem I have with games nowadays is that many of them don't incorporate failure as an option. Everytime you reload your quicksave or "lose a life", the game just goes on, maybe resets you to an earlier situation.
I'll take Mount & Blade:Warband as an example. If your army dies, you get captured, and eventually manage to free yourself, but you receive a definite penalty (money, equipment, people and time) for failure, and it changes your situation, rather than resetting it.
This has a huge impact on the way you tackle obstacles, compared to e.g. Skyrim.
I'll take Mount & Blade:Warband as an example. If your army dies, you get captured, and eventually manage to free yourself, but you receive a definite penalty (money, equipment, people and time) for failure, and it changes your situation, rather than resetting it.
This has a huge impact on the way you tackle obstacles, compared to e.g. Skyrim.
OK... Quick question.
How many companies even have that many IP's at all that have been around that long?
Most franchises don't change much, and judging by the arguments being used here, you're dismissing all Nintendo franchises as never changing while simultaniously pointing out equally trivial changes in long-running series made by others as though they're huge changes or improvements when they aren't that much more impressive than what you're complaining about.
You also seem to have completely failed to notice (as usual) all the 'little' IP's that have shown up along the way from Nintendo, or it's second party developers.
Probably because they don't end up being used the way Mario & Zelda are, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
(Pokemon is also less than 20 years old, just in case you've forgotten). But let's see...
The whole Mii business, about a dozen puzzle games of one kind or another,
Golden Sun (admittedly I don't know if it's fair to count a game made by camelot, which is an independent studio, but has their games published by Nintendo... But by that logic, Pokemon doesn't count either. But in a strict sense, neither does pretty much anything published by ÉA, Microsoft, Activision, or Sony... Remind me again where their dev teams come from)
pikmin (but you knew that one at least)
Animal Crossing
Advance wars
Well, in any event there are a lot more franchises than just Mario & Zelda, but they don't get much attention.
(Fire Emblem is huge in Japan though.)
How about F-zero, or starfox, when did you last see those mentioned?
Kirby? Well-known at least.
I mean, look at this list, it might surprise you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_published_by_Nintendo
I know the sheer volume of stuff on it (which I doubt is a complete list) is impressive, even considering a company that old...
How many companies even have that many IP's at all that have been around that long?
Most franchises don't change much, and judging by the arguments being used here, you're dismissing all Nintendo franchises as never changing while simultaniously pointing out equally trivial changes in long-running series made by others as though they're huge changes or improvements when they aren't that much more impressive than what you're complaining about.
You also seem to have completely failed to notice (as usual) all the 'little' IP's that have shown up along the way from Nintendo, or it's second party developers.
Probably because they don't end up being used the way Mario & Zelda are, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
(Pokemon is also less than 20 years old, just in case you've forgotten). But let's see...
The whole Mii business, about a dozen puzzle games of one kind or another,
Golden Sun (admittedly I don't know if it's fair to count a game made by camelot, which is an independent studio, but has their games published by Nintendo... But by that logic, Pokemon doesn't count either. But in a strict sense, neither does pretty much anything published by ÉA, Microsoft, Activision, or Sony... Remind me again where their dev teams come from)
pikmin (but you knew that one at least)
Animal Crossing
Advance wars
Well, in any event there are a lot more franchises than just Mario & Zelda, but they don't get much attention.
(Fire Emblem is huge in Japan though.)
How about F-zero, or starfox, when did you last see those mentioned?
Kirby? Well-known at least.
I mean, look at this list, it might surprise you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_published_by_Nintendo
I know the sheer volume of stuff on it (which I doubt is a complete list) is impressive, even considering a company that old...
That's exactly what I'm saying, you can't really say that Pokemon is changing it's formula in terms of story or level design or things like that, otherwise you wouldn't even be asking me if I mainly played single player (which I do, I don't have time to get into these things really competitively graduate courses tend to do that to one's life). Wouldn't it be rather different if instead of fighting the Team Rocket of the year you were one of them? What if in Black and White you WERE N? (I think that was his name) That's not what they care about in Pokemon though, they just add new pokemon and new moves, which affects the fighting and the competitive scene but never makes the game seem really all that different. They could if they wanted to (come on, playing as Team Rocket working your way up from grunt to the head of the operation would be amazing and you know it) but they never do.DigitalAtlas said:
And I think your second point is good reason for Nintendo to come up with some new IP and actually push it out there a little. Because that way no people are going to say that the prequel was better.
Your argument falls down in the fact that there were three (main) God of War games, and soon to be four. How many Mario platformers are there? And then you paint God of War with the generalization of killing mythological gods and monsters and then defend Smash Brothers with detail as fine as Wolf's weight class?Asita said:
Yes, we know that other companies do the same thing as Nintendo, but other companies also then move on to other IPs while Nintendo has done very little of that.
Yes. And if you apply that to anyone else in the industry, most of the big players start to look pretty flaky as well.Vivi22 said:
I mean, list the actual developers of most of the famous big-name games. Not the publishers, the developers.
No, being wholly owned by the publisher doesn't count. (Nintendo does technically own several developers it seems. Where is the line for instance between something like the various Nintendo EAD groups and HAL laboratory or Game Freak?)
I mean, does anyone even stop to think that Pokemon isn't strictly speaking developed by Nintendo?
And you could ask the same question about all the other large company.
Name a game developed by Microsoft or Sony. I don't mean published by them. I mean one they actually developed internally. (For extra credit, without having resorted to buying out a pre-existing company. - In which case I think you'll find that number drops off considerably)
How about EA?
Is it fair to say EA created the sims? Even though most if not all the people involved in creating it probably came from Maxis, which EA bought outright?
How about Call of Duty? Is that Activision, or, in fact, several different companies (principally Treyarch & Infinity ward) that Activision owns?
Does owning another company count?
In any event, even accounting for that it's still a longer list than most companies.
But... If you want to make that distinction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nintendo_games
Just make sure you know what your standards are before you ask these kinds of questions, and that you're judging everyone by the same standards if you compare companies.
(And that's implied in any being critical about how creative Nintendo is, since it kind of implies making a comparison to other companies...)
Guess what? They did.rob_simple said:
http://www.mariowiki.com/Super_Princess_Peach
It sold reasonably well but was "bombed" by critics for being too easy, as most Nintendo games are. All in all, it sold over 1 million units which isn't bad, it's just not great by Nintendo standards, which is probably why Peach is only the heroine in games like Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Tennis, Mario Super Strikers, Super Mario 2 & Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.
Peach is probably one of the most highly respected female characters in any game series. As the games evolved, so has Peach into less of a captured princess and more of a strong female in the unfortunate position of being the leader of a nation. Heck, in Paper Mario Peach actively tries to spy on Bowser to help poor, directionless Mario defeat the bosses and get to where he needs to go. All in all, I think Peach is awesome and breaks that mold you hate so much in her own way.
I'm sorry, but I you seem to be operating from the false assumption that video games are inherently about movie-like plots. Plot isn't the only way to create context for the game's goals. By disregarding the need for a coherent plot for each level--and the limitations thereof--the developers can instead focus their creativity on interesting (and wholly self-contained) environments, and populate them with creative challenges that put both the player's creativity and mastery of the game mechanics to the test.rob_simple said:
This design allows besting the challenges to become solely its own reward, rather than the means to an end that it usually ends up as in more cinematic games. Focusing on the star at the end of the challenge is losing sight of what playing the game is really about.
Thinking that this is the point of Super Mario Bros...
...means that you've missed the entire game.
DigitalAtlas said:
OT: I have no issue with the current state of gaming. The "rehashes" are just fine in my book. Then again, I have a loose definition of what constitutes "innovation".
What I take issue with is the many people populating these threads going on cherry picking which games they get to go in depth with, and which ones they break down to their base parts. Either make fair comparisons or don't bother. It just makes you look like a fanboy/hater, and your argument is just ignored.
I'll just let this guy make my argument for me.j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
As a side note (almost completely unrelated, so skip if not interested), I've said similar things about the FF series. Yes it's a long-running franchise, and yes they have recurring elements, but they manage to be incredibly varied from game to game.
Technically, they didn't make any of those. Xenoblde can be attributed to the wonderful people at Monolith Soft.penguindude42 said:
Man, my Pokecred is really coming under attack here. Yes, I have been to Bulbapedia and serebii, and I do indeed know about the spinoffs that they've done. To me, many of them seem like cheap cash-ins, Pokesnap and Hey you Pikachu being particularly blatant examples of this.Buretsu said:
I haven't personally played any of the spinoffs. They may have a couple of neat ideas but from what I've seen they play like completely different games that are skinned with the Pokemon brand. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly true that Nintendo is not relying on these games, they are quite simply not the core games and that's what would need to be changed for me to think of Nintendo as an innovative company. There are many things I think they could do that would be very successful (playing as Team Rocket, making a fully 3d game that takes some aspects of the Legend of Zelda games etc.) And the fact is that they never do those things.
Innovators take risks, they put out big ideas that have the chance to fail, and Nintendo doesn't do these things.
Now this is an overstatement.rob_simple said:
First of all, there are no Ridley fights in Metroid 2, Metroid Prime 2, or Metroid Prime Hunters. Big metroid fights only feature in Metroid 2, Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Other M (not counting Super Metroid because "having all your energy sucked out" hardly constitutes a fight).
There are even occasions where some powers are retained from game to game. For example, the Long Beam obtained in the first game is never lost, the Charge Beam is frequently retained, and in Metroid 2, Metroid Prime 3, and Metroid Prime Hunters, several other powers are available at the beginning of the game and never lost.
All told, only 2/3 of the games in the franchise feature Ridley, about 1/2 feature boss-level metroids, 2/3 feature loss of all powers (minus the Long Beam, of course), and only 3 games in the entire franchise (Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion and Metroid Other M) feature all three.
All games need to have some threads linking their games (the ones about that character) together. LOZ games for example All (at least the ones I played) at some degree have dungeons, collectable, and/or mini games. If you had Link in space and his job is to defeat an Allen race, it wouldn't really fit in and be more of a game with Link in it rather than Another LOZ game.
For me I'm tired of Nintendo Making LOZ, Metroid, and Mario games. They made so many that there losing originally is almost (if not all) gone. Games have to be different enough to grab our interest, and similar enough for us to associate them with another of the same kind.
The games are somewhat the same but the real issue is that there is too much of them, and for a lot of people (including me) they are getting old fast.
For me I'm tired of Nintendo Making LOZ, Metroid, and Mario games. They made so many that there losing originally is almost (if not all) gone. Games have to be different enough to grab our interest, and similar enough for us to associate them with another of the same kind.
The games are somewhat the same but the real issue is that there is too much of them, and for a lot of people (including me) they are getting old fast.