Veldt Falsetto said:
I hear alot of talk about Nintendo not trying anything new and just releasing the same thing each year but I had a little think and I think it's a stupid thing to say.
Look at Mario for example, hes been in almost every genre going and they keep doing new things with him, yeah Galaxy was a platformer but it's different to anything before it.
Has everyone forgotten what the Metroid series was like before Prime?
What about Pokemon, it's not always an RPG, it's been a photography game, a turn based beat em up, dungeon trawler, racer, even some form of weird tv game in Pokemon Channel
Starfox went through a bunch of genre changes on Gamecube and even on DS
DK has been a music game and a racer
Kirby had his own racing game
Even Zelda has been played around with a little during it's time, Majora's Mask was pretty different, Tingle got an RPG
If you want new franchises we got Pikmin last gen and there are a few great 3rd party titles on the Wii
I think Nintendo gets too much stick, especially considering Microsoft don't make games at all and Sony itself makes very few
Activision and EA more or less bring out the same games every year, no one complained at the lack of changes in CoD 6
What does everyone think, given all this, are we too hard on them or should we crack down on other developers that are worse than Nintendo?
The problem with some of these examples is that you are moving from 2D to 3D, of course the game is going to change. Yea metroid was a 2D shooter before prime, what else would it have been? The same with Mario, still a platformer, just a shift from 2D-3D. The only real successful deviations from this is the RPG versions, but even these are really just copypasted since the first.
A bit confused about the pokemon thing...the first game was a RPG/Dungeon/Turnbased combat...how has this changed besides a few small minor changes? You can play pokemon red/blue and you can get damn near the same experience.
Starfox...yea his change didn't work, most people consider his gamecube experience to be terrible. I haven't tried the DS one.
Kirby: Same game (I'll get into racers further down.)
Zelda: In my opinion it is the same rehash, with just some other element thrown in. You go to dungeons, get mostly the same weaponry. Majora's Mask threw in masks (even then only like 3of them had any real game changing aspects) and a time limit, just like light/dark in the last game.
I give DK some credit. It when from him tossing barrels down at mario. To his own adventure. Then to a platformer.
Racers: Every other twat gets a racer, the only real one that has stood trials is Mario Kart, the rest are bleh. Hell crash bandicoot, sonic, and other characters have gotten racers, not really a change to the series. They aren't really an involvement in the series and have pretty much 0 impact. It is just a side thing. In terms of music games and the sports games, nintendo just slaps their characters on various sports games, and a lot of them suck, or are just ways of making cash.
Nintendo doesn't like to go outside the formula that works, and while the general phrase "if it isn't broken don't fix it" usually applies, why should anyone want to play essentially the same thing over and over. People want some sort of evolution in a game when it is applicable. Yes games like Call of Duty or Sports games don't evolve that much. But take a second and think why this is. Is it a case of not broken so don't fix it? I think not. Instead there really isn't that much room for change. Football is football, a "realistic" shooter is just that. They are constricted by reality, you can't all of a sudden have a baseball player pull out a glock while he is running towards first shoot the firstbase man in the head, round towards second a melee the 2nd baseman, people would be like WTF?!. The same with COD, you can't all of a sudden make a realistic shooter have people riding rockets around and shooting each other with lasers.
But Nintendo's universe is a fantasy based universe, there is lots of ways to expand.
Also if you want to talk about things like EA having little evolution, look at the Mario Party series, a huge offender of just being cranked out over and over for cash.
In terms of Microsoft/ Sony not releasing too many games.
I was under the impression that MS owns companies that releases games, ie it owned Bungie and Rare.
Also, you have to consider that Sony and MS entered the game at a different stage of the game. Nintendo came in before third party developers really existed. Nintendo had the time to build its empire as both a system and game developer.
Some of my personal spite is that as a kid who has grown up with games, I and other players want our beloved characters to grow with us. Instead Nintendo characters have really become fairly static. Events that happen in one game really don't effect the other. Whereas now for other companies we get a trilogy of games bond to those characters and see their lives progress, hopefully to some sort of satisfying ending.
That and I feel awkward with Nintedo's consoles as of the last gen. The gamecube had a fairly small catalog of good games, and even then most places didn't carry a lot of them. Hell, I worked in a Best Buy and a Gamestop during the GC era, both had like 1 shelf or half a shelf for gamecube while Xbox and Ps2 had an aisle.
Nintendo also feels very gimicky, it feels less and less of a game company than creating some sort of niche experience. Great if it works but it feels like more like a toy or gadget than a console.
