Thoughts on Nintendo

I've been posting a lot of small shit lately, I'll try to avoid that.

I started gaming with Nintendo, most of us started with the the NES I'm sure, i was pretty young so i don't remember how often i played ours, but i do remember that i was never very interested in it. Also i never thought to ask for new games, we had a fairly large collection of NES games and i think by the time i was old enough to actually hold the controller the SNES had hit the market (which I had no knowledge of) so there were no TV ads or anything for new games (i knew nothing of Nintendo Power). When i played a game it was "the ninja game" (Ninja Gaiden) or "the castle game" (Prince of Persia). Also, my brother was never interested in RPGs or adventure games so i had no idea that there were games like Final Fantasy or The Legend of Zelda.

No the moment it finally hit me was the first time I played Super Mario 64. Yes, like many gamers before me my first real game was a Mario game. Instead of his debut on the NES in 2 dimensions, setting the course for the platform genre, I started with Mario's debut into 3 dimensions, setting the course for what Gamespot said: "If Mario 64 is even a rough indication of what's to be expected from Nintendo, or from games in general, then we just might have a revolution of sorts in our very hands."

So yeah, i certainly got to be apart of a "revolution" of sorts, not just with the move to 3 dimensions, but my own discovery's of types of games i never knew existed. For example, my first Legend of Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, which got a perfect 10 from Gamespot. That doesn't happen often.

I really don't remember the NES very well, so one thing i got to experience with the N64 that many older gamers didn't was that sense of wonder on how the machine did what it did. I was 12 at the time of the 64s release, so i had no concept of the pixel.

Older gamers started with this:

I started with this:
The Nintendo 64 washed all the 2 dimensional pixels that made up the textures into a blur, so when you played it on a standard definition television you had no clue that you were staring at a bunch of square pixels.

I would only get one game a year from the $100 i got for my birthday so i would have to do a lot of research into what game i would buy. When i finally got my hands on a fresh new game my hands would shake, I would definitely finish every game i had to 100% completion. I still remember the first time i bought a game where i didn't get that rush anymore.

The Wii is kind of weird for me. I've played 3 games that have REALLY stood out to me on the console so far: No More Heroes, Super Mario Galaxy, and Metroid Prime 3. I've owned a fourth game The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princes for some time, it's the first Zelda game i've never completed and have no plans to complete in the future. I missed the GameCube in favor of the X-box, so i've missed out on a generation of Nintendo games (i did have a Gameboy Advanced however). That's why it's been kind of surprising for me, i had forgotten how long it takes for Nintendo to release games.

Generally it is Nintendo that carries their system, it's rare that a 3rd party releases anything onto a Nintendo console that is worth playing, so you can go for long periods of time
before you are playing a "AAA" title. I had forgotten about that.

Mario Kart Wii comes out tomorrow, i played Mario Kart DS and every other Mario Kart (with the exception of the Gamecube Double Dash game), so i know what to expect with this one. I know i don't need to play it. So what is Nintendo's next big project?

The Balance Board, being bundled with Wii Fit. I really think this thing is going to be huge, I'm sure Nintendo will market the hell out of it. I'm not even a little interested in it. There have been suggestions that you could make some cool games with this thing. Perhaps have a boxing game where the two controllers are your boxing gloves and you move with the balance board, but that will never happen. Peripherals never go far on consoles.

The reason i think this thing will sell well is because people are willing to buy a console for an experience. Some people bought a Playstation 2 simply to play Guitar Hero, they wanted to have a specific experience, in order to have that experience they needed a Playstation. They will never buy another game for their Playstation, so it's proven that this model works.

The Wii has sold over 24.45 million units (as of March 31, 2008). I'm sure Wii Sports was a good contributor to this.
Nintendo really hit the nail on the head with the Wii, they actually tapped into this casual market and made millions of dollars off of it, something i thought they would fail to do.
People will love this thing.

It's too bad it's aimed at a completely different crowd because the hard core gamers all feel like they are getting phased out by Nintendo. Still, i don't think Nintendo minds.