So Miyamoto was just named is the #1 game creator of all time, and I have to agree.  Miyamoto and Nintendo created some of most memorable characters from my childhood not to mention some of the best gaming franchises in history (Zelda, Mario, Metriod—not Miyamoto, but Nintendo none-the-less).  Then I started to wonder what the hell happened to Nintendo?  They still make great games (Mario Galaxy was fantastic), but it seems to me they are much less of an innovator recently.

Now, the Wii is a huge success and I love Wii Sports (my wife and I bowl all the damn time) and while I don’t think Wii fit is all that, you can’t argue that Nintendo is innovating for a broader audience.  But like most people that visit this site, we are not the broader audience.  And it seems to me that for the hardcore, die-hard Nintendo fans, Nintendo really hasn’t innovated in quite a long time.

During the NES and SNES days, every Nintendo release managed to set the bar higher for a particular genre (Mario-platform, Zelda-Adventure,  Metriod-action/adventure, F-Zero-racing, etc…).   During the N64 era, Nintendo showed the rest of the world how to do 3-D platforming with Mario 64, and 3-D adventure games with Zelda:  Ocarina of Time—hell they even came up with the target lock system.  But during the Gamecube era, I feel like they started to slip.

Now, platforming after Mario 64 basically stuck to the “enter a work and collect a bunch of crap to pass the level” paradigm and early in the PS2 lifecycle, we saw the same kind of stuff.  Jak and Daxter, while a great game, still stuck to the same formula developed by Nintendo.  By this time though, I was getting sick and tired of the collect-a-thons, and thought that I had to wait for Mario Sunshine to experience the next generation of 3-D platforming.  Instead of getting a game that redefined a genre, what I got was a game that seemed like a rehash of an old game and an old, tired formula.  Worse of all, the game seemed to lack a level of polish that I usually associated with Nintedo games.

While Nintendo stuck with the old Mario formula, other companies decided to take the reigns of the platform genre and advance it.  Jak 2 brought in more of an open world aspect as well as a more action heavy combat system.  Insomniac games gave us Ratchet and Clank and brought upgradable weapons to the 3-D platformer fold.  Now as much as I love Mario, I have to say that I think that the real innovation in the platform world during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation came from Naughty Dog and Insomniac games.  Then of course came Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto III, which can be considered the evolution of the platform genre.

Well, so Nintendo didn’t innovate with the 3-D platformer, so what?  Didn’t mean necessarily the Big N’ had lost it—we still had the next Zelda to blow us away.  While I did like the Wind Waker and it’s art style, it seemed like a prettier version of Ocarina of Time.  The game mechanics were almost exactly the same. It had very similar special weapons, similar puzzles and dungeon themes—all that, and they tacked on a needless fetch quest at the end of the game.  Did Wind Waker innovate or was it more of the same?

Now lets look at Twilight Princess.  Other than some of the motion controls (which were tacked on to make it a Wii release), did this game to ANYTHING different any the 3 prior Zelda games before it?  During the entire time I was playing the game, I kept having this “I’ve done this before” feeling.  Now even bad Zelda is still good, I started wonder how many times can I use the Boomerang?  How many times have I used the Hookshot.   Let me see, I guess this sidequest will reward me with a heart container.  Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game that made me think that the Zelda formula was getting a bit stale.

So not only was Nintendo not innovating in the genres it dominated in the past, but it seemed like it was in a different era all together.  In this day of DVD/Blu-Ray storage, Nintendo still sticks with MIDI.  Nintendo’s FMV efforts are laughable.  And their reluctance against voice acting makes their games seem dated, not to mention their horrible on-line implementation.  Now were getting Wii-makes of old gamecube games with tacked motion controls.  Now I’m really looking forward to the new Punch-Out !!, but with the news that it will also utilize “classic” controls, I'm wondering how much innovation can possibly be in this game?  Animal Crossing:  City Folk didn’t have much change from a DS game, Smash Bros. Brawl really wasn’t that different from Melee.  What’s happening? 

Now I know Nintendo is making money hand-over-fist now, but that not the point.  As a long time Nintendo fan, Nintendo games used to mean the best production values, the best game design, and the most innovative products.  Now it seems like Nintendo makes fun games that could have been so much better with a bit more innovation and production budget. 

I don’t know.  I could be crazy.  I could be wrong.  Nintendo did make Metriod Prime, and Pikmen, but that was still last-gen.  What have they done for us recently?  Well, whatever they do, I’ll still probably buy it, but man, I really hope some of the future products manages to recapture that old magic (Zelda—I’m looking at you).

Wow, this game is good.  I haven't play a DQ since I and II on the NES, but I have to say I'm having a lot of fun.  Of course, to enjoy this game you have to 1) enjoy grinding, 2) not mind random encounters, 3) like old School JRPG.  Fortunately for me, I fall into all 3 categories.  

First of all, I love the graphics.  The anime inspired cell shaded graphic a beautiful, and goes to show how art style can triumph over technology.  In fact, I would love it if the next Zelda game would stylized cell-shaded graphics like this game.  Now I'm not talking about the Wind Waker, but a style inspired by the Zelda I/Zelda II instruction manual from the NES days.  Here's what I'm talking about

Man, try and tell me a Zelda game that looked like the screen above wouldn't kick ass?  Here's hoping.

Well, just played the demos for Riddick, Wanted and Wheelman and here are some impressions.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/

I been thinking about fanboys for a bit and started to wonder what motivates them?  Now I know that people’s definition of fanboy is different, but I consider a fanboy as someone who blindly defends one company while at the same time totally disregards a rival company despite the quality of their products.  

Now as a kid, I grew up a total Nintendo fanboy.  I loved the NES, and bought everything Nintendo.  Of course, this also meant that I hated all things Sega, and totally wrote off the TurboGrafx-16.  This was great for the NES era, because, uh, well—Nintendo did no wrong.   Nintendo’s light gun was cooler than Sega’s light gun, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy was better than Phantasy Star, Mario and Zelda were better than practically everything—done, end of story.  This continued through the 16-bit area for me as well.

It was only during the N64 era did my fanboyism start to falter.  I was defending Nintendo’s decision to stick with carts instead of CD’s saying things like “carts are faster”, “Nintendo has this crazy compression thing going so they can put a CD game onto a cart”, “developers don’t need the space of a CD anyway”—then Final Fantasy VII was announced for the PS1 and I was shocked.  I was so mad I e-mailed Nintendo asking how they could let this happen.  The summer before FFVII came out, I had a summer job a reluctantly decided to get a PS1 to prepare for the launch of FFVII.  I initially felt dirty—how could I get a non-Nintendo console?  But after a bit, I started to come around.  Resident evil was fun, Castlevania:  Symphony of the Night was fantastic, Metal Gear Solid was awesome, and of course FFVII kicked ass.  While I loved my N64, I was really appreciating having multi-consoles.  I no longer had to take sides.

The next generation, I was out of college and was making some money, and I started to branch out.  I got the Dreamcast, then the PS2, then the Gamecube, and even got an X-Box.  I was living the dream. 

This gen, I have all 3 systems, and love them all for their strengths and weaknesses.  Now today with the Internet and the message boards, it seems like the console war is as heated as it’s ever been.  A person who has a 360 bashes the PS3.  PS3 fanboys apparently hate Halo and FPS’s.  Wii users….well, they are saying some of the crazy things I was saying about the N64:  “well, the Revolution doesn’t have to do 720p like the 360, so games will look the same on a SD TV”, “You can’t tell the difference between a Wii game and a 360 game on a SD TV anyway”, “Nintendo is making Mature games now—for the hardcore”. 

I think that this blind loyalty to a single console and whatever games they have stems from the fact that gaming is expensive and most kids can only afford one console.  I mean $200 for an entry level 360 is still a lot for a kid.  So I can understand why they are trying to validate their purchase by undermining the competition—because the worst thing would be to spend all this money, and have your console fail (like the TG-16, or Jaguar, or..sigh…Dreamcast).  This would mean, of course, that the people who are the blind fanboys screaming how IGN is getting paid by Micro$oft, or Sony is buying Killzone 2 reviews, or everyone is teh biased against Nintendo is a single console owner.  This also assumes that crazy fanboys are a bit younger and can’t afford to go multi-console.  I wonder if this is true?  I have no data to back up this claim—I’m just keyboarding here.  Is fanboyism rooted in an economic divide, and not just brand loyalty and nostalgia?  Are people with multiple consoles still as defensive of their PS3 as a dude with ONLY as PS3?  Now that I’m a bit older and working/making money—I really couldn’t care about the console war.  I just want great games for any system, and if I really need a game (I’m looking at you Metal Gear Solid 4), I’ll get the system.  But if I still needed my parents to supply me with my gaming fix, I would probably only have one expensive as hell system and would be defending it to my last breath.

Perhaps only when the different consoles are all bargain bin prices and we're all rich thanks to the new Obama'ized economy will we have internet peace...that is until you go on a movies forum.

Yo guys.  Love the site.  Anyway, for the past few months I've been getting into "old" games.  By "old", I mean games that came out like, last year or so.  And I have to say--I'm loving it.  While I have plowed through some newer games like Prince of Persia, and Gears 2, I found the most fun I'm having is with good games that I missed the first time around.  I finally went through God of War 2--verdict:  Great Game!!!  I can't wait for GOW 3 for the old PS3 to come out.  Orange box for the 360--man, I loved Half life 2, and just never got around to this game when it came out and man, it is really terrific.  Burnout Paradise:  as a long time Burnout fan, I wasn't too interested in the "open world" thing, and the lack of a event restart made this game a "no buy", but after they put out the event restart patch, I caved--helped that the game was 20 bones.  Anyway, love the game.  Crashing through gates/billboards is more fun than I thought I would be, love the road rage mode, the races kind of piss me off (keep going the wrong way), but damn, the game is addictive.  Well the next game I'm going to play is Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 (on the old 80 gig PS3).  I was thinking of getting the DQ IV/V remakes on the DS, but then I realized that playing a 40+ game on the DS would be torture for me.  So, I'm going with DQ VIII--loved the art style, loved Dragon Warrior I and II back on the NES, so I'll give this a shot.   Of course not all new games are bad-SFIV is giving me some of the most fun I've had in years!!!!