Nintendo, get some new ideas.
I have just found out that the previously announced Super Mario Stadium Baseball has been renamed to the rather tantalizing title of Mario Super Sluggers. This is a new Wii game set to arrive in the US later this year and is the sequel to Mario Superstar Baseball. Wow Nintendo, you’ve really surprised me, you just cant miss another money spinning opportunity.
Mario has been in over 200 different games. Now, I quite like Mario - he’s a cool guy, but it’s the Mario spin off series that really get me. You know the ones I mean: Mario Kart, Golf, Baseball, Tennis. This is the norm for most of us, the next Mario sports games, buy it if you like it, and forget it if you don’t. That’s not good enough for me, though. I will readily admit the Mario spin offs are good quality games and this makes me wish even more that Nintendo would create a new franchise. It seem like such an obvious thing to do - it would make the Mario games more special and anticipated than they already are, and Nintendo could have a sports character/franchise that could be recognized universally. I mean new confirmed characters for ‘Super Sluggers’ include: Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Waluigi, Toad, Toadette, and Boo. Come on! Toadette? It’s ridiculous how could characters like Waluigi have any appeal, he’s barely been in any games! I just cannot imagine anyone going: ‘Yes! Waluigi my favourite character, I can’t wait to play as him’. Why do Nintendo do this? Well obviously for the money, but do they have no pride? These games must be so easy to make and require so little thought, they use the same powerups, characters and locations and are just churned out one after the other. The games are pretty much completed before they start - most of them even use the same art style! It’s pathetic Nintendo, get some new characters and some new ideas, then go and use them to make a decent games instead of exploiting your loyal fans. OpinionDebug out.
More on this to come.
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April 11th, 2008 at 5:23 am
But it’s entirely acceptable for EA to put out a new:
Madden
NBA Live
NHL
NCAA
MVP Baseball
Fifa
Tiger Woods PGA
Every fucking year?
I personally don’t like video sports games (EA or Nintendo), but I’m fucking sick and tired of North Americans and Europeans bitching about Nintendo reusing the same franshise and writing about it while they’re taking a break from playing an EA Sports game or FPS sequel.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Tottaly disagree with you. There is so much thought thown into these products… You must think on how making the power-ups support, how to balance them, how to blend the brand (mario) into the sports without feeling weird,the controls (to be simple as in any Mario game)…
That’s why those games are almost always high quality games. It works just like Wii casula games: Nintendo actually put a lot of effort into them, making them great, commercially succesful products, while 3rd parties make ugly and cheap games expecting to sell millions.
Super Mario Baseball was a great title. I never liked baseball, but i liked this game a lot more than expected. It still has a lot of potential, and is perfectly suited for the Wii. The format was really apart from the other Mario spin-offs, which expanded the possibilities of these games.
And many of my friends are really into these spin-offs, so they care and like about these characters, mainly Waluigi!
And i can’t see what comparisions can be made between Mario Party, Mario Baseball and Mario strikers in terms of Artwork.
The only brand i have to complain is about Mario Party, wich lost its focus a long time ago. Besides that, i’m more than happy with the “one Mario spin-off of each of the million brands per system” way of Nintendo doing things. They just need to take SSBB as a model: Always make things a lot better than you did before.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I can’t say it better !
Let’s ‘em have fun with any sport on earth, you’re not forced to buy it.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:17 am
@the_importer:
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At what point did I say EA was doing a good job? I just didn’t want to talk about EA and Nintendo in the same article. The EA situation is slightly different though. Instead of releasing new games, it would be better if they just updated the roster with a patch.
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@Razien:
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I agree the games are of a very high quality, which makes me regret that they are all dominated by Mario. If Nintendo turned the games into semi-serious products (a bit like wii sports), then they could establish a whole new sports franchise. The wii has a very different target demographic to the other consoles and I believe putting Mario on the front of a tennis game may alienate some of those people/
April 11th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
@Eoco
Well it’s not happening, EA has and will continue to release the crap every year and people are still going to buy into it. Now I still don’t recall any news regarding EA and their crappy marketing strategy? Why is that? Oh I know, it’s because:
-They’re not Japanese
-Sports is too popular to make fun of EA
-There’s nothing kiddy looking about sports
April 11th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I agree withe Eoco in a way in that they really are milking Mario to death, but the reason I think they put Mario on the front of their unrealistic (not in a bad way), fun and quirky sports and racing games is because that is the kind of game that Mario is generally viewed to be suited in. I believe when people see Mario on the front of the box they think: “wow, it’s Mario, I know him. I’ve played his games before and they are all generally good.” And they play it and it is good. Wheras if they put a new character on the box it would really blend in with the unrecognised characters unless it was ground-breakingly amazing which to be fair, the Mario spinn-offs are not. But if they did start the ball rolling on a new sport franchise then I would be happier and it would reduce the cries from the sony and microsft crowds “oh, so it’s another Mario game.” But realistically, Nintendo will probably continue milking Mario from here on out, mainly due to the financial gain but also due to the risk of bringing out a new character which can be as likeable as Mario, and it’s very easy for nintendo to make a character which people will hate.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
EA at least has a reason to update their game every year. Sports fans usually like their games to be up-to-date. The only update Mario sport games get is new stupid characters that serve no purpose. Waluigi? Why? He was created to fill rosters, nobody actually likes him. There is NO reason to like him, Luigi was not in need of an evil twin. Nintendo used to be one of the few companies to release some good software but they’re starting to get into the shovelware too now because it’s just too damn profitable.
Instead of doing this, they might create sequals people are actually waiting for. Pilot Wings, F-Zero, Wave Race, Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin and Animal Crossing are just a few that come to mind. Yes, I know that I could be asking for new franchises but it’s Nintendo we’re talking about here so that would be in the same league as asking Atari not to suck or Sega releasing a new console.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
you hit and miss the main reason that Nintendo makes these games: they sell. So you can complain about it all you like, but unless people stop buying the sports games, casual games like wii play, or anything with mario’s name on it… they’ll keep coming. In some ways thats bad because it seems like they’re repeating themselves, but the thing is with making video games is that so much money goes into their development, production, marketing and distribution that you really need to have the security of profiting. So if something will most likely make you money… why NOT make the game? And sometimes they’re quite good…
I understand what you are trying to say about Nintendo needing to be creative with games, but you are approaching from the wrong angle. The sports games will be here whether you like it or not, especially after WiiSports success.
You need to encourage them to bring back franchises other than Mario and Zelda in new and interesting ways or to create entirely new IPs.. but there’s trouble with that - because if they miss, after all the money they put into, they miss big…
But perhaps we can hope that all these sports games that garner great profit are helping them stock their coffers so that they’ll be brave enough to release some challenging new IPs.
Otherwise, look to WiiWare for the most creative games, as the ease for smaller companies and big ones alike to develop for it at low cost and big gain are there.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
@drew
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I don’t think I missed the reason why Nintendo make these games at all. The reason you gave was that they made money. In the article I said: ‘Why do Nintendo do this? Well obviously for the money’.
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I have nothing against sports games. You hit the exact thing I’m trying to say, with the success of Wii Sports, why not use that for sports games? Nintendo should expand and improve the Wii Sports franchise. If you replace Mario and co. with Mii’s, chuck in a few powerups, set up a campaign structure and call it Wii sports 2, then you’ve got yourself a hit.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I agree with you pretty much, except that Waluigi is my favorite character! Common, he looks cool. I guess it’s because my friend was always Luigi and when Waluigi was introduced in Mario Tennis I jumped at the chance to rival that little green satan that is Luigi.