Nintedo, get some new ideas - part 2.
Ok so I just really wanted to reply to some of the comments I’ve seen with regards to yesterday’s article. Many of you are under the impression that I hate Nintendo and only buy Madden games. Sorry, guess again. I also wanted to explain my opinion a bit better than yesterday to give people a stronger idea of what I mean.
Right, so quite a lot of people have said that anyone who supports my view, only buys and plays GTA, Madden and FPS games. Firstly I would like to congratulate you on your surprisingly ability to know what games people buy without ever meeting them. It’s a surprising talent. However I would argue that the GTA and Madden series seem fresh, when compared to Mario’s 200 appearances. GTA has had 10 games released and unless you think Madden has been going for 200 years, I very much doubt it has had as many releases as Mario. .
Secondly, some people seem to think that I’m unaware that Mario sports games sell. Of course they do! Hence me saying: ‘Why do Nintendo do this? Well obviously for the money’, in the original article. Nintendo have no economic reason to stop making these games, I just think there are other reasons. .
Nintendo is a very strange company: on the one hand you have immense creativity with the Wii’s control system and the DS’s touchscreen, but at the other end of the spectrum you have all the franchises that are just kept in some store cupboard and brought out when needed. What I am suggesting is that Nintendo create a new brand/franchise for their sports games. I’m not saying they should create a new character (is Madden a character? No, it’s a brand), unless they want to, but instead they should focus Mario games on platforming and their sports franchise on sports games. Again, I have nothing wrong with a colourful, arcadey sports game, that’s fine. I’m not demanding Nintendo make a sports simulator. What I think would be a good idea is if Nintendo brought all their sports games together under one brand - Wii sports. It seems perfect, why have both Mario sports and Wii sports? Wii sports is a perfect name as it means what it says - these games are sports games for the Wii. All Nintendo would need to do is replace the Mario characters with Mii’s, implement some sort of campaign structure, create some new powerups and rename the product. The Wii has a very different target demographic than the other consoles. It is trying to appeal to non-gamers just as much as us. I know many people that have bought a Wii, 4 controllers and just play Wii sports and Smarty Pants. Will Mario really appeal to them? I don’t think so. They have never played games before and despite Mario being the most famous gaming character ever, they will be completely oblivious to his notoriety. It’s for this reason that I think it would also be in Nintendo’s interests to hand sports games over to the Wii Sports brand.
Hope that answered a few questions. Discuss away in the comment box or send me an email at eoco@opiniondebug.com
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April 12th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Hey einstein the reason there is alot more mario games than say gta is becase…*shock horror*…..he has been around for over 2 decades. Doesnt really take a rocket scientist to work that one out. And besides why just stop at madden..what about the other yearly EA sports games other than madden..with there golf, basketball etc.. I mean do these games really need yearly releases??
How many war type FPS are there seriously?? I know alot of them are developed by different devs but seriously how many can they make that are going to be so different? Wait another decade and lets count how many war FPS’ there are compared to mario. However i do agree that they make to many mario spin offs, he should be kept to one every few years and concentrate on his platforming. Even make a new 2D game.
And also your last paragraph is a little bit hyprocritical as you are now saying that people that buy a wii for wii sports wont buy anything else…as what you said ealier….
“Firstly I would like to congratulate you on your surprisingly ability to know what games people buy without ever meeting them”
April 12th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Surprisingly, Both Madden and GTA have had more iterations than the Super Mario franchise. I’m not including spin offs simply because you can’t exactly call every game with mario in it a mario game any more than you can call every football game a Madden Game or every urban sandbox game GTA. Whereas I personally feel like Mario does a good job of reinventing himself in each iteration, Madden and GTA don’t. It’s my opinion. Thats all.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:48 am
@ Todd M
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I’m not being hypocritical at all. In the last paragraph I said that Nintendo are trying to appeal to non-gamers, just as much as gamers. I didn’t say that everyone buys a Wii just for Wii sports.
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Mario games are a bit different to an entire genre, or even a sub genre. War FPS’s are all done by different devs, all have different story lines, different characters etc. Mario games all star Mario and co.
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@Gamespiele
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You say you don;t count Mario spinoffs as Mario games. So Mario Golf isn’t a Mario game? Likewise Mario Super Sluggers is a Mario game as he is in title.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:44 am
mario golf is a GOLF game not a mario game. The official Mario game is a platform game. Not hard to understand…. same goes for all the rest………….
April 12th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Take away Mario in front of every Nintendo sport games and put Nintendo instead and your problem is solved. I mean Mario kart is called that way for name recognition I could easily be called Yoshi Kart, Nintendo Kart, Peach Kart, Bowser Kart…………
April 12th, 2008 at 3:52 am
“So Mario Golf isn’t a Mario game?”
Correct, sounds like you’ve got it.
I’ll admit, they milk Marios name, but the sports games are not “Mario” games.
Only games like Mario Sunshine, or Mario galaxy are Mario games and if you look at those, Nintendo generally only releases one per hardware cycle. Can you say the same of GTA? Madden? I don’t think so. How many GTA games were there on PS2? How many Maddens? Now, how many actual Super Mario platformers were there on gamecube?