Why I Like Nintendo Consoles
Hello hello. Various things made me want to write this out. I’m not busy at the moment and I just can’t figure out how to start. I was reading comments on a poll about Pokemon Arceus and people are just the weirdest things aren’t they? The things they say about the Switch, Pokemon and even Nintendo are absolutely ridiculous. Like, PlayStation isn’t exactly my cup of tea, I don’t exactly have any opinions one way or the other but I wouldn’t go out of my way to comment something on a PlayStation post saying like “PlayStation sucks” or “Nintendo/Xbox/PC better.” So I guess this is how I’m starting it. I really like Nintendo and I want to share with you how and why. It’s probably boring so I understand if you close out and I feel like I’ve talked about it before but looking at my blog list I don’t see anything that rings a bell. A little ironic since one of the reasons I started this blog was so I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. So, let us begin.
I wasn’t a Nintendo kid. We had an NES when I was very young and I played Mario 3, Megaman 3, Bubble Bobble, Ninja Turtles, Tiny Toons, stuff like that. As I got a little older I played Sega and PlayStation but it wasn’t until Pokemon came out that I was interested in Nintendo again. I remember watching a kid play Red or Blue on his Gameboy in 5th grade and was mesmerized. Pretty much from then on I had a handheld for the sole reason to play Pokemon. I had a few other games for the systems but they weren’t much to speak of.
It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I really got into Nintendo. There was a show I watched online, before YouTube was a thing, called Pure Pwnage. If you haven’t watched it yet I encourage you to click the link and watch it. I think if you were into gaming at the time it makes more sense or is more entertaining. I tired to get a coworker, who is a gamer, to watch it and he just couldn’t get into it. I was shocked. But it’s a mockumentary about a “pro gamer,” this was long before a “pro gamer” is what they are today, and the main character was playing Brawl with one of his friends. As I watched the episode I was thinking “this looks like a silly game, I want to play this.” So I went searching for a Wii. This was when Wii’s were very hard to find. I went to my local GameStop and traded in a bunch of stuff, I don’t even know what but I was looking above the registers and they had a Wii box with the price on it. So after trading my stuff in I said I would like a Wii. The associate said “oh, we don’t have any in.” I looked back up at the display and was like “well that’s deceiving” and he turns and looks and says “yup, it is.” So I went out looking for a Wii. I tried a few stores, no luck, ended up going to Walmart. Now I wasn’t really suppose to shop at Walmart, my mom worked at a rival store but they didn’t have a Wii so I had to go to the “dark palace,” as she calls it. I get there and ask an employee, “Wii?” They responded with, “yeah I think we just got some in actually.” I found my Wii. As I was going to pay, the cashier was like “You want anything else? A game, extra controller, just going to play with your Wii by yourself?” It was funny, but I was too nervous to say I have all this GameStop money. Now I was off to GameStop to buy all sorts of things, but not the same GameStop, I’m not going back to that rude guy. My town had two GameStops. The main one is by a supermarket and a stones throw away is the city’s mall that had another, smaller, GameStop. I know it sounds odd, and it was, that one is closed now but I went there and bought I don’t know what. I know I got Brawl and probably more Wiimotes and nunchucks. That’s a fun word… nunchucks.
So. Playing Brawl. Enjoying myself. I still think it’s the best Smash that I’ve played (and I’m not the only one, thank you very much) but that also could be chalked up to me being attached to the first game I play in a series. But it was fun, Subspace Emissary, challenge wall, secret characters (kinda), what’s not to like? But it was through Brawl that I got interested in other Nintendo franchises, Metroid and Zelda specifically. As I played Samus I thought “okay, I want to know more about this.” Looking online I saw Metroid Prime 3 for $60. Okay. Kept scrolling and saw the Metroid Prime Trilogy for $60… Kind of a no brainer. This was right at the same time that Nintendo announced they weren’t making anymore copies of the Trilogy. Of course. Looked at GameStop online, the closest store that had a copy was 40 minutes away… away I go I guess. I got to the store, saw it on the shelf, went to the counter and said I would like the game. The cashier says “we don’t have any, Nintendo isn’t making them anymore.” Before I could say anything his coworker leans over and was like “yes we do.” So I got my game. Yay. I won’t go into everything I love about Metroid Prime, I might’ve done that already too, maybe I haven’t, maybe that’ll be a different post but just playing it I was like “wow, Bungie really ripped off Metroid.”
Next series to venture into was Zelda. All my friends rave about Zelda and all that so I got Twilight Princess. It’s a good game, probably one of my favorites but when I played Ocarina of Time I was a little confused. My first experience with Zelda was in Brawl where she looks like she does in Twilight Princess. She can turn into Shiek and from Brawl and other internet sources I kind of figured they were the same person but in Brawl and TP she’s a brunette. First time seeing young Zelda in OoT and she’s blonde. Okay, maybe when she grows up she’ll be a brunette? Meet her as Shiek, okay, maybe she’s just blonde now so we don’t know she’s Zelda? Nope. Zelda be blonde in every other Zelda game haha. It’s still very weird to me but I think TP is my favorite version. I love how artists, (more than anything I think), have really made each Zelda have a very unique personality. TP is kind of cold and indifferent where the new Zelda in Smash is very over the top and animated.
Anyways, I really liked what Nintendo has done with their consoles from the Wii on. The Wii was different than anything else; I really enjoyed the controls for most things. I didn’t like in Twilight Princess I had to shake the controller to draw the sword first. Like, I’m in a pinch here guy, smack the thing! Quick! But what I did like was how in TP when you did a move it felt like a combo, something you could screw up and doing it right just felt rewarding. I remember there’s a move where you dodge roll to one side to get behind the enemy and shake the Wiimote to attack and Link does this rising uppercut sword attack. When playing Wind Waker HD that same move is in the game but to do it you just press A when it flashes on screen. Not really that rewarding. I loved being able to play Wii Tennis and just wave the controller to hit the ball. I played with a Wii Wheel for Mario Kart; I was all about it. I even used the Wiimote/nunchuck combo in Brawl. I liked that when I grabbed a character I could just swing the Wiimote one way and I would throw them that direction.
The 3DS was mind blowing, it’s still super amazing to me and I love it to pieces. I remember seeing the first like tech demo they had for it, (I can’t find the video to save my life now but) it was so cool. I showed a friend and he just buried his face in his hands in disbelief and was like “what are Nintendo doing? They’re crazy.” On the original 3DS I didn’t have any trouble with the 3D or my hands cramping or anything, can’t say the same for the New XL though. I love the gyro, it makes sense for me. Ocarina of Time for instance, whenever you use gyro it goes into first person and you just use the console to look around, I get that. Using gyro on my controller when aiming on Breath of the Wild or Splatoon just doesn’t work for me. I try to make little adjustments with the thumbstick but I’m also just moving my hands for whatever reason so then my aim is super off and I’m just flustered and like “wtf.” I remember in a Resident Evil review by Yahtzee he criticized how at one point you use a sniper rifle and when you look through the scope the 3D gets all fucky, but when @NEETproxy was playing I remember him saying that he had to close one eye, as if he was actually looking through a scope, and it looked fine. I’m sure that was the intended purpose and if so it’s fucking brilliant on Capcom’s part.
The Wii U was okay but not great. It was like a big DS, it had so much potential. I imagined a new Metroid Prime where you would use the game pad to scan things or as x-ray vision or something. I saw the potential for Mario Galaxy 3. In Nintendo Life’s video about which Zelda remaster is better, Jon talks about how much better the gamepad made Wind Waker. On Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate you could customize the touch screen, there’s just a lot more you can do with two screens, obviously, and I feel that’s one thing, maybe the only thing, that Wii U has over the Switch. It was nice to be able to transfer the game to the gamepad and lie on the couch or take it on a bathroom trip. It didn’t have a big range but.
Now the Switch is pretty great. I have so many games for it, it’s a little ridiculous compared to my Xbox and PS4. The joy-cons are no Wiimotes, for the most part I just don’t like using motion in any games despite being such an advocate for it during the Wii. When I play something like Arms I can’t use the motion. When I throw a punch for some reason my other hand moves or something so I’m constantly trying to grab my opponent. As I said earlier, gyro isn’t my favorite on the system either but I have gotten a tad more use to it. The games that are on it are a lot more ambitious then anything that was on the Wii U and almost all the “good games” from the Wii U have been ported over. There’s talk and rumors about Nintendo’s next console and I don’t even want to think about it man, let’s just enjoy this a little longer more. A more powerful Switch, okay. A love child between the Wii U and Switch, I don’t know how you’d pull it off but go for it. And what even would the next console be? I could never have fathomed what Nintendo has done the last 15 years or so, I can’t even imagine what’s next.
Last year I was trying the VTuber thing. It was fun, I enjoyed it even if no one was watching but I was having issues with my PC crashing so I decided to stop. Vshojo, in September-ish, said they were looking for new talent and I put in my application. If I got hired to do something like this I would totally spend a ton of money into my setup to make it more “professional” but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t selected. They didn’t even look at my introduction video. I’m not even sure if they ended up getting any new people, I haven’t heard. Recently a couple Nintendo related YouTube channels said they were hiring so I’ve applied for those sites as well. Like I don’t have much experience in these things, (I dabbled in video editing for my VTuber stuff and I do like it) it’s not even closely related to my current job but this is the kind of stuff I want these companies to know about me. Gaming is my true passion and I would do whatever I could to have a job related to it. I’m ready to quit my job at the drop of a hat if one of these groups would hire me and I would dump money into my setup to get it running smoothly and do anything and everything that was necessary for the job.
Well
that’s a tad long but it’s also pretty condensed. I could babble more about all
those subjects but I think you get the gist. So what’s your true passion? Have
you been able to make it your career or are you just muddling through your job?
I’m gonna go play some Arceus and Monster Hunter now. Bye bye. Oh, what am I suppose to use for a picture... hold on.
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