Nintendo Charm
Hello, I thought I had made a post about this before but it doesn’t seem like it. It looks like I’ve mentioned things here and there but not all together so I’m going to try my best to coherently talk about the charm Nintendo’s games and consoles have had on me. It’s the little things that Nintendo did in their games and approaching gaming differently that got me into them. Their games have a sense of personality that most other games don’t even try to do. Okay, let’s start this mess.
When I was a wee lad I remember seeing the commercial for Smash Bros. Four characters frolicking in a field and then they start beating the crap out of each other. I knew the characters and thought it was a funny commercial but I didn’t have an N64 so I never played it. Brawl was the first game I got with my Wii and it was just such a goofy game. The items, the assist trophies, tripping for no reason, bouncing off of peoples heads, the challenge wall, stage gimmicks, it was just hectic fun. I love how Subspace Emissary basically just tied all Nintendo franchises together. I especially enjoyed when Diddy Kong was running through the jungle and he came up to a lake and a friggin’ Rayquaza came out of it. It was what lead me into all the other Nintendo franchises.
Metroid Prime was the next game I got into and all the little things in that game really blew my mind. I just don’t recall seeing that kind of attention to detail in the other games I played up to that point, or since for that matter. For one thing, before Metroid I was a huge Halo fan so I was a little shocked or confused when I first saw the space pirates. They looked so much like Halo Elites I thought, “Wow, Bungie really ripped off Metroid huh?” I enjoy the motion controls for those games, it just makes sense to me. You’re not holding a gun, her arm is the gun so using a Wiimote to aim with feels better. When you enter the scanner mode, as you move the cursor around her eyes track the cursor as if she’s actually looking at what your scanning. You can also see her eyes reflect in her visor if there's a big blast close to Samus. Her mask fogging up when going through steam vents. Heat would radiate from her arm cannon after firing your gun a bunch. These are just some of the things I remember but apparently there were more of these subtle touches in the Gamecube version and there’s even less of these in the Switch remake.
I’ve talked about Twilight Princess before but basically I liked the motion controls, they made me feel like I was actually DOING something. The thing I usually bring up is this move where you have to dodge left or right to roll behind an enemy then shake the Wiimote to do a rising attack, in The Wind Waker the same move exists but you just press A when it prompts you. The only thing I wish for the sword combat is when I start shaking my Wiimote he attacks, he first has to unsheathe his sword before he attacks. Kind of annoying. The other thing I remember specifically was when you’d come out of water Link’s cloths would look damp. Again, something I don’t recall other games bothering with. These little details tell me the developers care about the game and our experience. There are some of these things still in newer games. I don’t think Link’s cloths get damp in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom but he does shiver when he’s cold. Mario as well in Odyssey, he shivers and he sweats. I’m sure there’s more things like that, they just haven’t jumped out at me like they did when I first played the Wii.
Mario Kart Wii, another one I’ve talked about before but I really liked the motion controls. It’s really different playing a Mario Kart with the main focus being the motion controls and not just something you CAN do like in 8. I talked recently about Mario Kart so I won’t dwell too much on it here. Basically they’ve removed a lot of things since Wii in favor of, mmmm, a more fair and balanced competitive scene maybe? In the Wii game motorcycles had a clear advantage but also they were more susceptible to being bounced around. In 8 Deluxe there’s no real difference.
And you can’t talk about the Wii without the Miis. @NEETproxy recently went down a Raw Time rabbit hole and found Mii Time. It’s an animated version of Raw Time with Miis. I somehow stumbled upon Raw Time a long time ago and pretty much forgot about it but the Mii animations are pretty funny. I liked the Wii Sports games, I liked Nintendoland, I liked the Wii U plaza with all our Miis running around to various games and stuff. It was just a nice way to have an avatar that wasn’t just a random icon from a game. My Mii was always rather generic. I’m very self-conscious about absolutely everything so I never really put much effort into my Mii, so after seeing this Mii Time I decided to get my 3DS and let it make my Mii. I think it came out rather well, it’s, I don’t know, to me, not very flattering cause even in Mii form I still see my “flaws” but I think it’s better than the Mii I have had all these years. I went through everything, replacing my old Mii with this new one. 3DS, Wii, Switch, My Nintendo. It’s a simple character creator but it’s effective. I’m looking to get Wii Sports Resort again, I have a need to play it recently.
Now Nintendo is kind of getting away from all that experimental stuff. The joy-cons do still use motion it’s just not the focus anymore. I plan on using motion for Metroid Prime 4 and I might give it a try with Mario Kart. I’m kind of hoping the next Zelda game will support motion but I doubt it will. Nintendo still puts a decent amount of detail into their games just not as much as I think they used too. I liked in Smash Ultimate that if you have Pit and any other character stand around for a while Pit and Palutena will start talking about the characters strengths and weaknesses. Intentional or unintentional, in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe when Luigi passes another character he looks like he’s giving them the stink eye. When I was playing through Fire Emblem Conquest recently at some point I had the little orange friend light come on and I was like “What the hell?” I go and look and sure enough one of my, mmm, high school friends? Childhood friend? Someone I kind of know? They were online doing some Pokemon things.
The thing is now more than in the past things are more competitive for no real reason. Things are more competitive and as such developers are designing the games with competition in mind. Like sure there was a competitive aspect to Smash and Mario Kart but that was just something the community did on their own. Now Smash has more ways to make maps not do their gimmicks and drop items, Mario Kart is a lot more “balanced” for lack of a better word. There’s not so much bouncing for the small characters hitting a heavy which is fine to an extent. It’s just that I too have become tainted with this competitive mindset. Playing Smash used to be a lot of goofy fun and like win or lose it was whatever but with kind of the expectation of being a “gamer,” well now I have to show my skill in a straight up 1v1 with no items. It was just different during the Wii/Wii U time when Xbox and Playstation gave you a game and you sat there with your controller where as Nintendo was changing up how you interacted with games. But now the Switch isn’t much different then that. Sure it’s a handheld with a dock, which is very cool and convenient, but it’s still leaning more towards the rest of the industry in a way they haven’t before. In any case, I still like Nintendo games more than the others. Whenever there’s a Playstation State of Play or an Xbox Direct, the games look same-y. Here’s some kind of hacky-slashy where you teleport all over an arena dodging stuff. Here’s a Souls-like. Some of these games do look pretty but I just don’t know if they can really hold my interest.
An example of them leaning more competitive lies in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Smash Ultimate basically is just for competitive players and has very little for casual players. Brawl had the Subspace Emissary, the challenge wall, trophies to collect, Ultimate was just about the player vs player aspect. There was a story-ish mode but it was just using the characters from the roster with different challenges. Trophies were also replaced by spirits, not as interesting as trophies. Basically NFT looking things. I don’t know it was just a downgrade in my opinion. I mean, part of the problem for me too I think is that Smash Wii U was stripped down, the characters didn’t change all that much from Brawl and that Ultimate was basically the Wii U and 3DS version put together in the beginning, I think that’s how it was being marketed, so I really just gave up on Ultimate all together.
I
really love the 3DS also, I’ve mentioned it before and recently so I won’t sit
on it for too long but I think Kid Icarus: Uprising was the peak of what the
3DS has to offer. It being made by Sakurai, who also made the Smash games, it
had a lot of the same kind of things that I loved from Brawl, challenge walls
and trophy-esque things. There was a
So with all these negative thoughts, my mind wonders about the new Mario Kart. There’s speculation that there will be a Switch 2 bundle that will include Mario Kart, you know, cool, but I’m worried this Mario Kart is going to be bad. You know how we got a decent Mario Party then they released a new one that wasn’t as good then released Jamboree and it was pretty good? I’m worried that’s what’s going to happen to with this Mario Kart. Like, it’s still crazy to me that they milked Mario Kart 8 so hard that there is no more teat and didn’t come out with another console game. The Switch was such a good opportunity for Double Dash 2 with their whole thing about taking the joy-cons and two people playing on one Switch but they just didn’t pull the trigger. So, I’m wondering if by having a bundle they just hope to ship this Mario Kart out into as many people as possible before people really get into it and realize it’s not that great. It just being a “Mario Kart” means it will fly off the shelf but that’s just my thought. Maybe this one won’t be great but in a few years they’ll put out one that is truly worthy. But again, they’ve milked 8 for what, eleven years? So this just might be the next Mario Kart for another decade which still sounds crazy to me. I can’t imagine Nintendo making and releasing a “bad” Mario Kart at this point but we’ll see. One rumor I heard was that maybe players will have to do pit stops here and there to get gas, change tires, which sounds dumb to me. Doesn’t seem like something you want to do to players, you know, forcing them to stop but I thought that might be a way to try to make the person in first not be so far ahead. Typically in Mario Kart and even Crash Team Racing, once you’re in first you can put some serious distance between you and the rest of the pack and it’s usually pretty easy to keep that spot. Sure you got your blue turtle shells but unless there’s like three in a row you’re fine. You’ll typically get bananas or green turtle shells to protect you from orange shells so while you’re up there just doing your thing the people in the pack are having a Mad Max war with Bullet Bills and invincibility stars.
The only game I’ve seen lately that has as much charm as Nintendo’s Gamecube/Wii era has been Astro Bot. But anyways, that was longer than expected. Umm, what do you think about any of that? What games, Nintendo or otherwise, do you thing has a lot of charm? Do you think the Switch 2 will have some hidden gimmick they haven’t showed us yet? Will we ever see a new way to play console games or is the tried and true controller sticking around. I might buy a wheel for the next Mario Kart just for the hell of it. Just for nostalgic sake. I’m also hoping for Kid Icarus: Uprising remake. That would be great. Anyways, give me some opinions and comments and I’ll see you around. Monster Hunter next week so I might be back in a month or less with something to complain about! Until then, bye-bye!
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