Before I begin, I have to say that I’m pretty fond of “Nintendo” I grown up playing Zelda: link to the Past on the Snes and remain to be the only person on the planet who really enjoyed Donkey Kong 64. A lot of gamers have be dishearten by Nintendo’s recent game design direction focusing towards the casual gamer audience although I remain to be one of the few people who will defend them for this approach because at least they are trying to broaden gaming to other people, if people are having fun and enjoying it, what is the problem?
Nintendo seem to take pride in their ideas and so they should, they are very inventive with many surprises up their sleeves and only seem show off products when they are finalized (near completed). This mentality has worked for them for years since N64 days pushing the industry with innovation revealing their hidden jewels yearly at E3, this Nintendo approach has finally back fired this year. It disappoints me to say that Nintendo this year didn’t reveal anything that surprisingly that you didn’t see coming. The main titles revealed were: Wii sports Resort, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii Music, GTA: Chinatown Wars and Spore. Will sports Resort is no brainer release (easy money) Animal crossing development was revealed last year (I really like AC), GTA well it had to happen at some point, Spore yet again we know about from before. It was only Wii Music (yeah it was showed off two years to demonstrate what “Wii” can do, so no surprise really) that surprised me with innovative approach to creating music and even then I wasn’t blow away, it wasn’t no “Electroplankton” when you thought “Wow! What’s this unusual title?” The issue is also to do with the simple fact that didn’t show any core gamer games from any of their famed franchises like “star fox”, “F-zero”, “pilotwings” (which is no brainer wii game, which I’m really surprised they haven’t made by now) “Donkey Kong”, etc. They claim that “Pikmin” is in production which is good news but when will we see it?
Like I said before Nintendo seem to only show off products when they are finalized. This is Nintendo’s biggest strength as game developer but it is also their biggest weakest as Nintendo do intend to release titles too late in the console cycle, like Perfect Dark and Conker’s bad fur day in the N64 era were released in 2000- 20001 when everyone were far more interested in PS2 and Dreamcast and these games I thought were the best games on the N64.
Although I think this year Nintendo’s E3 was disappointing with a lack of surprises, I’ve willing to bear with Nintendo, like Disney every time they enter the dark side, they always return back with some magic putting them back on top again and I hope Nintendo will that soon before it’s too late to win back us gamers.
