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"Something old, something new"

I've just read one of the most fascinating articles on IGN.

The reason it did was because it was staring me straight in the face, a concept developing in my mind and there it was. The entire problem surrounding Nintendo's fall from grace. In a collection of words on a page.

It started to play on my mind when the latest DS title was announced. Super Princess Peach, a tongue in cheek role reversal of Nintendo's classic Mario franchise. The game could well be an innovative and enjoyable new franchise. But it isn't. Not really. Instead it is placed along Nintendo's other DS franchises. These are Animal Crossing DS, Wario Ware DS, Mario Kart DS, Mario Brothers DS, Mario 64 DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters, four swords, Pokemon Dash, Yoshi's Touch and go... and so forth.

All of the above titles try to use (and probably succeed) a new and original form of gameplay. Yet they all, every one of them, share a common issue. They are all established Nintendo franchises. Why could Nintendo not call "Yoshi's Touch and Go" something totally different and remove Mario and Yoshi. Introduce a few new characters. Suddenly a new world is born, suddenly a new franchise is born... Yoshi and Mario could help the game to sell well but... we will never truly know.

It is funny how Nintendo are trying to release the most innovative game system ever... and yet they have not got one original game in the line up. SEGA's XY/XX feel the magic, is in fact the only game I see that isn't a new breed of an old franchise.

You see I, you and the legions of avid Nintendo followers love Nintendo for Mario, for Pokemon and for Zelda. So Nintendo continue to keep their forever falling fan base happy with new iterations of Mario and Zelda. Yet by not making a new "Mario" or a new "Pokemon" how can Nintendo ever hope to expand their fan base?

Metroid Prime was Nintendo "re-inventing" the Metroid brand. It was clever and the game is genius. Introducing the gaming world to something totally new. So why Metroid? Strafio, a massive Metroid fan from these very forums, still craves for a third person action platformer. Was it beyond Nintendo's capacity to make this? This would have satisfied the fan base. And what of Metroid Prime? Well did we have to have Samus in it? Did it have to be based around the Metroid universe?

Sure, Metroid Prime may not have sold as much if Samus and his enemies were not part of the game. And yet I feel we could have seen the birth of a brand new killer Nintendo franchise. Metroid could take the crown from Tomb Raider in the action platform sides of things. Whilst this new innovative First Person Adventure from Nintendo will make Perfect Dark a distant memory.

I shall present Zelda as my next example. A perfectly lovely realistic Zelda would have kept all Nintendo gamers happy. But the Wind Waker ruled did it not? The Wind Waker was a great new addition to the series. Yet why did it have to be Zelda? Could we not have seen a new adventure title from Nintendo? Even an RPG game! A cartoon RPG is a good idea (Namco did it). It did not have to be Zelda. It could have been a different game. A whole new series of Nintendo titles. Maybe next year we'd have the cel-shaded new adventure RPG and a new Zelda game. And the series' need not have anything to do with eachother.

Pokemon saved Nintendo back in 1996 as sales started to fall. It was Nintendo "being original". There was no Mario. There was no Zelda. This was something new. This was to attract new gamers. This was a new game. And like Mario and Zelda before it. It was huge. Now though we do not get that. We get Nintendo putting all their money, resources and efforts into keeping the fan base happy with a new Mario title or a new "Zelda Four Swords adventure". If Nintendo can keep 2 20-year-old franchises such as Mario and Zelda feeling fresh imagine what they could do with a new idea? Imagine if they were asked to make a Bongo action game that had nothing to do with Donkey Kong? We'd be looking at a totally new franchise at the beginning of next year.

What could Nintendo create with that sort of freedom on the Gamecube? Let me tell you. Pikmin. Pikmin started life as a demo featuring 100 Mario's. Imagine if that had stayed the same. Imagine if Olimar was a big Mario and the Pikmin were hundreds of little Mario’s/Luigi's and Peach's being directed to do various tasks to defeat Bowser. Indeed the game would still be original and fun. But instead we got a different world. New characters, a new franchise, new iconography and new landscapes. We got a whole new Nintendo game. One that can stand besides Mario/Zelda and Pokemon as a game that had NOTHING to do with another game. Olimar was never a baddie in Mario Land and Pikmin was never a Pokemon.

This is what Nintendo need. New games. New franchises. They don't HAVE to be adult either, might be helpful but hardly essential. Why does Wario Ware have Wario in it? Is he needed? Why did Dinosaur Planet have Fox in it? It was obviously not a Starfox game!

Nintendo are scared. Releasing a totally new game could mean a disaster. A flop. Would Viewtiful Joe have sold through the roof if it were a Megaman game? Hell yes. But would it be a new franchise on which Capcom can build on? No it could not.

Nintendo tried widening its appeal with new games. Metal Gear and Resident Evil remakes are a prime example. Yet these two games are still "old" games. Nintendo should never have bought the Resident Evil games because they had Eternal Darkness. This game could have been a new Nintendo franchise. An ideal new Nintendo franchise. As it happens it was never needed. It would never sell. Capcom's famous survival horror put pay to that.

RARE were never scared to release a new game. They did sequels too but next to the release of Banjo Tooie came Conker's Bad Fur Day. Next to Donkey Kong 64 came Jet Force Gemini. Besides Killer Instinct Gold there was Blast Corps and Goldeneye. Some were sequels. Most were totally new franchises that branched out to new gamers. What would the N64 have been without RARE? What new franchise did Nintendo create themselves? If it wasn't for the fact Nintendo's brand faces were moving into 3D we would all have wondered "what's new?" Just like we are now. If Nintendo still had RARE we would have had Grabbed by the Gholies and Kameo by now. 2 completley original and new games.

X-box gamers are lucky. Loads of totally new games to play, Knights of the Old Republic was a success, Blinx a failure but an attempt at least... and the biggest success story of this generation. Halo. A game that was so totally fresh that nearly every gamer in the world wants to own it. Even Sony, with Ico, the eye toy games, Rachet and Clank and Sly Cooper can risk a new franchise.

Are Nintendo just a bunch old golden oldies? Making nice games with the same faces over and over again? Are Nintendo out of touch? No I don't think so. Shigeru Miyamoto, a guy that made the original Donkey Kong game decades ago, made Pikmin. He hasn't lost it. He can still create a new world to exploit. A New World to delve into and explore.

Retro, Nintendo's latest acquisition, is one of Nintendo's greatest properties. Metroid Prime is almost a totally new franchise. Sure the name is the same but the game is not. Retro are original and Nintendo need to expand this team and bring Raven Blade and the companies back to the release schedule. Rare, Left Field and Silicon Knights have gone. It was a stupid mistake by the big N. But if only Nintendo themselves can make something new.

Nintendo are innovators. They were once the driving force in the gaming industry. Introducing new characters and new ideas. Now they are just a company growing old. Making the same great games... we need new great games.

Wake up Nintendo.

i'munn wrote:

>
> You people are all too stupid.

Go tell that to IGN who wrote the original article.

Get on MSN gerrid :' )


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What you all seem to be forgetting is that Nintendo created a pedigree for it's characters and franchises back with the SNES and again with the N64.

Mario has a reputation for being in really good games - you see Mario on the front of a box, say in a tennis game, and you automatically relate it back to when you were playing Super Mario 64. Every game with Mario in it automatically has connections with all the classic games that he's already been in.

In a marketing way - Nintendo are doing exactly the same thing as Cadbury are doing with their Dairy Milk brand. Have you noticed how Caramel has become Dairy Milk with Caramel, and how there are a load of new Dairy Milk flabours. Sure, Cadbury could have just invented new names for it's chocolate, instead of Dairy Milk with buscuit, but people wouldn't have known what it was, they wouldn't have trusted it and they wouldn't buy it - the way that it is you know it's Dairy Milk and you know that it will be good.

Nintendo use the reputation of their franchises to sell their new ideas. If they flooded the market with new franchises things would just get ridiculous - Nintendo wouldn't have an identity any more, people wouldn't associate them with anything and their games would hardly sell - just look at Viewtiful Joe and all the other great games that just don't sell.

Think about it - Paper Mario without Mario would be half the game it is now - Mario Party would just be a crappy boardgame filled with random unrecognisable characters. No matter what you think you want, familiarity with franchises and characters improves most games - if Majora's mask hadn't been Link and Zelda but it had been about some guy called Tak and his fairy JuJu, you wouldn't have cared - it wouldn't have been as good and you know it. Playing Wind Waker brings back happy memories of playing Zelda OOT and LttP. If Wind Waker had the characters from Tales of Symphonia it just wouldn't be the same - it would be missing something - the familiarity - you feel like you know the characters and you care about them more if you already know them.

Now obviously Nintendo need to create new franchises - they re-invented Metroid and it has been very successful - Pikmin, the example that you all use, worked because it was something new - if it had been a platform game where you had to jump around with Olimar it would just seem like some substandard flower based Mario game. To create a new Franchise you need a new type of game - franchises don't tend to co-exist well together in the same genre.

Think about Wave Race and 1080 - If Nintendo released a sequel to Blue Storm but called it Ultimate Jet Ski Racer 4 (GB version remember), and it didn't contain the familiar characters, music or iconography of the Wave Race games, everyone would be up in arms about "where has Wave Race gone", because they feel comfortable with the franchise and that improves the experience of the game as a whole. No matter how much we all harp on about gameplay being the be all and end all - there are a lot of other things in play that we might not think about.

Nintendo are pushing their luck a bit these days, what with Super Mario Ball, and the slew of near identical Pokemon games, but it's just milking it's franchises while it still can. You don't abandon your identity for the sake of innovation if it's making you shedloads of money - it's their franchises that give them the opportunity to work with developers to create Eternal Darkness or Geist. These aren't games which will become Franchises, because the characters aren't memorable and they don't appeal enough, despite them being good games. Next generation Nintendo will continue to use it's Franchises to push its new ideas, but there will be a couple of new gems in there as well along the line. Creating new characters, worlds, franchises isn't as easy as everyone is making it out to be - think how many cartoons have failed because the characters just aren't up to scratch. There isn't space in the consumer's brain for too many franchises so Nintendo needs to stick with what it has.

As long as they dump Kirby somewhere along the way I'm not too bothered though.

IGN is the holy source for Dringo.

Even thoughts on certain topics.

Which, thearetically, isn't right.

I think Dringo meant that Mario games are unlikely to make people that currently don't have a Gamecube buy one. The Mario games only appeal to those that have played them and understand that they are good games. Then again, I could be wrong...

Strafio wrote:
> i'munn wrote:
> B: Why invent a new franchise when you've got one that's just as
> good.
>
> So you'd be happy to never play a game that didn't star Mario then?
> You're being stupid. You know variety is the spice of life.

That's not what I'm saying, but, why invent say, a 3D platformer, when you've got one that'll do you fine?

Strafio wrote:
> Only a hardcore few remembered Samus from the Snes days.

That also works against the original statment.
If only a hardcore few remember it, then to the majority of people, it's a brand new franchise.


Don't go onto me about how it should stay 2D as that's where it started, next you'd be telling me that Mario and Zelda should have stayed 2D.


Also, on the original post, Viewtiful Joe wouldn't have sold well if it was a Megaman game, the majority of Megaman games are crappym so people would go "Oh, Megaman, stay away from that game"
If Megaman was known to be an awesome game series, however, it would be a clever marketting move to sell it as one, as people go "I've heard Megaman games are good" and would buy it.


Franchises only need to be developed if there's nothing similar to it that you already own the license to.

Imagine Nintendo decided, "Oh, lets develop a 3D game where you run around and catch monsters and then fight other monsters with them, but lets not make it a Pokémon game, as our Pokémon games are 2D"

Why would they make that a Mario game?

You could play it as Mario, but then, you'd not be able to have the evolution of Pokémon (Mario monsters), as you've already got the monsters in Mario that don't evolve.


Anyway, you got it off of IGN.
What does that show you?

Dringo wrote:
> Mario only appeals to Mario fans munn, not to new gamers.

Eh?

I'm not a Mario fan and I have Mario Party 5, Sunshine and Double Dash.

I don't have Mario shrines. I don't worship him and I don't have posters on my wall of him.

It's just some of his games appeal to me.

And I know alot of new 'Cube owners who would pick up Mario games beacuse they are good, not for the love of the little fat Italian.

Yes, because the current selection of franchises they have make them next to no money.

Mario may not appeal to 50 million people or whatever, but why spend more time and money developing a series that would say, make 10 million more, if it costs an extra 12 months to make, and 5 million in development funds (these are just examples).

Why did Metroid have to be 2D?

Everyone knows that 3D appeals to more people, and, if you can use a base storyline, and add to a current franchise, why make it a new franchise?
When Mario became Mario 64, whyy didn't it stay 2D? When they made it 3D, why didn't they make it a new franchise? Because they didn't need to?

You people are all too stupid.

Mario only appeals to Mario fans munn, not to new gamers.

Nintendo need new franchises, like Pokemon was back in 1996, to grab new gamers.

i'munn wrote:
> B: Why invent a new franchise when you've got one that's just as
> good.

So you'd be happy to never play a game that didn't star Mario then?
You're being stupid. You know variety is the spice of life.

> It's like saying "Yes, we've got Mario, lets invent a game
> similar to it but not Mario, then we can waste time inventing new
> stuff for it when we could have had the game out 6 months ago and
> making us money"

You don't seem to get it, do you?

We're not saying stop making Mario games and find a new platforming mascot, but he's plastered on the cover of 75% of Nintendo's games.
They make a game and paint it Mario instead of trying new characers ideas.

I mean, was Mario suited to Mario Ball?
WTF did Dinosaur Planet have to do with Starfox until they painted him in.
There's nothing wrong with Mario spreading his wings a little:
Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis and plenty more are classics. But look at Dringo's examples in the main post.
Don't you agree that they're starting to push it, that it's starting to wear a little thin?