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"KONAMI"

Do you remember the era of the N64? Where we had but a few third party developers making their titles upon Nintendo's finest machine?

Capcom were making million selling franchises on the Playstation, Square stuck their middle finger up at cartidge based Nintendo, Namco repeatidly slanted Nintendo's home format, Eidos refused to accept the system existed and new company Rockstar would only release a handful of tiny projects. But what all these companies believe would come to pass did not, the fall of Nintendo. Some brilliant innovations, the introduction of Pokemon and a certain game called Goldeneye allowed the mighty N to laugh in the face of the massive menace that was the Playstation. Nintendo may have had themselves to blame for the introduction to the Playstation but it was also because of Nintendo and Nintendo alone that they had managed to stop the money guzzling giant from eating away at Nintendo's fabled fan base.

Nevertheless Nintendo had support, well at least a bit from two major companies... in the east that support came from friends and highly talented publisher/developer Konami and in the east the adult orientated genius that was Acclaim.

Oh how times change.

Now a mere generation later and all of the big Japanese developers are making games exclusivly for Nintendo... Namco have confirmed the release of all their biggest franchises (bar Time Crisis and Tekken) plus 2 exclusive Nintendo money spinners. Capcom have release 5 exclusive games for Nintendo in the last year and a half... since the sale of Rare in fact who, despite being a bigger production studio, have made a mere 1 title for Microsoft. Square had been grovelling for weeks and set up an independant studio to allow the creation of exclusive Gamecube titles. SEGA of course are always doing something for Nintendo. In the east EA show dedicated support for Nintendo, Eidos spot that Nintendo exist and actually published 2 games and Nintendo have picked up 2 new companies Silcion Knights and Retro Studios.

So where have Konami and Acclaim gone?

Acclaim of course still exist and they do still support Nintendo. But a whole lot less. Turok, the previous Nintendo exclusive title, is now multi-format... it is also crap. In fact a lot of Acclaim titles have lost it since they've decided to leave Nintendo in favour of the money grabbing Playstation market. It may be due to the recent shake up by the company but Acclaim have publicaly made Nintendo responsible for their lagging software sales. Shadowman, one of the finest N64 titles, got a sequel that was nothing more than a pathetic 3rd person adventure game for the PS2. Acclaim's biggest titles such as the Extreme G series and in particular Burnout are now all released as a PS2 title with a later conversion. It may not be a massive loss, whereas once they ruled they now do not and so not having this company as dedicated as they once were is not that damaging. But it is still sad.

Konami is a little different. Since the N54 era Konami have become probably the biggest Japanese 3rd party developer in the world. Pro Evolution Soccor and Metal Gear Solid are titles that sell systems in style and get number 1 all over the world. These are titles that have never appeared on a Nintendo home console (outside of Japan). Nintendo could do with such titles, but that is okay because Konami have exclusive games for Nintendo that can potentially do the same. Well at least they did. Castlevania and Mystical Ninja, fantastic underatted games (well I though so) on the N64 no longer exist as Nintendo titles. In fact other than the Gameboy Nintendo barley see anything of their old friend bar the disspointing ISS system. But unlike Acclaim Nintendo need to rescue their fallen relationship. Because Konami sell systems and Nintendo have systems to sell.

Enter Silicon Knights, in my eyes Nintendo's GREATEST developer. Retro are fantastic, Hal are amazing but Silicon Knights make works of art. Eternal Darkness for example, despite lacking flare, is such a beautifully crafted piece of perfection with not a flaw to find. Amazing and the release of their next title had a mixed response from me. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a class looking title that has all the flare missing from past Knight's titles. But it is also a game that has stopped Dennis Dyack's team from making their next classic and concentrating on this upgraded port dicatated by Konami. Now the Metal Gear game is the first exclusive Konami game on the Gamecube... and they're not even making it. This is Nintendo trying desperatly to work so close to Konami that this is the first of a beautiful friendship. SK themselves have claimed this and that they could be working with Konami more in the future.

Could this be Konami's return? Could Retro be making a specific ISS Nintendo exclusive (the were making a football game after all)... Could Silicon Knights be producing the next Castlevania game (imagine how fantastic that would be)... Could Hal be ressurecting Goeman? What do you think?

Here's to the future.

Dringo.

Dringo wrote:
>Some brilliant
> innovations, the introduction of Pokemon and a certain game called
> Goldeneye allowed the mighty N to laugh in the face of the massive
> menace that was the Playstation.

>it was also because
> of Nintendo and Nintendo alone that they had managed to stop the
> money guzzling giant from eating away at Nintendo's fabled fan base.

Nintendo alone?

So NINTENDO made Goldeneye?

Hehe! :-P


Talking of which, I wonder how Rare are getting on.
They've got just over a year to release 4 more games! ;-)

Kameo might make it out by then, and so should Conker (if it's not out already?), but I wonder what else they'll have...
Having said that, we didn't see Grabbed By the Goulies until within 3-6 months of it's release...

Maybe they'll surprise everyone at E3...

perhaps. :-)

While I'd love to believe that such classic series liek Castlevania and Mystical Ninja may return (the NES version is genius), I very much doubt it.

Sure, Nintendo are tryign to win back Konami with basically handing them some profits from MGS: TT (which, despite what everyone says, will be an awful game), but Namco don't seem to be doing much at all and Nintendo have offered them a whole lot more; StarFox, Donkey Konga and PacMan to name a few (unless PacMan is made by someone else...)

I do hope they make a triumphant return, because Konami are brilliant and do have some great franchises (and Castlevania by Silicon Knights would be brilliant, perhaps adding a more brooding and horror feel to the game), but we can only live in hope.

Oh, and Eternal Darkness lacking flair? Nooooooooooo! ;-)

Just be prepared for people to disagree with everything you say, Dring - most of the commenst on mine have been to disagree with me.

My articles have no aims, with gives me free reign to do whatever I wish, usually with loads of replies - 90 in under a day for the latest.

reviewing your owns games for nothing = poor.

Aryticle writing with after debates = awesome

I just let Conor know that I would like to make a regular article that looks at the wonderful world of developers and how their loss or attachment affect Nintendo.

I'd like to write articles... far more fun.

And the C-E readers would appreciate them more than the monkeys on here :D

Just use some of your old SR ones - I sponged off my old articles up until now, and Conor needs someone to fill in the fortnightly gap - my Pause gets posted once fortnightly, and Conor used to post his Gameoff every other week, but now that's gone. avast. Talk to conor.

I approached Conor about it a while ago... he told me to give it ago...

But then after being bogged down by coursework I never got round to it.

But what about cube-Europe, Dringo? Get your damn articles posted on there.

You worked for them once, did you not, writing reviews? Thankless, that was, but article writing is sweet...

Max powers wrote:
> EAD?

Nintendo in house development team headed by Shigeru Miyamoto.

Argh sorry *It's no wonder I don't like YOUR POINTS anymore.

EAD?