Nintendo is soaked with tradition. I can say unequivocally that as long as there is a Nintendo console, Mario, Zelda, and Samus will exist. Nintendo is allowed to keep using these characters and environments because they've been around for thirty-nine (!!!) years, and they deserve to utilize their own gold-plated intellectual property they've worked hard to sculpt. But it's hard to forgive Nintendo for the shoddy treatment they've been giving their all-stars lately. Metroid: Other M was a total embarrassment, and the New Super Mario Brothers series is cute, but serves no purpose beyond wasting time. Even Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, which I consider to be the crowning achievement of the Zelda series, got the HD treatment for the Wii U, which is proof that Nintendo is more interested in capitalizing on nostalgia rather than new experiences. New series are not immune to this lazy tune-up, either. Animal Crossing: City Folk was simply a Wii port of Animal Crossing: Wild World, and while it added a few neat things, it was just a thinly-veiled rehash of something that had worked in the past. Nintendo's software library was at its most diverse during the era of the darling GameCube. Brilliant 3rd party titles such as Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia were being released on a fairly regular basis during those years. Unfortunately, when Nintendo unveiled the Wii with it's proprietary motion controls and sup-par processing capabilities, those 3rd party developers that had contributed so much to GameCube's diverse library jumped ship for more orthodox, less niche territory like Sony and Microsoft. Since then, Nintendo has basically been relying on their aging mascots to carry the brand, which at best are overextended, and at worst, stale. The company seems to be in the mindset where they know that an old product was successful, so they spit-shine it and release it on their new console, hoping that fans will line up to buy the same thing they just bought a year or two ago. They keep reaching into their ragged bag of tricks that they've been using for decades, when they should be focusing on appealing to 3rd party developers that can give the platform some real depth and individuality. The fans deserve better than that, and so do the characters that are wallowing in mediocrity due to Nintendo's laziness.
Eller likes a lot of old video games, and some new video games. Follow him on Twitter (@JordanEller) for updates about articles, but mostly silly jokes.
Nintendo is soaked with tradition. I can say unequivocally that as long as there is a Nintendo console, Mario, Zelda, and Samus will exist. Nintendo is allowed to keep using these characters and environments because they've been around for thirty-nine (!!!) years, and they deserve to utilize their own gold-plated intellectual property they've worked hard to sculpt. But it's hard to forgive Nintendo for the shoddy treatment they've been giving their all-stars lately. Metroid: Other M was a total embarrassment, and the New Super Mario Brothers series is cute, but serves no purpose beyond wasting time. Even Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, which I consider to be the crowning achievement of the Zelda series, got the HD treatment for the Wii U, which is proof that Nintendo is more interested in capitalizing on nostalgia rather than new experiences. New series are not immune to this lazy tune-up, either. Animal Crossing: City Folk was simply a Wii port of Animal Crossing: Wild World, and while it added a few neat things, it was just a thinly-veiled rehash of something that had worked in the past. Nintendo's software library was at its most diverse during the era of the darling GameCube. Brilliant 3rd party titles such as Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia were being released on a fairly regular basis during those years. Unfortunately, when Nintendo unveiled the Wii with it's proprietary motion controls and sup-par processing capabilities, those 3rd party developers that had contributed so much to GameCube's diverse library jumped ship for more orthodox, less niche territory like Sony and Microsoft. Since then, Nintendo has basically been relying on their aging mascots to carry the brand, which at best are overextended, and at worst, stale. The company seems to be in the mindset where they know that an old product was successful, so they spit-shine it and release it on their new console, hoping that fans will line up to buy the same thing they just bought a year or two ago. They keep reaching into their ragged bag of tricks that they've been using for decades, when they should be focusing on appealing to 3rd party developers that can give the platform some real depth and individuality. The fans deserve better than that, and so do the characters that are wallowing in mediocrity due to Nintendo's laziness. 