Nintendo Minute Plays 15 Minutes Of Kirby And The Rainbow Curse

nostalgia blind huh

*why I think the Wii U GamePad is not anywhere near as innovative

Sorry, that was a typo.

Also, the last part of this may have turned into a long-winded rant, so I’ll clarify here:

I’m just sick of seeing Nintendo try to validate the GamePad. We get it. You screwed up by thinking extensive touch controls have a place in the home console industry when you knew that there was a reason the Wii was received so well with motion controls, bar the few exceptions with aforementioned games like Skyward Sword and Other M. But, no, instead of building off of that success, you back-pedal to a design that is meant for on-the-go gameplay and strived to capture the casual market with a tablet-like device as that was what was popularized by Apple. This should go to show that you don’t beat a dead horse by making games that use the controller in extremely gimmicky ways just as you don’t fix what ain’t broken with the masterful control scheme you had with the Wii.

Nintendo has already merged the home console and handheld divisions of their R&D together a few years back after the release of the Nintendo 3DS XL and Wii U (which was in late 2012). In 2013, the teams began working on their next-gen hardware, so if all goes well we should expect to hear an announcement of the Wii U successor in 2016 with a release in Holiday 2017.

Back on topic, the divisions were merged to share ideas with each other and make two systems that can work better in unison through a shared OS. The main problem both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS share is the disconnect both platforms have from each other in this modern age where platforms by the same company tend to run on the same OS.

For the next-gen, Nintendo devices shouldn’t continue this trend of skimping on powerful tech. Though it doesn’t need to really push that envelope too far with its portable systems and its home consoles shouldn’t be trying to mimic a PC, both next-gen platforms need to be different, modern, and should feel like a natural evolution from their predecessors. The Nintendo 3DS felt natural as a successor to the DS which felt natural from the GBA and so on, but the Wii U doesn’t have that same natural evolution the Wii had from the GameCube; the N64 is the console most similar to the Wii U because it didn’t feel as natural an evolution as the SNES was to the NES.

You don’t need to have the most powerful console on the market to push sales. This has been proven time-and-time again. But, consoles need to feel modern, and the Wii U is anything but because it’s leagues behind the rest of gaming devices in terms of specs to the point that it’s laughable, really. This is why the home console market has been heavily impacted: it is because, ever since the Wii and DS gen, Nintendo seems to think that everything they make ‘NEEDS’ to be cheap, low-end tech that relied on gimmicks to sell (they learned their lesson, though, and I’ll get to that in a bit). Sony and Microsoft were both going to ‘FORCE’ the PS Eye and Xbox Kinect 2.0 down consumer’s throats with the PS4 and Xbox One respectively until the negative reception both companies had made them silently slip that mandatory requirement out as well as their very controversial DRM practices that even Sony was about to implement before the Xbox One E3 2013 Reveal’s DRM practices and entertainment-focused nature went viral.

This generation better be a lesson to all companies that you can’t force DRM or gimmicks that don’t feel natural down consumer’s throats. We simply won’t buy into them. The reason I continue to decline buying a PS4/Xbox One is because of the fiasco both consoles had prior to being released and the fact that those DRM practices can rear their ugly heads again at any point in time given the fact that it is explicitly stated they can do that in both of the consoles’ ToS. We just don’t buy into gimmicky methods of control that hinder the experience of immersion instead of improve upon it. All three companies made the same mistakes because they were all trying to recapture the success of the Wii and Nintendo DS, and it’s WRONG because when you focus too hard on being a success, there’s little room for innovation.

Continuing from my point about how Nintendo has learned its lesson, I will say that I have more respect for Nintendo than Sony or Microsoft now. Miyamoto pointed out that targeting the same fanbase they were trying to recapture from the end of the Wii’s lifecycle, which were casual gamers, was a huge mistake that they have to deal with now for the extent of the console’s lifecycle. In other words, they’re stuck with the Wii U and have to make the most of it until they can get back on their two feet on the home console front. The 3DS tried to be another DS at first, but it quickly failed to capture its target audience, so Nintendo resorted in a massive price-cut that they corporate execs took a massive pay-cut for until it started selling at a profit again because they (unlike any company ever before) didn’t want to hinder game development by getting rid of any of their employees for a poor decision the execs made.

Now, the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS are getting a continuous lineup of exclusive, first-party titles, and the Wii U will have two great years of games released for the system if 2016 proves to have as much games in the pipeline as 2015 has. The Wii U is now becoming a bridge towards Nintendo’s resurgence as the core gaming platform on the market, which is a good thing as it started out not knowing what it wanted to be.

But, when Nintendo develops games like this, it does nothing but lengthen that bridge and make it even longer until Nintendo realizes what gamers really want. And, until Nintendo stops making these types of games that rely heavily on gimmicks and catering to a casual audience that is now non-existent on its platforms instead of delivering games that their fanbase actually wants, it will continue this output of having 1 Must-Have Game > 5 Gimmicky/Forgettable Budget Games > 1 Must-Have Game, year-after-year. 2015 is the only year looking different so far for the Wii U, so I’m really hoping that this is the year the Wii U reaches new heights.

Also, the problem with the Wii U GamePad that I have didn’t stem from Off-TV Play. I would like to see that still continue to even exist, as a matter of fact, as it’s a very useful feature. I just feel that the GamePad in and of itself is too complex to use and tries to do too much, and when Nintendo makes games that try to take “advantage” of those gimmicks, it makes an already gimmicky controler even MORE cumbersome. That is what happened with Nintendo Land, Skyward Sword, Other M, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. They all suffer ‘because’ of their control scheme (though SS and Other M also had other bad design choices, too, but that’s a story for another day).