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Nintendo: Consistent If Nothing Else


MBJ

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I was reading through one of the recently completed issues of Nintendo Power from the big torrent and I came across this article. It made me grin as it sounds exactly like what Nintendo is saying today in regard to the Wii. It's from Volume 49 (June 1993) page 26, 13 years ago...

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Critics always complain that Nintendo is a small player, but every console they've released has met its targets. Now I will exclude the GBA, because there were way too many crappy titles released for that handheld, but their home consoles have enjoyed very strong success in terms of game quality and selection. Even the lamest N64 or Gamecube titles aren't all that bad, compared to the flood of Xbox and PS2 games where 9 out of 10 titles are pure garbage. You can say all you want about Nintendo being a kid's console, but they've always delivered a great gaming experience at a great price. Nintendos don't cost $700, they cost $200. Games usually hit the $20 mark after a few months. It's less about cinematic visuals and more about pure gaming enjoyment. What costs the most in game development is the content, not the engine. Let's face it, we're playing the same games we had 20 years ago, they're just prettier and in 3D, but it's still run-jump-shoot. Any idiot can draw a high-poly human with big boobs and guns, it takes a master designer to create an experience worth revisiting time and time again.

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Critics always complain that Nintendo is a small player, but every console they've released has met its targets. Now I will exclude the GBA, because there were way too many crappy titles released for that handheld...

In defense of the GBA, its backwards compatibility is unparalelled. Name any other platform, PC or elsewhere, that can flawlessly and seamlessly play software from 17 years ago.

The new brighter screen is breathtaking too. I love playing lecagy software on my GBA. It's the ultimate handheld nostalgia trip. Nintendo DID rehash a lot of NES and SNES titles for that system but that's not really so bad for a Retrogamer like myself. Case in point: you can play every 2-D Zelda game ever released (with the exception of Four Sword Adventures) on GBA. :)

I still maintain that Nintendo made a mistake by not including GB/C support in the DS.

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I still maintain that Nintendo made a mistake by not including GB/C support in the DS.

With the exception of a few, I bet it would be hard to find anyone who is a DS owner that didn't have an original GB/C sitting around in a drawer somewhere who will never part with it. Betcha too they still have a GBA lurking around too. I still have an original Gameboy Pocket in my closet, beaten all to hell, but still works. :)

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Sorry folks but I am of the opinion that when it comes to Game Boy hardware, newer is better. I have seen an original Game Boy playing the same software side by side with the latest model of GBA and I can't imagine looking back. I don't even know how I was able to play games on that old dim murky system. I am a nostalgia fan but I prefer to be able to see the games and not have to constantly replace batteries.

Sav: if you want an older model GB you can pick one up off of eBay for very cheap.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

i think one can hardly fault nintendo for the swarm of crap games for the gba. that credit would have to go to the 3rd party developers. from what i have seen, anything that nintendo released itself for the gba is pure gold. hell, i still have my original gameboy, and it still works. i never bothered to get a game boy pocket (a smaller version of what i already had never made sense to me, which is the same reason i don't have a gba sp), but i did pick up a gameboy color (which i still have, and still works). personally i think that the gameboy line is one of the greatest line of systems ever to be created, and i agree with MBJ that they should have included legacy gameboy support in the DS.

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Critics always complain that Nintendo is a small player, but every console they've released has met its targets.

More importantly, while Nintendo is a small player, they are the only profitable player. Both Microsoft and Sony are huge conglomerations, most with (presumably) larger profit margins than game hardware. That is why they can afford to take a hit on the sale of each console- the company is so huge that even if the gaming division has a net loss, it can be absorbed.

Nintendo, on the other hand, is very dependent on the success of each product.

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