@Zidentia Your comment at the end about Ikegami "diversifying their portfolio" seems off. Ikegami was always a broadcasting equipment manufacturer. Video game development was purely a small side thing they were trying to get into, like a lot of other companies at the time.
Nintendo itself included. You'll hear about how Nintendo used to be a playing card company, but I don't think very many people truly understand the full context of that. Nintendo was a playing card manufacturer for half a century, and video game development was just one of the things they tried, after such a long time of doing one specific thing and finding that it wasn't working for them anymore.
They got super lucky with it too, because once again, success is purely a matter of luck. Heck, they're trying to do movies now. I don't just mean the Mario movie, I mean they want to start doing things themselves. I hope that works out for them. Kinda sounds like they want to buy Illumination, even.
(Yes, I understand these posts are old. But the situations behind them haven't changed really.)
@Caryslan What a narrative. Not a single thing here is true.
Donkey Kong "faded into irrelevance" because what else were you going to do with it now that Super Mario Bros. was a thing? You're taking this out of context on purpose. Donkey Kong was essentially put into the same box that Alex Kidd was, with the only difference being that Nintendo actually wanted to do something with the character later on. Yes, that was Nintendo's decision, not Rare's; they used the fact that Donkey Kong had been out of the public eye to their advantage, so that they could experiment without ever feeling like they had to go too far with it, which is probably why we also got GB Donkey Kong at the same time.
Meanwhile, it was Rare's decision to make a fairly normal platformer. Indeed, the DKCs are honestly not particularly interesting games by themselves, and are carried largely by having nice audiovisuals, and being released in the right place at the right time with said visuals. Since we got Yoshi's Island out of it, an actually interesting game which everyone also happens to genuinely adore for its visuals, Miyamoto was completely right to take issue with DKC. Yokoi was right too; the graphics actually make DKC kinda hard to play for quite some time, though DKC fans will never admit to it.
Sega never truly had a chance in the "16-bit war", and for the most part had no real intention of being a major player. Sure, they probably thought it would have been nice, but all of their business decisions suggest that they were interested in doing their own thing. That aside, Sonic's success was always a massive fluke. The Sega CD was an appropriate answer to the TurboGrafx-16 CD, hated largely by people jealous that they didn't have one as kids. The 32X was Sega of America trying desperately to do something that doesn't make sense: actively resist the next generation by releasing an inferior product. Had the 32X never been released, Sonic fans (and it's almost always Sonic fans) would never be able to whine about Genesis add-ons like they do. Sega of Japan deciding to move on to the Saturn was not some mistake as your "Sega finished the job" comment implies, as the Genesis had been around for some time at this point and the PlayStation was coming out at the same time the Saturn was.
You mean Jungle Beat and Paon's games? Some of the more interesting platformers released period, which actually try to be unique in a genre where uniqueness is actively resisted but continually demanded? How could those possibly be "half-hearted spinoffs"? What metric are you basing that on? Success? What a joke. Success is not fact-based at all and comes down purely to luck. I'm sure that's why you're so eager to dismiss an incredible game like Jungle Beat. Doubly funny as Jungle Beat is often perceived as an especially important game, not just by itself, but also by being seen as a vital stepping stone towards juggernaut Super Mario Galaxy.
Returns is okay as a DKC title specifically, but do you think it's as impressive as something like Rayman Origins? I'm not sure about that one. Are you going to dismiss that as unimportant somehow? Retro also had to sell their souls to do the job; I am not confident that Prime 4 will release, let alone be any good. But speaking of interesting platformers, why write off Nintendo's own GB Donkey Kong and MvDK games like you do? GB Donkey Kong is overwhelmingly considered to be one of the best Game Boy games ever released, possibly even one of the best Mario games ever created. You don't have to be any kind of fanboy to see that.
Your post doesn't read like intelligent commentary on history, it reads like obvious anti-Nintendo propaganda, in a time when Nintendo fanboys are telling us that it's "morally right" to hate the company and everything it has ever done. It's very tiresome to read, year after year, and it's a miracle that anyone cared about the Switch at this point. "In your opinion", that is in your own little world, Nintendo is likely responsible for very little of its success, despite having massive dev teams putting out huge games all the time, for decades now.
I'm sure you'd write a similar post about how third-party Mario titles like Camelot's sports games and Hudson's Mario Party games somehow "saved" the entire Mario name, or similar insanity. Pokemon fans already do this with Coliseum and XD, games that did not sell particularly well; 1 million each is good for how low-budget they are, but not good for Pokemon games. Considering how much fans claim to worship success, this is not a good look.
So what's supposed to be your point here? You don't seem to actually have one. I assume you would just call me a "fanboy" at this point, but worthless namecalling is not what's going to make anything I've said wrong.
Comments 2
Re: Feature: Shining A Light On Ikegami Tsushinki, The Company That Developed Donkey Kong
@Zidentia Your comment at the end about Ikegami "diversifying their portfolio" seems off. Ikegami was always a broadcasting equipment manufacturer. Video game development was purely a small side thing they were trying to get into, like a lot of other companies at the time.
Nintendo itself included. You'll hear about how Nintendo used to be a playing card company, but I don't think very many people truly understand the full context of that. Nintendo was a playing card manufacturer for half a century, and video game development was just one of the things they tried, after such a long time of doing one specific thing and finding that it wasn't working for them anymore.
They got super lucky with it too, because once again, success is purely a matter of luck. Heck, they're trying to do movies now. I don't just mean the Mario movie, I mean they want to start doing things themselves. I hope that works out for them. Kinda sounds like they want to buy Illumination, even.
(Yes, I understand these posts are old. But the situations behind them haven't changed really.)
Re: Feature: Shining A Light On Ikegami Tsushinki, The Company That Developed Donkey Kong
@Caryslan What a narrative. Not a single thing here is true.
Donkey Kong "faded into irrelevance" because what else were you going to do with it now that Super Mario Bros. was a thing? You're taking this out of context on purpose. Donkey Kong was essentially put into the same box that Alex Kidd was, with the only difference being that Nintendo actually wanted to do something with the character later on. Yes, that was Nintendo's decision, not Rare's; they used the fact that Donkey Kong had been out of the public eye to their advantage, so that they could experiment without ever feeling like they had to go too far with it, which is probably why we also got GB Donkey Kong at the same time.
Meanwhile, it was Rare's decision to make a fairly normal platformer. Indeed, the DKCs are honestly not particularly interesting games by themselves, and are carried largely by having nice audiovisuals, and being released in the right place at the right time with said visuals. Since we got Yoshi's Island out of it, an actually interesting game which everyone also happens to genuinely adore for its visuals, Miyamoto was completely right to take issue with DKC. Yokoi was right too; the graphics actually make DKC kinda hard to play for quite some time, though DKC fans will never admit to it.
Sega never truly had a chance in the "16-bit war", and for the most part had no real intention of being a major player. Sure, they probably thought it would have been nice, but all of their business decisions suggest that they were interested in doing their own thing. That aside, Sonic's success was always a massive fluke. The Sega CD was an appropriate answer to the TurboGrafx-16 CD, hated largely by people jealous that they didn't have one as kids. The 32X was Sega of America trying desperately to do something that doesn't make sense: actively resist the next generation by releasing an inferior product. Had the 32X never been released, Sonic fans (and it's almost always Sonic fans) would never be able to whine about Genesis add-ons like they do. Sega of Japan deciding to move on to the Saturn was not some mistake as your "Sega finished the job" comment implies, as the Genesis had been around for some time at this point and the PlayStation was coming out at the same time the Saturn was.
You mean Jungle Beat and Paon's games? Some of the more interesting platformers released period, which actually try to be unique in a genre where uniqueness is actively resisted but continually demanded? How could those possibly be "half-hearted spinoffs"? What metric are you basing that on? Success? What a joke. Success is not fact-based at all and comes down purely to luck. I'm sure that's why you're so eager to dismiss an incredible game like Jungle Beat. Doubly funny as Jungle Beat is often perceived as an especially important game, not just by itself, but also by being seen as a vital stepping stone towards juggernaut Super Mario Galaxy.
Returns is okay as a DKC title specifically, but do you think it's as impressive as something like Rayman Origins? I'm not sure about that one. Are you going to dismiss that as unimportant somehow? Retro also had to sell their souls to do the job; I am not confident that Prime 4 will release, let alone be any good. But speaking of interesting platformers, why write off Nintendo's own GB Donkey Kong and MvDK games like you do? GB Donkey Kong is overwhelmingly considered to be one of the best Game Boy games ever released, possibly even one of the best Mario games ever created. You don't have to be any kind of fanboy to see that.
Your post doesn't read like intelligent commentary on history, it reads like obvious anti-Nintendo propaganda, in a time when Nintendo fanboys are telling us that it's "morally right" to hate the company and everything it has ever done. It's very tiresome to read, year after year, and it's a miracle that anyone cared about the Switch at this point. "In your opinion", that is in your own little world, Nintendo is likely responsible for very little of its success, despite having massive dev teams putting out huge games all the time, for decades now.
I'm sure you'd write a similar post about how third-party Mario titles like Camelot's sports games and Hudson's Mario Party games somehow "saved" the entire Mario name, or similar insanity. Pokemon fans already do this with Coliseum and XD, games that did not sell particularly well; 1 million each is good for how low-budget they are, but not good for Pokemon games. Considering how much fans claim to worship success, this is not a good look.
So what's supposed to be your point here? You don't seem to actually have one. I assume you would just call me a "fanboy" at this point, but worthless namecalling is not what's going to make anything I've said wrong.