Soapbox’s features allow our individual writers to express their own opinions on important topics, opinions that may not necessarily be the voice of the website. Having argued a March 31 defense yesterday, Kate decides to take on another hot topic: Why is Nintendo so focused on remaking old games?
Do you remember a few years ago, when each film was a remake or continuation of an 80’s classic? Remember how exhausting it was for people who missed that decade a little? You may not know it – the past year has kind of turned the weather into a beige mud, so we’re not even sure if we remember our zip code anymore, but it was a difficult time. Some of us wanted new films. Innovation. Creativity. Instead, we have Ghostbusters (but women!), Blade Runner (but Deckard is old!), and Prometheus (but completely misses the goal of Foreigner Series!).
It’s okay, though – now all we have are terrible live remakes of Disney movies and ten thousand Marvel movies and TV shows that you have to follow if you want any chance to understand the nuances of the next one. Sigh. If this is the grumpy old man’s hill I’m going to die on, so be it. I want Hollywood to invest a billion dollars in something new.
All aboard the moody train, because we are going to Complainsville, population: me.
Progress is not made by looking back and trying to recreate our childhood through pink sunglasses. God knows that we would all prefer to return to our relatively peaceful and uncomplicated childhoods, but they were peaceful and uncomplicated because we were children and we did not realize that the world was still full of war, politics and misery. Constantly reviving The Goonies it will not take us back to our years as a blind child.
Likewise, the constant hustle and bustle of sequences, remakes and old game versions is, for me, getting a little tiring. (I know I recently argued for a Pullblox sequence, but I have a multitude, okay?) A remake or sequence is usually an easy win for an editor: the code base, outline and story already exist, so it’s definitely more it is easier to depend on something already done than to build something from scratch. Of course, there are expectations to fulfill, and rarely does a sequel or remake reach them – there is always some artistic or mechanical choice that infuriates and disappoints fans, like the new Pokémon Diamond and Pearl chibis, but people will buy the games anyway, so what does it matter?
I will take same He’s a grumpy old man, but I sometimes feel that modern Nintendo is afraid of the really big risks. Lately – over the last few years, at least – Nintendo’s new IPs (intellectual properties – in short, new ideas, new series and generally just entirely new games) have revolved around showcasing their latest technology or experimenting with new technologies .
I may be wrong here, but I I think Ring Fit Adventure is the last original Nintendo game that was really new. Before that, it was ARMS; before that, Splatoon. There is also Nintendo Labo, if you want to expand the definition of “game”, and the 1-2-Switch, which was little more than a fun demonstration of technology for the underused HD noise of Switch. All great games, but hardly for all time (except Splatoon, which is already producing sequences) and most of them involve Joy-Cons in style, demonstrating what the Switch is capable of.
I know I know. It’s annoying to complain that Nintendo didn’t give me what I want. I warned you that I was entering my most grumpy old age, and I promise that I will be back to praise some obscure DS game in no time. But I do not would you like to relive my childhood indefinitely with refined remakes. I would prefer to be able to access games from my past without paying £ 100 for an unboxed copy of an eBay GameCube game. I want the technology to be designed to outlast a single console generation. I don’t want to be asked to upgrade, upgrade and upgrade before I’m ready to proceed.
More than anything, I want new experiences, risks, leaps of faith that seem terrifying at first, but are worth it in the end. Nintendo fans (including myself, hi) are notoriously difficult to please, and there is always the risk that a completely new series will attract anger like never before – Splatoon seemed strange at first, didn’t it? A Nintendo sniper? No thanks – but we all know that they will make it.
The moment when a business goes from “throw things on the wall and see what sticks” to “it stopped – let’s do it over and over again, now we know it will always stop” is inevitable, because that is how business works. They have investors and shareholders to please, and the risks do not bring money. Mario, Zelda and others earn a lot of money, because they have proven to be profitable; smaller games like Pikmin are archived and occasionally shown to please cult followers. It just makes sense.
Asking for new and risky things with no idea of what really would you like, nor any guarantee that we would actually buy it, is tantamount to asking Google to invest millions in a new line of nuclear powered tricycles or accessible lunar journeys. Sure, they have the money, the talent and the connections to do that – but why would they leave your comfort zone when things are going well?
We live in a world of extremes now, where most things are judged by the masses as excellent or terrible, and everything in between is resigned to the “meh” corridors and forgotten forever. Why risk a “meh” when you can guarantee an “excellent”? Even the worst Zelda title on the mainline will not drop below 9/10 today, and even if the test of time eventually finds you a little unsatisfactory – like Skyward Sword – it will still sell, because it is a Zelda.
If the last few years serve as a reference, we can probably expect a new idea for Nintendo soon, perhaps when all things about Zelda / Mario’s birthday have subsided a bit. But until then, it’s sequences and remakes, sequences and remakes, even the bank. I will still buy them. Of course I will. I am a sucker for Nintendo’s work, and I must point out that none of these sequences or remakes are bad. They are simply not new – and I don’t want to be stuck in a world where we have the same five games and movies, repeatedly channeled into our lives as one Player One Readyflavored porridge.
In the meantime, I’m going to look for the indies to get my dose of the weird and wonderful, and I hope someone finds it appropriate to give them a billion dollar budget someday. A girl can dream.