56ok.org

One way Nintendo is what Genesisn't

If Genesis does what Nintendon't in arcade game play, then Nintendo is what Genesisn't in this respect: Most Sega characters are pretty generic. After all, most of their success was in the arcade, and their initial home strategy was hoping their arcade lineup would sell a home system. Most people when they put in their quarter want actiopn. The character suits the game. They are about new gameplay concepts primarily. That's why lot of their hits are one-offs.

Nintendo had less arcade experience, since Sega was making mechanical games since World War II and has been founded as an East-meets-West company, and Nintendo was mostly making Playing Cards, and was mostly focused on Japan. The way they made it in America was forcing developers to deny Sega and Atari their third party games. There's literally only one title made for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, and Atari 7800, Rampage. They changed video games from the wild wild west to the iron power glove fist. Then Sega has a reset with the Genesis, and government helped rust the iron power glove. It was no big deal to make NES exclusive when NES owned 90% of the US market, but when companies wanted to hedge their bets, they wanted some Sega Action. Some didn't want to be seen so they "licensed" a Sega version to companies like Flying Edge and Arena, which were basically Acclaim dummy companies. Even LJN was a dummy company to get around a quality control limit of Nintendo. The US governent said lifetime company system exclusives were illegal. And then Nintendo had to do something Sega couldn't do well with their arcade mentality. Make longer, deeper, and more story driven games, and games that had signicant differences without regrudging the old levels, and that means making characters. Mario was conceived as digital actor to be a recognizable face in their video games, so they got a hewad start. Super Mario Bros was the game everyone wanted to have becuase it felt like there could be a conclusion. I joked saying when Mario beats the eighth levelk, it will show a toad with a crown and a little fickering like a movie projector saying, "Thank you Mario, but I'm in another castle", and then you do level one over again, but harder. I was half right. Do something to get the second quest, but the game actually ended. I thought most people would probably say, "What a Jip, I have 2 lives left and the machine took them away from me." But instead they said, "An end? I actually finished it. I did something!" Nintendo did something no other video game I heard of had before (Infocom and similar games, and purely head-to-head contest games exempted, but those were designed as second person stories.), a defined end instead of beating some nebulous world record.

It's sort of like WWE vs. TNA WWE uses action to resolve the drama, TNA uses drama to hype the action. When asking people who regularly watch both, mostly in WWE you remember the storylines, in TNA you remember the moves, but not exclusively. Most of the things you remember about Sega are nailing that extremely long but not quite full jump, or scurrying through bullets, or the first time they played something and was awed, individual moments that are gameplay related. Nintendo was known for the moments that moved the story, whether they are plot points, or secrets found, or if they remember something with action, the way they beat the boss and the A-Ha moment when it became easym, but again, some crossover. When Playstation came out, Nintendo was Flanked on the action side by Sega, and on the Story side by Playstation. They had the middle ground. They were trying to make it a sweet spot comnbining the best of both instead of a half-hearted vanilla spot. They had established characters, and made a purely action Nintendo All Star title. It's like an all-star disater movie. A lot of big names, everyone has a reason to save their own skin (in disater movies some people care about the others, but Nintendo was making an pure competitive Action game for people who thought PS1 was too story driven, and not enough game driven.) all but one are going to die along the way, and you're told to guide your favorite character in a "what if" fan fight that you're not given any particular reason why, all you need to know is how to move, punch, block, and otherwise fight. Super Smash Bros 64 (a retronym to differentiate it from other SSB games) was a game only Nintendo could produce and only in the N64 era, they had many "game stars" who starred in games people admired, and had kids on the bus debating whether Mario could beat up Donkey Kong, or Pikachu could beat up Link. They took their stars from games that were consider more dramas than Sega, (in genreral, but F-Zero for example, that was pure action), and used them in a game that was more action than Sony, and lets fans answer who can beat up who by playing them in a battle. And depending who the fan was and who he/she was facing, it could be anybody. Eventually Sega had a last hurrah getting the last few big purely arcade games, saw the arcades diminishing, and made their games online with a built in Dial Up modem to try to be the leader in Online gaming. Obviously from the company that brought us more story content came the DVD drive, which outsold networking, which action-gamers preferred, but the non-gamers and story-oriented gamers preferred the world's cheapest DVD player, the PS2.

© 2017 Brian Ciesicki. All Rights Reserved

Search Engine Optimization and Free Submission