Internet discussion about video games (and really, most everything) eventually downgrades into nothing more than stupid flame wars about subjects that only half relate to the original topic. Nintendo discussions are especially annoying, because one stray comment by some PlayStation fanatic looking for attention turns the whole thing into a place of anarchy and insanity. One common thread I hear from Nintendo haters is "Why buy the next Mario? Its pretty much the same game", "That new Zelda hasn't changed anything from Ocarina of Time", "Come up with something new Nintendo we've seen enough of Mario, Link, and Pokémon". I find this argument to be annoying and unoriginal (then I guess its makes it a bit hypocritical), and also garbage because most successful publishers do the exact same thing, but even to a worse degree than Nintendo in most cases. Here are some examples.
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| The Bros. from Brooklyn have been around for awhile. Some say its been too long... |
The biggest (and most blatant) example of this is the ultra-popular Call of Duty series. Activision has put the series on an annual cycle, and while each game changes the setting from the last, the series hasn't had serious innovation since its first entry in its subseries Modern Warfare. If you've played one, you can pretty much play any of them. At its core, the series has been nothing but a rerelease of the same mechanics and engine, with nothing new introduced other than a campaign, a set of maps, era-accurate weapons and maybe a different multiplayer if you're lucky. Paying $60 for a game every year that adds little to no innovation from previous installments is something that I'm not interested in. Nintendo has done a little reusing of the core mechanics and engine with the two Super Mario Galaxy games (among a few examples), but they also added in things like Yoshi, new powerups, and a different way to explore to give a fresh, yet familiar experience.
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| Only someone who played the games a lot could tell you which Call of Duty this is. On the other hand, someone who hadn't played Zelda all that much could tell the difference between Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. |
Another point of the argument is that Nintendo keeps adding entries to its long-running series, complaining that they should come up with something new. Like I said, successful publishers will make successful games sequels. What games introduced since 2005 have made series out of themselves? Off the top of my head, I can name Uncharted, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Gears of War, LittleBig Planet, Mass Effect, and Nintendogs. All but one of those were made by publishers outside of Nintendo. I bet most of those trolls who make "Nintendo Unoriginal" comments enjoy one of the series I've listed above. A good number of the above series have made trilogies (or more) of themselves, in less that ten years to boot. My counter is that Nintendo has been coming out with plenty of new IPs. Games like Professor Layton, Elite Beat Agents, Flingsmash, Steel Diver, Pushmo, Sakura Samurai, and Dillon's Rolling Western are games that Nintendo has published recently that show they can make new classics to stand up high with Mario and Zelda. The last four were all released within the past year on the 3DS (though only Steel Diver was through retail), which shows Nintendo definitely wants to create new games.
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| Pushmo: One of the biggest examples of new Nintendo IPs |
So here's my argument in a nutshell: Every really successful game, like Call of Duty, will get sequels, and usually the non-Nintendo ones are less original than the Nintendo-made followups. Those who slam Skyward Sword for unoriginality yet enjoy the heck out of Uncharted are hypocrites, plain and simple. Also, Nintendo brings out new IPs periodically, so Nintendo doesn't just make sequels like the flamers claim, because they ignore them for the convenience of their argument. Nintendo is an awesome game maker, and I want to keep enjoying what they bring us!
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