Nintendo: A history of ups and downs

wow i was just watching Gamemakers on G4
they were doing it on the NES
and that "robot rob" i think it was called
helped a lot in selling the console as an entertainment system and not a game console

Make sure to tell Sony that connectivity is weak sauce. That's all they have left after they gave up Rumble.

It's funny how they have already predicted the Wii being a hilight. It very well could be a failure. I hope not but since it's not out yet how do they know? I agree that the DS should have made that list considering that its out now and is selling well.

i love "The Wizard" it is awesome.

I don't see how ROB could be considered a negative because it was the key factor that helped Nintendo get into the toy stores after the Atari crash, when stores didn't want anything to do with video games ("It's not a video game! It has a robot! It's a toy!").

Say, now that you mention AOL...
Don't you guys wanna do an article about the net neutrality thing?

www.savetheinternet.com

You can even post some more Daily Show clips. And don't tell me it hasn't got anything to do with Gaming, because it does.

I ask this question not as a fanboy, but as an ignorant dupe who owns neither a GBA nor a GameCube (but who owns a DS Lite and will probably buy a Wii once it's been on the market for a while):

What is wrong with connectivity? It seems to be being able to see your GBA games on a bigger screen when playing at home would be a good thing? Does it work horribly in practice? Do the games look like garbage? Do some games not work at all? Enlighten me. The article seems to bag on it b/c it's not online play. But would it be OK if coupled with online play?

GC-GBA connectivity is a mediocre point in Nintendo's history, but I'd call it undersupported before I'd call it a Nintendon't. I found the Tingle Tuner genuinely useful at a couple points in Wind Waker, when I didn't want to use up my precious remaining bombs, and could rely on the fat little fairy man to drop some science.

Four Swords adventures was also pretty fun, although scheduling time to play it with friends was tricky, and led to it taking us a year and a half to finish. I've heard the same of Crystal Chronicles.

Pac Man Vs. is perhaps the best argument for purchasing link cables. It's great fun if you're hanging out with a mixed group of gamers & non-gamers, since the gameplay is so simple and intuitive.

Anyway, there's not a lot of good reasons for connectivity, but the few that work do so pretty well. I'd substitute "E-Reader" for "GC-GBC connnectivity" on the list.

Is this a gaming blog or a Nintendo blog? I'm confused.

I was surprised that Nintendo's move to overcharge game makers for selling games on Nintendo's cartridge... or Nintendo's move to kick Sony and their CD ROM to the curb were not mentioned in the don't list.

As beuks mentioned... the e-reader should have made the list of don'ts as well.

I think they forgot the ultimate don't that was pulling out of a deal to make a cd drive for the snes. It was with some major japanese electronics company what was thier name?

What passes for game journalism these days so often comes down to received wisdom punched up with bad writing. Exhibit A: "One word: Franchises. Or, as Nintendo president/head bean-counter Satoru Iwata would say, 'Ka-ching!'" Exhibit B: "What would the world be like without Shigeru Miyamoto, a deadbeat artist from Kyoto when he first joined the firm in 1980?" Thanks for the value judgment about the prior state of Miyamoto's life, Scott Steinberg of AOL Games!

The ROB wasn't a "failure" for Nintendo, it just wasn't a success. Nintendo's had lots of little projects like that during their history. Remember eReader? Pocket Pikachu? Game & Watch? Are these failures? They weren't big successes but they're hardly a reason for other companies to stand around and Nelson laugh.

Virtual Boy *was* a failure, there's no denying that, but it's also nothing we don't know. The SMB movie would be a failure if Nintendo were in any way responsible for it other than supplying the license and putting writeups for the thing in Nintendo Power -- we aren't blaming Sega for that House Of The Dead film.

But most shameful is the article misses out on Nintendo's biggest failure -- and it's not even allowing Sony to move on to become Number One back during the SNES CD drive debacle. It's failure to reign in abuses of their monopoly status during their company's heyday, which had to have caused lots of industry illwill and set the stage for Sony's usurpation during the Playstation era.

Well, IMHO at least.

agree with jc.
the crash with sony is a top 3 in nintendo's history.

I think 90% of that article was poorly made, the ninty history is more interesting than that!

21 million gamecubes and 75million gbas, connectivity between gamecube and gba woould not take off, I knew that connectivity would suck, the average person that own and play a gba dont own a gamecube, however they own a ps2. It would have been nice if there was connectivity between ps2 and gba who both are the most recgonized gaming products around and the most mainstream. Connectivity between kingdom hearts chain of memories for the GBA and kingdom hearts 2 would have been sweet or connectivity between gba and ps2 with american idol game.

Not that I'm all that fond of GameSpy (even pre-IGN merger) ordinarily, but read this...

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/25smartest/index22.shtml

It's dead-on in saying that not only was R.O.B. not a mistake, it is one of the reasons Nintendo rose to the stature it reached. Underestimating the importance of R.O.B., who still makes plenty of cameos in Nintendo games? That sauce is so weak, it's baby formula.

While Virtual Boy was a failure from the start, I did like it. Even though it was only red and black, the games were great like Wario Land and Galactic Pinball. Dare I say it, Red Alarm was also a good VB game despite it being in wireframe-like graphics, causing some confusion to the gamer

Personally, Virtual Boy falls in between "NintenDO" and "NintenDONT" It's slowly reaching to the point where it's a collector's item and some claiming it a cult favorite. Nintendo had some guts to actually produce this console and being the first to make a mainstream & affordable virtual reality system for the average gamer.

ROB is gaining cult status here, regardless of the clunky gameplay with this cheap plastic robot. I bought one myself in mint condition(NES ROB Console Set) as an icon to videogames. Move over Mario, ROB is Nintendo's true mascot. Plus isn't this thing fetching big bucks on ebay(depending on condition)?

Okay so we all know the article is poorly written or well...poorly chosen considering they put The Wizard and Super Mario Bros the Movie on the list. Why?!? Pick something that's actually from Nintendo!

For the reccord, Super Mario Bros. the movie was awesome.

Reminds me of

"Genesis does what nintendon't."